The reader hardly needs to be informed that this was a momentous period in the history of England. It was the epoch of Reform, and the nation was in a state of ferment. During the brief space while Mackenzie had been crossing the Atlantic great events had taken place. Earl Grey's ministry had resigned; Sir Robert Peel had refused to join the Duke of Wellington in an attempt to form a Government; and Earl Grey had resumed office, armed with the King's written authority to Lord Brougham and himself to create as many peers as might be necessary to ensure the passing of the Reform Bill. This authority it did not become necessary to exercise. The titled aristocracy bowed to the unconquerable will of a great and thoroughly-aroused people, and Mackenzie reached London in time to hear the third reading of the Great Bill in the House of Lords. He was soon afterwards received at the Colonial Office, not as the representative of any particular class of Canadian politicians, but as a person interested in Canadian affairs, and able to afford much valuable information concerning them.[153] He then found that the efforts of the official party in Upper Canada to render his mission inoperative had not been barren of results. Petitions had been received at the Colonial Office in which entire satisfaction was expressed with the existing laws and institutions of the Province; and the signatures thereto slightly exceeded in number those appended to the petitions of which he himself had been the bearer. He however devoted himself with characteristic energy to the presentation of his case, and prepared a memoir wherein all the most serious grievances of the Upper Canadian people were set forth in detail. In this document the writer adopted a discursive and rhetorical style which, as the Colonial Secretary justly remarked, were "singularly ill adapted to bring questions of so much intricacy and importance to a definite issue." The facts were nevertheless pretty comprehensively embodied, and were generally speaking of such a character as to tell their own story. The perusal of the memoir seems to have produced an impression upon the Colonial Secretary's mind. He wrote a long and elaborate despatch to Sir John Colborne, in which the weak points of Mackenzie's arguments were exposed with cutting severity, and wherein it was evident that very little weight had been attached to most of his representations; but at the same time certain concessions to popular opinion were plainly hinted at. When this despatch was submitted to the Legislative Council and Assembly of Upper Canada at the ensuing session it was treated with scant respect. The Upper House formally declared that it did not regard it as calling for serious attention, and returned it to the Lieutenant-Governor. The Assembly discussed the propriety of sending it back, but finally resolved not to do so. Both the Crown Law Officers made hot-headed speeches on the subject, and