dignity of the House, and its share in legislation, than a majority got together by the long supremacy of one party in the State, eager to show its ill-will by rejecting bills of small importance, but afraid to appear, and skulking in clubs and country houses, in face of a measure which has attracted the ardent sympathy of public opinion.' [Sidenote: BOWING BEFORE THE STORM] 'God may and, I hope, will forgive you for this bill,' was Lord Sidmouth's plaintive lament to Earl Grey, 'but I do not think I ever can!' There lives no record of reply. The last protest of the Duke of Wellington, delivered just before the measure became law, was characteristic in many respects, and not least in its blunt honesty. 'Reform, my lords, has triumphed, the barriers of the Constitution are broken down, the waters of destruction have burst the gates of the temple, and the tempest begins to howl. Who can say where its course should stop? who can stay its speed? For my own part, I earnestly hope that my predictions may not be fulfilled, and that my country may not be ruined by the measure which the noble earl and his colleagues have sanctioned.' Lord John Russell, on the contrary, held then the view which he afterwards expressed: 'It is the right of a people to represent its grievances: it is the business of a statesman to devise remedies.' In the first quarter of the present century the people made their grievances known. Lord Grey and his Cabinet in 1831-2 devised remedies, and, in Lord John's memorable phrase, 'popular enthusiasm rose in its strength and converted them into law.' The Reform Bill, as Walter Bagehot has shown, did nothing to remove the worst evils from which the nation suffered, for the simple reason that those evils were not political but economical. But if it left unchallenged the reign of protection and much else in the way of palpable and glaring injustice, it ushered in a new temper in regard to public questions. It recognised the new conditions of English society, and gave the mercantile and manufacturing classes, with their wealth, intelligence, and energy, not only the consciousness of power, but the sense of responsibility. [Sidenote: A GENEROUS TRIBUTE]