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I made the best speech, by general agreement, and in my own opinion, that I ever made in my life. I was an hour and three-quarters up; and such compliments as I had from Lord Althorp, Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Wynne, O'Connell, Grant, the Speaker, and twenty other people, you never heard.
It is difficult for a later age to understand why the accession of Althorp to a peerage should have afforded even a plausible reason for a change of ministry. The position which Althorp held in the house of commons is puzzling to a later generation. It is well known that Gladstone recorded the very highest estimate of his public services.
Even between Wellington and Peel there was a want of cordial harmony and confidence, yet Peel was the only tory statesman of eminent capacity in the house of commons. The attitude of the king, too, was not only strictly constitutional but friendly, though it afterwards appeared that he relied too implicitly on Grey and Althorp to protect him against the machinations of the radicals.
Lord Althorp immediately rose, and amid loud cheers, and with considerable warmth, demanded to know what the honourable and learned gentleman meant by his gesticulation;" and then, after an explanation from O'Connell, his Lordship went on to use phrases which very clearly signified that, though he had no cause for sending a challenge, he had just as little intention of declining one; upon which he likewise was made over to the Sergeant.
Two or three years before, Lord Althorp, who, in Lord Grey's ministry, was Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader of the House of Commons, told Peel that the people had become so indifferent to it, that he never meant to bring forward the question again, and in the last seven years only fourteen petitions had been presented to Parliament in favor of it.
Seeing the truth of the boatswain's statement from the deeper immersion of the ship since he had gone below, he at once ordered the men down into the boats, the passengers going first; then the foremast hands; and, lastly, the officers. "Mr Althorp," said the captain, "you will take charge of the jolly-boat and shove off as soon as she's got her complement. I will command the long-boat myself."
Althorp, Russell, and Duncannon were men whose sympathies leaned more or less decidedly in the opposite direction, and therefore, especially with O'Connell thundering at the gates with the Irish people and the English Radicals at his back, a deadlock was inevitable.
Though Althorp, unwilling to offend the manufacturing interest, pleaded for deliberation and urged that a select committee should frame the regulations to be adopted, the majority of the house was impatient of delay, and he encountered a defeat. The question now resolved itself into a choice between a greater or less limitation of hours.
In many localities the pressure of these evils had led to voluntary compositions between tithe-owners and tithe-payers, which, being temporary, lacked the force of law. The permissive tithe bills of Althorp and Peel were designed to render general a practice which already prevailed in a thousand parishes, and that now introduced by Russell was little more than an extension of the same principle.
Lord Grey and the cause of Reform Lord Durham's share in the Reform Bill The voice of the people Lord John introduces the Bill and explains its provisions The surprise of the Tories 'Reform, Aye or No' Lord John in the Cabinet The Bill thrown out The indignation of the country Proposed creation of Peers Wellington and Sidmouth in despair The Bill carried Lord John's tribute to Althorp.
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