Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/213

 1832.] Canning's Premiership to Passing of Reform Act. 199 of the rank and file which had been used to obey his com- mands. But on the same side now sat men who had been all their lives in opposition, and to whom the vote in favour of ministers was indeed a novelty. Some of the small band of Radicals went across with the Whigs. Lambton, Burdett, and Wilson were prominent in their support of the Premier : but Hume refused to share in the action ; he had no con- fidence in the real Liberalism of Canning, agreeing in that respect with the opinions so fiercely expressed by Lord Grey in the other House. He showed his own determination, and put to the proof the concession which his old friends were prepared to make for the sake of upholding ministers, by a motion which he brought forward on the 3ist of May, for repealing one of the notorious Six Acts which imposed a stamp duty on cheap periodical publications. There could not have been proposed a more severe test, but it was met openly by Sir Robert Wilson, one of the oldest and staunchest Radicals, and obtained only ten votes in its favour.* Not all his popularity in the country, nor the union of his new with his old friends in the Commons, could save Canning from defeat at the hands of what was practically a new element in the Constitution the House of Peers as re- modelled and essentially reconstructed by George III. and his successor. It has been seen how and why this work of changing the character of the Upper House was begun during the Ministry of Pitt,f and it was continued throughout the remainder of the two reigns. The extent of the change, and the permanence of its influence, may be gathered from the fact that whilst, during the reigns of William III., Anne, and the first two Georges, there had been of peerages which now exist only fifty-three creations or elevations in the peerage trasting them with the opportunists who supported Canning : Dawson, A. Lombe, Edward Warburton, C. Ferguson, Sir R. Maitland, Captain Wood, John Hobhouse, J. C. Monck, J. B. Hume, J. Howick, Lord Pelham, C. Wood, Alderman } t Ante, Chap. IX.
 * The following are the names of what may be called the irreconcilables, con-