Early in the year 1821 Lord John reintroduced his bill for the disfranchisement of Grampound. Several amendments were proposed, and one, brought forward by Mr. Stuart Wortley, limiting the right to vote to 20_l._ householders, was carried. Thereupon Lord John declined to take further charge of the measure. After being altered and pruned by both Houses the bill was passed, in spite of Lord Eldon, 'with tears and doleful predictions,' urging the peers 'to resist this first turn of the helm towards the whirlpool of democracy.' Grampound ceased to exist as a Parliamentary borough, and the county of York gained two members. Although Lord John supported the amended bill--on the principle that half a loaf is better than no bread--he at the same time announced that 'in a future session he proposed to call attention to the claims of large towns to send members to this House.' He was determined to do all in his power to deprive what he termed the 'dead bones of a former state of England' of political influence, and to give representation to what he termed the 'living energy and industry of the England of the nineteenth century, with its steam-engines and its factories, its cotton and woollen cloths, its cutlery and its coal-mines, its wealth and its intelligence.' Whilst the bill about Grampound was being discussed by the Lords he took further action in this direction, and presented four resolutions for the discovery and punishment of bribery, the disfranchisement of corrupt boroughs, and the enfranchisement of wealthy and populous towns. On a division his proposals were defeated by thirty-one votes in a House of 279 members, and this, under all the circumstances, was a better result than he expected. On April 25, 1822, Lord John again tested the feeling of Parliament with his motion 'that the present state of the representation requires serious consideration.' In the course of a speech of three hours he startled the House by proposing that 100 new members should be added, and, in order that the Commons should not be overcrowded, he added another resolution, to the effect that a similar number of the small boroughs should be represented by one member instead of two. Mr. Canning opposed such a scheme, but complimented Lord John on the ability he had displayed in its advocacy, and then added: 'That the noble lord will carry his motion this evening I have no fear; but with the talents which he has shown himself to possess, and with (I sincerely hope) a long and brilliant career of Parliamentary distinction before him, he will, no doubt, renew his efforts hereafter. If, however, he shall persevere, and if his perseverance shall be successful, and if the results of that success shall be such as I cannot help apprehending, his be the triumph to have precipitated those results, be mine the consolation that, to the utmost and to the latest of my power, I have opposed them.'[2]