In the year 1830 England was in a strange state. The reform which sanguine men had looked for as close at hand fifteen years earlier had not yet come, but many things had come that had not been expected. France had shaken off the Bourbons; Belgium had shaken off the Dutch; the people had in fact righted themselves. The example was contagious. Throughout the length and breadth of England there arose an ominous murmur of discontent. It was clear that the limit of patience was being quickly reached, and if Parliament would not reform itself it ran a fair chance of being reformed in spite of itself. The accession of William the Fourth, the manifestation of the supremacy of popular will on the Continent, and the increasing pressure given by depression in manufacture and agriculture, all joined to produce a general conviction that the moment had arrived when reform could no longer be delayed. What then must have been the dismay and indignation of all men who were not blinded by faction to the true interests of England when in November, 1830, Wellington delivered in the House of Lords his famous anti-reform speech, telling the astonished country that the existing representative system possessed the full and entire confidence of the country, that any improvement on it was impossible, and that "so long as he held any station in the Government of the country he should always feel it his duty to resist any measure of parliamentary reform." This speech was read as a declaration of war. A fortnight after its delivery the Duke resigned office, the Whigs came in, but they sought rather to fence with the question than to solve it. The excitement became more intense, the country was literally as well as figuratively in a blaze. In the north of England incendiary fires burned continuously. In March the first Reform Bill was brought in by the Whigs; incomplete and emasculated though it was, to suit the tastes of opponents, it was still thrown out. Then Brougham, seeing that the hour had come for reform or revolution, stepped to the front, forced dissolution upon the reluctant King, and the great election of 1831 followed. The new House of Commons passed the Bill; the Lords threw it out. Popular rage rose higher than ever. There is one way to save the State. Let the King create new peers, and out-vote this obstinate faction in the Lords which is bent on resisting the will of the people. The King would not take this step, and the tide rose still higher. Bristol was burnt. The funds were down to seventy-nine. The windows of Apsley House were broken. The Duke of Newcastle's castle at Nottingham was destroyed by the mob. Indignation meetings were everywhere convened to protest against the action of the Lords. An enormous meeting of one hundred and fifty thousand persons assembled in Birmingham, and unanimously resolved not to pay taxes until the Bill was passed. The winter of 1831-32 was spent in fruitless debates.