1837-] Fi rs t Reformed Parliament to Death of William IV. 279 deans, and chapters, and by better management to increase the proceeds, applying the surplus to the purposes for which church rates were used. The plan commended itself neither to the church party nor to the dissenters ; and on the 22nd of May, on the second reading, it was carried by a majority of five only, the numbers being 287 to 282 ; and, this being equivalent to a defeat, the business went no further. This is a barren record of a ministerial session, but it was all that was attempted ; and if the Parliament had been prolonged, it is much more probable that the Government would have been turned out than that they would have accomplished any practical work. The Radicals, on their part, were unusually active. If they had known, at the beginning of the year, that the death of the King would lead not only to the calling of a fresh Parliament, but to the opening of a new era in political life, and if with this knowledge they had tried to formulate a programme for the adoption of their party in the country, they could scarcely have taken wider grounds than they did. The subjects on which they gave notices, and on most of which discussions took place, were directed to both branches of politics ; to those which dealt with beneficient legislation, and to those which, by increasing the power of the people, would render any such legislation possible. Under the first head, the most important, both in its character and in its influence on the immediate political history of the future, was the proposal to repeal the corn laws. This was a distinctly Radical motion, for the Whigs were as much opposed to it as the Tories ; Melbourne and Russell were as strong in its condemnation as Wellington and Peel. This year it was Clay who, on the 1 6th of March, submitted a resolution for the repeal, which was seconded by Villiers, who was soon afterwards, at a meeting of the Radical leaders held at Sir William Molesworth's, formally requested to take charge of the question in Parliament.* On this occa- sion the motion was lost by forty-five votes, the numbers being 89 for, and 134 against. On the no less important
- Memoir attached to " Free Trade Speeches of Villiers," vol. i. p. 16.
