Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/105

 1815.] Dismissal of Grenville to the End of the War. 91 which had been insidiously but constantly increasing, and was now exercised by a sincere but obstinate King, opposed with a passion related to his insanity to any change ; by ministers who were either in complete sympathy or in virtual subserviency to the monarch ; by a Parliament of which the upper House was swamped by the nominees of the court, and the lower one was filled by creatures of those nominees; and by a large and influential class outside, who had not recovered from the terror into which they had been thrown by the out- break of the French Revolution. Such forces were not to be successfully met by a minority who derived their own authority from no more popular source, and many of whom had at one time or other taken office, or worked in harmony, with the very ministers they were now opposing. All the distinction which the public could see between the Whigs and the Tories was, as the writer in the "Annual Register " declared, that between the ins and outs ; and no doubt he was justified in saying that, with regard to both, "the people at large had absolutely lost all confidence in a majority of them." * The Whigs had not yet come to see that no progress of any kind, no reform of administration, no removal of abuses, would ever be possible in England without a great and substantial change in the electoral system, and the provision of machinery by which the people themselves could obtain direct representation of their wishes and their wants. This opinion, however, was fast spreading in the country, and it never was without some few advocates in Parliament itself. There was a remnant of the Whigs who still preserved the traditions sent down by Chatham and Richmond, by Fox and Sawbridge, and who maintained the succession of Radicalism in both Houses. They were not, however, the men who moved the masses outside, and their work had to be supplemented by that of agitators who acknowledged no allegiance to the old party leaders. It was almost a necessity of the struggle which was slowly approaching, that the popular advocates should be to a great extent outside the
 * "Annual Register," 1807, p. 235.