This is how it came to pass. The French and Belgian revolutions, in the year 1830, powerfully moved all the populations of Europe; and the news of that double convulsion reached the people of England at one of the saddest periods of their history. To quote Mr. Molesworth,[7] “they were going mad with misery.” Machine-breaking and rick-burning kept the country alive with alarm, and sent some poor wretches to banishment or to death. People in the towns began to growl again, as they had growled ten or twelve years before. And the leaders of reform took fresh heart; for they saw that the question could no longer be stifled, with the country in a greater state of degradation than under the Tories of 1817. So, in the midst of all this trouble, a Reform Bill was introduced. And, looking at the subsequent history of the struggle, and its consequences, it is impossible to avoid this conclusion: that the same prosperity and public confidence, which ensued upon the Act of 1832, might have been the guerdon of the Tories, at the beginning of the century. * * * * * The writings of Mr. Cobbett had been very severe upon the Whigs. There does not appear any time, in his whole political life, when he had not more or less distrusted them. And, now that the leaders of the party were in power, the individuals themselves were not spared. Cobbett hit off with accuracy, and with bitterest irony, their waverings and inconsistencies. No sooner had George the Fourth shuffled off this mortal coil, than he announced a “History of the Regency and the late Reign;” and, as the successive numbers of the work appeared, the Whigs had the felicity of seeing their old place-hunting fully exposed. Upon the appointment of Earl Grey’s ministry, he declared his belief that they would keep on talking, and speechifying, as of old, without any regard to the promises they had been holding out to the people. Putting a list of twenty-six questions, referring to reform, taxation, tyrannous restraints on liberty, pensions, the six Acts, reduction of the forces, poor laws and game laws, he gave his opinion that none of these things would be touched. And Mr. Cobbett was right; none of these matters were dealt with, except on pressure from without, or on the part of sturdy and independent men of the class of Joseph Hume. All this told upon the party newly raised to power. Very naturally. But they must have felt a certain insecurity of tenure, to resort to the same mode of retaliation which their political adversaries had exercised, twenty years before. So soon does a lease of power translate itself into a mere parade of force. The Government had not been many weeks in office, before they had the abominable folly to charge Cobbett with being the instigator of the incendiary fires which were then devastating the agricultural districts of England!