1834-] The First Reformed Parliament. 241 has been used to the utmost by Whig statesmen ; but although the organization of Radicalism has been hindered by it, the thing itself has not been destroyed. On their part, the Tories had suffered even more than their rivals from the endeavour to ignore or suppress the Liberalism of some of their members. The attempts of men like Eldon and Sidmouth and Wellington to resist all change, had led to the secession of Canning and Huskisson, of Goderich and Palmerston, and had culminated in making the Reform Act much more effective and far-reaching than it would have been if the resistance at first had been less vehement. If this loss of members, of intelligence, and of popular tendencies, was not to be made continual and utterly ruinous, it was necessary to stop it by recognizing the fact that reaction was impossible, and mere obstruction a mistake. Peel was wise enough to see this, and his party of Conservatives, therefore, was not reduced by deserters to the Liberals, but, on the other hand, was strengthened by the sympathy of the more conservative of the Whigs. Even he could not foretell the strength of the national stream which was setting towards Liberalism, and which was to carry him faster than the bulk of the party which he anxiously tried to prepare for some movement. The position of the Radicals, then, was this : they were numerous enough to make themselves important to the Ministry, and they had behind them the full force of the popular agitation which could be raised on any great question. On the other hand, whilst admission to the Government was impossible, they could not force the Whigs beyond a certain line, because there was always the Conservative vote to appeal to against what might be stigmatized as revolutionary pro- posals. It is not surprising that they did not at once understand the full meaning of their position, and that in consequence they were more eager for action and more sanguine of success than the realities of the case warranted. At all events, they so far justified their claim to be the representatives of public opinion, that in the first session of the new Parliament they raised in one form or other nearly every great question which R
