Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/244

 230 History of the Radical Party in Parliament. [1833- CHAPTER XL THE FIRST REFORMED PARLIAMENT (1833-1834). ON the 1 6th of August, 1832, the last session of the last unreformed Parliament was closed. By the elections which followed, the extent and the position of the Radical party in the House of Commons were materially affected. Hitherto the Radical members had been regarded rather as the mouthpieces of outside opinion than as exercising any direct influence upon the proceedings of Parliament. For a long time to come they were destined to maintain the same place. They represented the wishes and the feelings of the people, they formulated and expressed the national desires, and they kept before Parliament the growing determination to obtain reforms in certain directions ; but when the popular demands had reached a point at which they could no longer be resisted, the work of Liberal legislation was taken up, not by the men who had been responsible for its preparation and who believed in its principles, but by members of one or other of the old parties, who had to the last moment resisted the concession, but who still retained command of the majority of the con- stituencies. The Tories were almost as ready to make con- cessions as the Whigs ; and the Whigs were quite as deter- mined as the Tories to keep the power of the Government in the hands of the privileged classes to which they all belonged Yet in the first reformed Parliament there was a definite Radical party, returned as such by the electors, and recognized as such by the House. To ascertain why it was that this