But now he began to advance an opinion that that act required "some
amendments to carry into more complete effect the principles on which it
was founded." He inserted an intimation of that doctrine in the Queen's
speech; and endeavored to give effect to it by bringing in a bill to
lower the franchise, having, it seems, persuaded himself that a
five-pound franchise would create a more Conservative class of
voters.[273] He had scarcely introduced it when the fall of his ministry
led to its abandonment; but, though it was coldly received by the House
of Commons, the idea was taken up by the other political parties, who
can hardly be acquitted of having used the question merely as an
instrument of party warfare, trying, with an unstatesmanlike
indifference to the danger of re-awakening the old frenzy on the
subject, to rouse the nation to take an interest in it; but trying in
vain. The nation was no longer in the same temper as it had displayed
twenty years before. The Reform Bill of 1832 had been demanded and
carried with a frantic vehemence of enthusiasm such as could only have
been excited by real defects and grievances. But those grievances had
been removed and redressed. And the bulk of the people could take no
interest in schemes whose sole end seemed to be either to satisfy the
theories of some political doctrinaires or to embarrass an adversary;
till at last, as Reform Bill after Reform Bill was framed, brought in,
and defeated, or dropped, it became plain, "as the Prince Consort noted
in a private memorandum at the end of 1859, that what the country
wanted, in fact, was not reform, but a bill to stop the question of
Reform.
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