1841.] Accession of the Queen to Fall of Melbourne. 287 possible base, that they might at the same time make them consistent with the most democratic principles and obtain for them the widest and most earnest popular support. In this they did but fairly represent the opinions of the bulk of the working classes, who, after assisting to carry the Reform Act, found themselves left by its provisions without any direct voice in the selection of their rulers. The first important step taken by this party was the formulation of their demands in the shape of the People's Charter, the framing and publication of which took place in the following year (1838). The other and more numerous section of the Radicals, whilst they did not deny the necessity of Parliamentary reform, devoted their energies to promoting administrative, commercial, and social reforms by means of pressure upon the existing legislature. They commenced their action in the new House also in the year 1838, by the meeting, before referred to, at Sir William Molesworth's, when Mr. Villiers was requested, and in fact formally deputed, to take charge of the movement for the repeal of the corn laws.* The kind of work thus undertaken was arduous to the last degree. It involved, as we have since seen, the cost, in labour and time and money, of originating and carrying on a separate national movement on behalf of every special piece of improvement which was to be undertaken ; and it offered to the people, instead of the direct representation to which they were entitled, the opportunity of putting, by long- continued or violent agitation, an indirect pressure upon the governing classes in Parliament. Some compensation there was for this trouble and delay. If the Whig ministers themselves were never converted to any stalwart kind of policy, the average Liberalism of the party was increased by the propagandism of the Radicals, and the process which a more modern statesman has described as a permeation of the Whig mass by the Radical leaven went on. The influence was less than it should have been, because there were leading
- Ante, p. 279.
