volt. The Whigs had made common cause with the Radicals when the
Reform Bill stood in jeopardy every hour, but the triumph of the measure
imperilled this grand alliance. Not a few of the Whigs had been
faint-hearted during the struggle, and were now somewhat alarmed at its
overwhelming success. Their inclination was either to rest on their
laurels or to make haste slowly. The Radicals, on the contrary, longed
for new worlds to conquer. They were full of energy and enthusiasm, and
desired nothing so much as to ride abroad redressing human wrongs. The
traditions of the past were dear to the Whigs, but the Radicals thrust
such considerations impatiently aside, and boasted that 1832 was the
Year 1 of the people. It was impossible that such warring elements
should permanently coalesce; the marvel is that they held together so
long.

[Sidenote: REMEDIAL MEASURES]

Even in the Cabinet there were two voices. The Duke of Richmond was at
heart a Tory masquerading in the dress of a Whig. Lord Durham was a
Radical of an outspoken and uncompromising type, in spite of his
aristocratic trappings and his great possessions. Nevertheless, the new
era opened, not merely with a flourish of trumpets, but with notable
work in the realm of practical statesmanship. Fowell Buxton took up the
work of Wilberforce on behalf of the desolate and oppressed, and lived
to bring about the abolition of slavery; whilst Shaftesbury's charity
began at home with the neglected factory children. Religious toleration
was represented in the Commons by the Jewish Relief Bill, and its
opposite in the Lords by the defeat of that measure. Althorp amended the
Poor Laws, and, though neither he nor his colleagues would admit the
fact, the bill rendered, by its alterations in the provisions of
settlement and the bold attack which it made on the thraldom of labour,
the repeal of the Corn Laws inevitable. Grant renewed the charter of the
East India Company, but not its monopoly of the trade with the East.
Roebuck brought forward a great scheme of education, whilst Grote
sought to introduce the ballot, and Hume, in the interests of economy,
but at the cost of much personal odium, assailed sinecures and
extravagance in every shape and form. Ward drew attention to the abuses
of the Irish Church, and did much by his exertions to lessen them; and
Lord John Russell a year or two later brought about a civic revolution
by the Municipal Reform Act--a measure which, next to the