scorn. The day will come when it will be made in a louder voice than mine-when this question will be grasped by a ruder hand than mine; and when it is so made, as was the case in 1832, that for which reason and justice now plead in vain, will be surrendered amid terror and humiliation.' At a Reform Conference held at the Guildhall Coffee House, London, on the 7th of December, in this same year, a resolution was unanimously passed thanking Mr. Bright for his labours in connection with Parliamentary Reform, and highly approving of his bill upon the subject. A second resolution demanded a large extension of the suffrage, redistribution, an assimilation of the electoral laws of England, Scotland, and Ireland, the repeal of the Septennial Act, and the Ballot. Mr. Bright said that, in the event of the failure of the Government, he would be prepared to introduce his own bill, which was now in so perfect a state that it could be brought in any night. But although everything promised well at this juncture for the cause of Reform, the hopes built upon an early settlement of the question were doomed to be frustrated by a variety of events. When at length Reform could no longer be postponed, the measure, though largely moulded by Mr. Bright and his friends, was initiated by that party which, from the passing of the Act of 1832, had resolutely set itself against a liberal extension of the franchise. |