Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/140

 126 History of the Radical Party in Parliament, [1815- political purposes outside a line which they themselves thought proper to draw. Speaking of the movement in favour of Parliamentary reform, he said, " In his view those who sought such objects (universal suffrage and annual Parliaments) must be understood to seek revolution, for he maintained that such objects were incompatible with the existence of the British Constitution of which neither annually elected Parliaments nor universal suffrage ever formed any part ; nay, he was prepared to maintain that the establishment of such a system was inconsistent with the stability of any constitu- tion whatever that, in fact, it could not last for one year in any country that desired the possession of a regular govern- ment." On the day following Sir Francis Burdett gave a practical reply to this dictum by presenting a petition from Warrington, praying for annual Parliaments and universal suffrage. It was at this time, when the policy of coercion was in full operation, and when ministers not only put down all attempts at reform, and all means of political discussion, but when they even declared that to agitate for constitutional change was treasonable, that the Whigs chose to desert the cause of Parliamentary reform, and thereby accentuated the differences between themselves and the Radicals in Parliament. The commotions which took place in 1817, which the committee of the Lords declared did not affect the great body of the people, alarmed the members of the privileged and propertied class in both political parties, and the Whigs had not sufficient faith in their countrymen to remain true to their cause under circumstances of trial and excitement. Wingrove Cooke says, " Since the rise of the democratic faction, the Whigs have owed all their reverses, as a party, to their timidity of the people." * They never showed this timidity more than at the time under consideration. The secession began in 1817, writing under which date Harriet Martineau says, "From this year we may date the retrogression of the course of Parliamentary reform, which continued to go back, or stand still, as long as the
 * " History of Parties," vol. iii. p. 297.