political questions, which Mr. Herbert Spencer and his collaborateurs hold to be one of the distinguishing features of the period 1768–70.[1]
In the House of Commons, Alderman Sawbridge began the system of annual motions on popular subjects, by moving every year, from 1771 to 1778, for leave to bring in a bill to shorten the duration of Parliaments; and in 1776 Wilkes asked leave to introduce a measure, by which he proposed to increase the number of representatives for the metropolis, the counties of Middlesex and York, and other populous counties, and to give members to the great trading and manufacturing towns, such as Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, and Leeds. The demand for reform was largely based on the corrupt power of the Crown in Parliament, and attempts were made to remedy the evil by the disqualification of placemen and officers in the public departments. It was on this point of endeavouring to purify the existing institutions rather than to re-construct them, that Burke separated himself from the reformers. Throughout the country, however, reform became a popular cry, and the large counties joined the city in active agitation for its adoption. This system of combined public and Parliamentary action was still further developed in the next following period, and it was then supported by a man who, from the splendour of his abilities as well as for his ardour on behalf of liberty, was worthy to take the place which Chatham was so soon to vacate. Charles James Fox, who was for a few years a member of Lord North's administration, and in that capacity opposed some of the earlier efforts to obtain reforms, left the Tory party in 1774, and soon became the great Liberal champion.
During the period which has now been under review, we can clearly trace the influence of principles which the King and the Tories hated, and which the official leaders of the Whigs could not accept; and we can see also the action of men who either, like Chatham, refused to be bound by party traditions, or, like Wilkes, were regarded as political incen-
- ↑ "Descriptive Sociology—England," table v., and notes thereon.
