though the stiff old Tories who had counted Wellington as of their number voted solidly against it. Even the Lords failed to make the expected resistance, and accepted the measure by a vote of two to one despite the known preference of the court and clergy, and a bombardment of Protestant petitions. One peer had thus predicted the result to Macaulay, who was in doubt as to how the Duke would explain the bill and justify his change of front: "0, that will be simple enough. He'll say, 'My Lords! Attention! Right about face! Quick march!' and the thing will be done." King George tried to slip out of his pledges, but the Iron Duke held him fast, and the 13th of April, 1829, the act became a law. It is the chief monument of the Wellington administration. Against the next great question, the reform of Parliament, he set himself resolutely, expressing his opposition in such unmistakable terms as to forfeit at once his office and his popularity. The London mob stoned his windows, but could not change his attitude toward legislation which he thought pernicious to the welfare of his country. He carried on his opposition when the reform bills began to come up from the Commons into the Peers' chamber. On the 18th of June, 1832, the seventeenth anniversary of Waterloo, he was pelted with stones and dirt by a yelling mob in the streets of London, and only saved from rougher handling by two old soldiers who walked at his stirrups and held back the ruffians until the police came to the rescue. The Reform Bill had already become a law, Wellington and his irreconcilable friends, perceiving the futility of further obstruction, absenting themselves from the chamber rather than vote contrary to their consciences. Even after the reformed Parliament had come into existence this arch aristocrat could see nothing but evil in the outlook. He complained that the House of Commons "had swallowed up all the power of the state," and he was not far wrong. Still his loyalty to the crown, and his determination that the government should be upheld kept him from merely factious opposition and made him a useful servant of the nation. The leader of the majority in the House of Lords, he declined to use his position to thwart the purposes of the popular House. "I do not choose," he said, in 1834, when the Poor Law Bill was up, "I do not choose to be the person to excite a quarrel between the two Houses of Parliament. The quarrel will occur in its time; and the House of Lords will probably be overwhelmed. But it shall not be owing to any action of mine." It was in this year that a singular occurrence showed his unique place in the confidence of King and nation. In November the King dismissed the Melbourne ministry and called on the Duke to form another. The latter perceived that no Tory but Peel could manage the Commons, but Peel was then traveling on the Continent. The Duke accordingly undertook to carry on the government alone until that leader's return.