Parliamentary reform began to be spoken of in 1819, when a resolution pledging the House of Commons to the consideration of the state of representation was rejected by a vote of one hundred and fifty-three to fifty-eight. This decision stirred up the reform spirit, and large meetings in favor of it were held. The people attending these meetings received military drilling and marched to their meetings in orderly processions, a fact naturally very disturbing to the government. When a great meeting was arranged at Manchester on the 16th of August, troops were accordingly sent to Manchester. The cavalry was ordered to charge the crowd, and although they used the flat side of their swords, the charge resulted in the killing of six persons and the wounding of some hundreds. The clash did not end here, for to offset the ministerial approval of the action of the magistrates and their decision that the meeting was illegal, the Common Council of London passed a resolution by a large majority declaring that the meeting was legal. A number of Whig noblemen also were on the side of the London Council and made similar motions. But the ministers, unmoved by these signs of the times, introduced bills in Parliament for the repression of disorder and the further restraining of public liberty. The bills, it is true, were strenuously opposed in both houses, but the eloquence expended against them was all to no purpose, the bills were passed, and reform for the time being was nipped in the bud. Although after this laws were gradually introduced by the ministers which tended very much to the betterment of conditions, the fire of reform did not burst out again with full fury until the time of the Revolution of July, in France, which it will be remembered was directed against the despotic King Charles X, and ended in his being deposed, when his crown was given to his distant cousin Louis Philippe. The success of the French in their stand against despotism caused a general revolutionary stir in several European countries, while in England the spirit of revolution showed itself in incendiary fires from one end of the country to the other. With Parliament itself full of believers in reform, the chief of the Cabinet, the Duke of Wellington, announced that the House of Commons did not need reform and that he would resist all proposals for a change. So great was the popular excitement at this announcement that the Duke could not venture to go forth to dine at the Guildhall for fear that he might be attacked.