Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/145

 1 820.] Close of the War to the Death of George III. 131 proving that the political reforms, to which the instincts of a suffering and oppressed people looked for relief, were not the mere creations of disaffected ignorance, but were founded on great moral and social laws, and were supported by men to whom scientific method and historical research were alike familiar. The effect of the teachings of Bentham and Mill, of Grote and Molesworth, did not, until a later period, pro- duce any direct effect upon the constitution or proceedings of Parliament ; but it soon became impossible to dismiss their arguments with the lofty scorn which had been used towards Cartwright and Hunt: and the Tierneys of the future would have been laughed at if they had expressed their " contempt of the understanding " of the historians of India and of Greece. One important characteristic of the early teaching of Bentham was the persistence with which he kept in view the union and interdependence of the objects of government and the machinery by which they were to be effected. When the promotion of the happiness of the greatest number was realized not as a vague theory, but as a vital principle as the end of government, it was the easier to see that it was absurd, as well as unjust, to exclude from the discussion of aims and methods the bulk of the people whose happiness was immediately concerned. The union of ends and means in the popular demonstration was natural. It was the pressure of distress, and the absence of any attempt at relief by the existing Government, which forced the masses of the people to ask for some constitutional reform. The most extreme demands, those for universal suffrage and annual Parliaments, had been urged years ago by Richmond and Fox, the predecessors of the very Whigs who were now horrified at their mention. But they were then advanced as theories which their professors, when in power, never thought of carrying into practice ; they were now claimed as the only means of help by the millions of over-burdened and suffering people. At Manchester, and other places where the distress was most keenly felt, every political meeting exhibited banners on which " No corn laws "