Page:History of the Radical Party in Parliament.djvu/73

Rh of Parliamentary reform, based on a petition from residents in London. The debate was commenced on the 6th of May, 1793, and continued by adjournment on the following day. Pitt had now reached the level of the most bitter opponent of the reforms which he had previously advocated, and declared that he would rather abandon what he conceived to be the best plan of reform than risk the Constitution as it then existed. Fox spoke strongly in favour of the motion, which was rejected by 282 to 41. The forty-one members who voted with Grey may be taken as forming that Radical party which, deserted by their Whig colleagues, and subjected to abuse and misrepresentation, remained true through the darkest days to the cause of liberty.

They were indeed dark days which were coming upon England, not only for the friends of reform and progress, but for the whole nation. With a war commenced without definite object, carried on without method and without success, and ending in a desperate struggle for life; with the resources of the country lavished in subsidies to allies without energy or genius; with trade paralyzed, and the people daily sinking lower in want and suffering; with a Government driven by fear—that most cruel of all human passions—into a policy of continual coercion and repression, there seemed neither within nor without any possibility of present happiness,