Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/267

 1834-] The First Reformed Parliament. 253 the whole of last year's Act ; O'Connell had to be informed of this, and the inevitable storm arose. It was on the 3rd of July, two days after the renewing bill had been introduced into the House of Lords by the Premier, that the scene took place in the Commons. Explain it as they might, it was now evident to all the world that there had been divisions in the Cabinet, and it was impossible to conceal who were the members who had advised the more moderate policy. Grey himself was not one of these, for when Lord Durham, upon the second reading in the Lords on the 4th of July, objected to the clauses relating to public meetings, the Prime Minister declared that if he could not have introduced the bill with those clauses he would not have proposed it at all. On the other hand, Lord Althorpe, the leader and mainstay of the party in the Commons, knew that his opinions, which differed from those of his chief, were public property. He felt that he could not, under such circumstances, either conscientiously or successfully support the measure, and on the 7th of July he resigned, and, on an interview with Earl Grey, refused to withdraw his resignation. Even if he had been anxious to do so, the Premier knew that without Althorpe he could not carry on his Government, and on the Qth of July he announced to the House of Lords that he was no longer minister. It was an unhappy close of a noble public life, that the Premier who had carried the great Reform Act should retire because he could not induce his colleagues to pass a sufficiently stringent Coercion Bill. This event raised a cloud between the once popular hero and some of his admirers ; but it was a cloud which the sun of national gratitude dispersed, and men remembered more vividly the work which he had done than the mistake which led to his retirement. This resignation was supposed at the time to increase the power of the Radicals, to give an "addition to the influence of the movement party, as it was called that is, of the party who clamoured for more Radical and destructive innovations." *
 * " Annual Register," 1834, p. 124.