to justify the popular confidence. In less than a year after the meeting of the new Parliament—on the 18th of April, 1785—he introduced a motion for reform, which, on the 20th, was rejected by 248 votes to 174. He is described as the most determined minister who ever held power. He had almost the greatest majority behind him which has ever supported a cabinet; and he is said to have been as powerful with the Crown as with the country. This was a subject which he had made especially his own, which he had introduced in more than one Parliament, and which he had declared to be "essentially necessary to the independence of Parliament and the liberty of the people." Yet this omnipotent minister, this self-willed man, is defeated on his favourite subject by a majority of seventy-four; and, what is more, sits down quietly under the blow, and never afterwards brings forward the matter in any shape. Well might the Westminster committee, at its last recorded meeting, resolve—"that this committee, impressed with the idea of the absolute necessity of a reform in the representation of the people in Parliament, feel the deepest concern in finding that the House of Commons has refused to give leave for bringing in a bill on the motion of the Right Hon. William Pitt, for amending such representation," and then give up the hopeless struggle.
The condition of the nascent Radical party was now indeed depressed, if it could be said to have any definite active existence. Its spirit and principles lived in the hearts of the people without any sense of their immediate value, and in the minds of a few statesmen without power to give them practical expression. Another cause for this state of calm is to be found in the fact that there was at this time no pressure of unusual suffering in the country, and no exercise of despotic power on the part of the Government. Neither Pitt nor any one else would be allowed to interfere with the existing order of things; but there was no influence strong enough to threaten the power of the King or the patronage of his friends. There was in the political world the sort of tndifferentism which comes from the existence of a strong
