Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/285

 1837-] First Reformed Parliament to Death of William IV. 271 tender mercies of the opposition, were debarred from even that amount of influence which their numbers would have warranted. Throughout the remainder of this Parliament, therefore, they were restricted to efforts to increase the efficiency of the ministerial proposals, in which they were not very successful. In this session of 1835, however, they accomplished two objects, one of permanent and one of great temporary importance. On the 5th of March Roebuck, fol- lowing up the line which he had taken in the former Parlia- ment, moved for and obtained a committee on the subject of education, a step which led to the beginning, in a very moderate way, of what afterwards became the national system and remained so until after the passing of the next Reform Act. During the session there was much discussion as to the character and object of the Orange Societies which were established in different parts of England, and which, in con- travention of the Articles of War, had been introduced even into the army. It was Hume who obtained the information and originated the proceedings taken in Parliament. It seems now scarcely credible that a conspiracy of so serious a kind could have been carried on in times so recent ; but it was established by the evidence accumulated by Hume, that the Duke of Cumberland, who was Grand Master of the order, and some of his associates, in their desire to stop the spread of reform, and to reverse some of the great work already done, went so far as to contemplate an alteration in the succession to the throne, and even the dethronement of the reigning sovereign. The conspiracy had been carried on for some time, but the public exposure destroyed it, and in the follow- ing year the Orange Societies were dissolved.* The spirit of which this conspiracy was the outcome was one of the forces against which Radicalism had to work, and which it required the outspokenness of popular representatives to defeat. but it is told with great force and fulness by Harriet Martineau, in her " History of the Thirty Years' Peace," vol. ii. pp. 266, et seq.
 * The history of these extraordinary transactions is too long to be given here,