On the 15th, they were defeated in the House of Commons, upon a motion of Sir Henry Parnell, for a committee to inquire into the civil list; and on the following day the Duke of Wellington and his colleagues resigned; being apprehensive that the same majority would vote for the principle of parliamentary reform in a day or two after, and not wishing to virtually give up that question by going out after being beaten on it in the House of Commons. During the year 1831, while the discussions on the Reform Bill were going on, the Duke made frequent speeches against the measure, and led the opposition in the House of Lords in a manner quite consistent with his declaration in November. In a speech he made on the 28th March, explanatory of the causes of his resignation, he distinctly denied that the reform fever was owing to that declaration, and asserted that it was to be attributed to the effect on the public mind of the revolutions in France and Belgium. On the 10th of October, after the Reform Bill had been thrown out in the House of Lords, the Duke of Wellington was insulted by a mob on his way to the house. In the evening, the windows of his mansion at Hyde Park-corner were broken. It is to be lamented that any class of Englishmen were to be found so degraded as to be guilty of this ingratitude. Fortunately, the worst of the evil was averted, by the total indifference of the Duke to all such demonstrations. The greatest men have been despisers of mankind, of the swaying multitude, that is to say, the unthinking, the headstrong, and the violent--not of necessity merely, from that intrinsic superiority and natural antagonism which forbid their commingling; but also, and with a more hearty potency, from the experience which they, alternately the adored or the scorned, have had of the inconstancy of the giddy people. In this light estimation, indeed, of the judgment of their less worthy fellows, lies the secret of their greatness and their strength. They ride towards their goal while the stream tends that way, and when the course of the current is diverted, they are not dismayed. Their scorn of the means leads them to pass on by their own strength, or to rest secure on the foundation-rock of our moral nature--principle, and the consciousness of duty done. In April, 1832, on the motion for the second reading of the new Reform Bill in the House of Lords, the Duke made a speech, characterised by unqualified opposition to the measure, at a time when many of the conservative peers (called "waverers,") were for giving it a qualified support. But, after a defeat of ministers in committee, on Lord Lyndhursts motion of the 7th of May, followed by their resignation, and when the king, rather than agree to create peers, called on the Duke of Wellington to form an administration, he expressed his readiness to do so upon the principle of moderate reform.