Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/141

 1 820.] Close of the War to the Death of George III. 127 middle classes were afraid of its agitation." * There was not much sign of the division during the remainder of that Parlia- ment, but after the dissolution on the i8th of June, 1818, it soon became manifest. From the election of the new Parliament, which met on the I4th of January, 1819, the word Whig ceased to be considered by any one as synonymous with Liberal. There were two sections of the party working together whenever the Whigs would make a forward movement, but avowedly recognizing different standards of policy, and advocating different rates of progress. So far as the respectabilities and gentilities of the time could effect it, Radicalism was put under a ban. Its leaders were demagogues, its followers wild democrats ; every term which could be applied to it was in turn made one of reproach. We have not yet outgrown the practice which was then established, and which constitutional historians and royal biographers have caught from political opponents. During the early part of the session some divisions were taken which tested the relative strength of parties. There is no record which will show how many members were distinctly Radical. One workj has been devoted to the purpose of ascertaining the political character of all candidates, but full materials for the purpose were not available, and the particu- lars for all years before 1832 are quite useless. Thus, for the election in 1818 the only Radicals recorded are Daniel Whittle Harvey, who sat for Colchester, and Sir R.T.Wilson, member for. Southwark; even Sir Francis Burdett being entered as a Whig. On the 3rd of February a bill was introduced called the Westminster Hustings Bill, to relieve the high bailiff of that city from the costs of elections. It was opposed by Burdett, but not on the broad grounds that candidates ought not to bear the charges, and the division list is therefore not very important. Ten members, besides his fellow-teller, supported him, and the second reading was carried, thirty-two voting t " The Parliaments of England from the first of George I. to the Present Time," by Henry Stocks Smith, three vols., 1844-50.
 * " History of the Thirty Years' Peace," vol. i. p. 152.