This was the one great defect of the Reform Bill introduced by Lord Grey and Lord John Russell. Perhaps it would not have been prudent for these statesmen, at that {183} time, to enter on the introduction of a more comprehensive measure. Perhaps Lord Grey and Lord John Russell would have preferred of their own judgment not to introduce too comprehensive a reform measure all at once, and to allow the franchise to broaden slowly down. But it is certain that almost immediately after the passing of the Reform Bill a profound feeling of disappointment began to grow and spread among the classes who found themselves excluded from any of its benefits, and who believed, with good reason, that they had rendered much practical service in the carrying of the measure. The feeling prevailed especially among the artisans in the cities and towns. In some of the towns the Reform Bill had distinctly operated as a measure of disfranchisement rather than of enfranchisement. In Preston, for instance, there had been so large a number of what we have called, adopting a more modern phrase, "fancy franchises" that something not very far removed from universal suffrage was attainable by the male population. These fancy franchises could not be justified on any principle commending itself to rational minds, and it was, moreover, an obvious absurdity to have one system of voting prevailing in this constituency and a totally different system prevailing in another. Therefore Lord Grey and Lord John Russell cannot be censured for their resolve to abolish the fancy franchises altogether. They were introducing an entirely new constitutional system, and it was evident that in the new system there must be some uniform principle as to the franchise. But it is none the less certain that the men who were disfranchised by an Act professedly brought in to extend the suffrage must have felt that they had good reason to complain of its direct effect upon themselves and upon what they believed to be their rights. Nearly forty years of agitation had yet to be gone through before the principal deficiencies in the Reform Act of 1833 were supplied by Liberal and Tory legislation.