Mr. Disraeli’s Budget speech was a brilliant performance which pleased everybody but his own Party. Its principal point was to provide for the continuance of the Income Tax for one year. But what made it interesting was its glowing eulogy of the Free Trade measures of Sir Robert Peel, not to mention the elaborate statistics by which Mr. Disraeli, while silent on the Corn Duties, proved that incomparable benefits had been conferred on the country by Peel’s tariffs, and by his reductions of import duties. The oration was, of course, a bid for the accession of Palmerston and the Peelites to the Tory Party. “Disraeli’s speech on introducing his Budget,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “has produced a bad effect in the country, for the farmers, though reconciled to giving up Protection, expected relief in other ways, and he does not give a hint at any measure for their advantage.”[54] A night or two afterwards, Mr. Disraeli had therefore to make a vague recantation of his change of opinions, and at a Mansion House dinner Lord Derby did his best to explain away the Budget speech of his embarrassing colleague, by an elaborate exposition of the doctrine of compromise, on which he said British institutions were founded. During the first part of the Parliamentary Session of 1852 the cause of Parliamentary Reform made but little progress. Mr. Hume, on the 25th of March, moved for leave to bring in a Bill for the extension of the Franchise. Though he tried to galvanise his party into vigorous life by a scornful and defiant retort to Lord Derby’s recent attack on democracy,[55] the discussion of the subject was felt to be academic rather than practical, and his motion was rejected by a vote of 244 to 39. A similar fate attended Mr. Locke King when he, too, brought in his motion to assimilate the County and Borough Franchise. Several debates were devoted to the question of the prevalence of bribery at elections, and Lord John Russell’s Bill, empowering the Crown to direct a Commission of Inquiry into any place at which an Election Committee reported the existence of bribery, was carried through both Houses of Parliament. The disfranchisement of Sudbury and St. Albans for corrupt practices had left four seats in the House of Commons to dispose of. Mr. Disraeli’s scheme for allocating them to the West Riding of Yorkshire and the Southern Division of Lancashire was, however, rejected on Mr. Gladstone’s amendment--a defeat which was a sharp reminder to the Ministry that, so long as they were in a minority and refused to dissolve Parliament, they could not hope to control the House of Commons when contentious business came before it.