ZNGLAND IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, 
In March, 1831, Lord John Russell, a scion of the great 
Whig house of the Dukes of Bedford, introduced the Reform 
Bill in its first shape. It soon became evident 
The Reform 4, 2 x a 
Bill passed that the ministerial majority was not large enough 
in the House to carry the measure ; though the representatives 
of Commons, . - x 
of five-sixths of the great constituencies voted for 
it, the members for the rotten boroughs were so numerous and 
so resolved not to sanction their own destruction, that the 
second reading of the bill was only carried by one vote (302 
to 3or) in the fullest house that had ever met. Seeing that 
they could not hope to finish the business with such a small 
majority, Lord Grey and his colleagues offered to resign ; the 
king refused to receive their resignation, but dissolved Parlia- 
ment instead, to give the nation its opportunity of renewing or 
refusing its mandate to the Whig party. "The election was 
carried out in the midst of a tremendous agitation, unparalleled 
in the history of the nation; it ended, as might have been 
expected, in the ministers sweeping the whole country and 
obtaining a decisive majority of 136. In September the great 
bill was reintroduced, and passed all its three readings in the 
Commons with ease. 
The resistance of the Tories had now to be transferred to 
the House of Lords, in which they were omnipotent, Pitt and 
Thrown out his successors had almost swamped the upper 
bythe House chamber by their lavish creations of peers during 
of Lords, the last forty years. Not gauging at its full 
strength the determination of the country to have the bill 
passed, the Lords threw it out by a majority of 41 (October, 
1831). 
The winter of 1831-32 was spent in furious agitation against 
Violent de- the House of Lords. Meeting after meeting, 
monstrations attended by scores of thousands of the members 
againstthe of“ Political Unions,” “ National Unions,” and 
Lords, x . . 
. Other such bodies, asserted their desire for 
“The Bill, the whole Bill. and nothing but the Bill.” "Che