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It was no empty boast of Mr. Disraeli that he was at the head of a government 'truly liberal.' For assuredly experience shews his opponents have been professedly but not really so.
Reform, made a political cry by Lord Russell for the purpose of rallying a discordant party, was dangled before the popular gaze until it had performed its office and then was quietly shelved. Whether the genial, patriotic English spirit of Lord Palmerston, or the conviction that he alone could exorcise the bugbear from the House of Commons was the secret of his influence, remains a question. The union of the Liberal benches was dissolved when it became a proximate reality, and the test was by no means complimentary to the professions which had heralded it.
And what was the object of Liberal Reform? was it a measure truly national, or merely a scheme on the part of Earl Russell and Messrs. Bright and Gladstone to widen the area of the liberal constituencies by lowering the qualification a little, so as just to include the fag end of the middle class, who, always having a grievance of some kind, and being chiefly given to Dissent, might be safely reckoned upon as Radical? If this plan of theirs had succeeded, and a long tenure of office been thereby secured to the Whig-Radical coalition, at some future period when Conservatism had once more fought its way to a level, this weapon of Reform would again have been unsheathed from the Radical quiver, and a fall from £6 to £4 would have again
