to be supposed that even the impassible Duke of Wellington could avoid
referring to the subject in the debate on the address. This he did, with
more candour than prudence, by his well-known declaration against
reform, and in favour of the existing system. It will be found at length
elsewhere. The excitement it produced was enormous: so great, that in
three days afterwards ministers advised William the Fourth not to
proceed to the City to visit the Lord Mayor, lest there should be
tumults.

On the 15th, they were defeated in the House of Commons, upon a motion
of Sir Henry Parnell, for a committee to inquire into the civil list;
and on the following day the Duke of Wellington and his colleagues
resigned; being apprehensive that the same majority would vote for the
principle of parliamentary reform in a day or two after, and not wishing
to virtually give up that question by going out after being beaten on it
in the House of Commons.

During the year 1831, while the discussions on the Reform Bill were
going on, the Duke made frequent speeches against the measure, and led
the opposition in the House of Lords in a manner quite consistent with
his declaration in November. In a speech he made on the 28th March,
explanatory of the causes of his resignation, he distinctly denied that
the reform fever was owing to that declaration, and asserted that it
was to be attributed to the effect on the public mind of the revolutions
in France and Belgium.

On the 10th of October, after the Reform Bill had been thrown out in the
House of Lords, the Duke of Wellington was insulted by a mob on his way
to the house. In the evening, the windows of his mansion at Hyde
Park-corner were broken. It is to be lamented that any class of