Sir Robert Peel soon saw that he had not gained much by his appeal to the constituencies. The results of the general election showed that the Conservatives had made a considerable addition to their numbers in the House of Commons, but showed also that they were still in a disheartening minority. The return of the first Reform {242} Parliament had, indeed, exhibited them for the time as completely down in the dust, for there was a majority of more than three hundred against them, and now the Liberal majority was hardly more than one hundred. A very hopeful Conservative, or a Conservative who had a profound faith in the principles of antique Toryism, might fill himself with the fond belief that this increase in the Conservative vote foretold a gradual return to the good old days. But Peel was too practical a statesman to be touched for a moment by any such illusion. He had fully expected some increase in the Tory vote. He knew, as well as anybody could know, that there had been some disappointment among the more advanced and impatient reformers all over the country with the achievements of the first reformed Parliament, and, indeed, with the Act of Reform itself. After victory in a long-contested political battle there comes, almost as a matter of course, a season of relaxed effort among the ranks of the victors, for which allowance would have to be made in the mind of such a statesman as Peel, and, in this instance, allowance also had to be made for a falling off in the enthusiasm of those who had helped to carry the Reform movement to success, and found themselves in the end left out of all its direct advantages. [Sidenote: 1835--The Office of Speaker] Peel saw at once that his Government must be absolutely at the mercy of the Opposition when any question arose on which it suited the purposes of the Opposition leaders to rally their whole forces around them and take a party division. So far as the ordinary business of the session was concerned, the Ministry might get on well enough, for there must have been a considerable amount of routine work which would not provoke the Opposition to a trial of strength; but if chance or hostile strategy should bring about at any moment a controversy which called for a strictly party division, then the Government must go down. Nothing can be more trying to a proud-spirited statesman in office than the knowledge that he can only maintain his Government, from day to day, because, for one reason or another, it does not suit the convenience of the Opposition to press some vote which must leave him and his colleagues {243} in a distinct minority. Peel had not long to wait before he found substantial evidence to justify his most gloomy forebodings.