Opposition. It reduces their supporters to that tractable number which can
be managed by the joint influences of fruition and of hope. It offers
vengeance to the discontented, and distinction to the ambitious; and
employs the energies of aspiring spirits, who otherwise may prove traitors
in a division or assassins in a debate.

The general election of 1832 abrogated the Parliamentary Opposition of
England, which had practically existed for more than a century and a half.
And what a series of equivocal transactions and mortifying adventures did
the withdrawal of this salutary restraint entail on the party which then
so loudly congratulated themselves and the country that they were at
length relieved from its odious repression! In the hurry of existence one
is apt too generally to pass over the political history of the times in
which we ourselves live. The two years that followed the Reform of the
House of Commons are full of instruction, on which a young man would do
well to ponder. It is hardly possible that he could rise from the study of
these annals without a confirmed disgust for political intrigue; a
dazzling practice, apt at first to fascinate youth, for it appeals at once
to our invention and our courage, but one which really should only be the
resource of the second-rate. Great minds must trust to great truths and
great talents for their rise, and nothing else.

While, however, as the autumn of 1834 advanced, the people of this country
became gradually sensible of the necessity of some change in the councils
of their Sovereign, no man felt capable of predicting by what means it was
to be accomplished, or from what quarry the new materials were to be
extracted. The Tory party, according to those perverted views of Toryism
unhappily too long prevalent in this country, was held to be literally
defunct, except by a few old battered crones of office, crouched round the
embers of faction which they were fanning, and muttering 'reaction' in