Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/104

 9O History of the Radical Party in Parliament. [1807- CHAPTER VI. FROM THE DISMISSAL OF GRENVILLE TO THE END OF THE WAR (1807-1815). THE death of Fox, the dismissal of the Grenville Ministry, and the election of the new court and Tory Parliament, were events which seemed to mark the completion of the ruin of the Liberal party. For the time its power for any useful or effective work in the State seemed utterly broken. There were Whigs in the House of Commons, of course. Some of the pocket boroughs were owned, and some of the counties were dominated, by the great houses which had always belonged to that party, and, as we have seen, 155 members voted against the address to the Crown when Parliament met. These numbers were quite insufficient to produce any effect upon the policy of the Government, so long as they were not backed up by any strong manifestation of public feeling outside ; and no such support could be hoped for, or invited, by the bulk of the Whigs. They derived neither their inspiration nor their election from the people. They were Liberals in the sense that they advocated especially when in opposition such reforms in the administration, and such moderate enlargement of the popular liberties, as would not alter the balance of the Constitution, nor remove the ultimate power in the State from the hands of the governing classes. These are conditions which would render the obtainment of effectual reform at any time difficult, and, under circumstances like those which existed in 1807, absolutely impossible. At that period reformers were faced by the power of the Crown,