20 ENGLISHSAGA

fancy, or some article of comfort and convenience which I may
wish them to procure," The wealth, power and culture of an
ancient and complex community continued to be represente4
by those who possessed them. In 1840 nobody in Parliament, and
few outside, would have questioned the propriety of this.

But, though this attitude to the., art of Government was
subconsciously held 'by almost every member of the two ruling
assemblies, they were far from all of them admitting to it. The
prevailing majority in the House of Commons was Whig, and it
was the unspoken philosophy of the Whigs that property should
be maintained and their own importance preserved by a liberal
advocacy of advanced and popular sentiments. Ten years before
they had brought to an end a long period of Tory predominance
by championing'the cause of parliamentary reform, which they
had represented as the sure cure for the grave social and economic
troubles from which the lower orders in the new industrial
towns were suffering. As a result, after a brief period of furious
agitation, an electorate of 300,000 had been discreetly widened
into a slightly less submissive one of about 800,000.

Though to many timorous folk the Reform Bill of 1832
seemed the prelude to bloody revolution, the new electors, like
the old, continued to return men of substance to the House of
Commons. Nor had the change in the system of representation
brought about any improvement in the condition of the poor.
The popular force of the Whigs was therefore expended, and they
remained in office with the cynical support of a small body of
Radical reformers for no better reason than that the Tories were
not quite strong enough to turn them out. Neither party had
1 any strong basis of support in the country, which tended to dis-
trust them both, the Tories because they were supposed tp oppose
all clfange—a view which their opponents lost no chance of
fostering—and the Whigs because they were popularly suspected
of using office to feather their own nests. "What son, what
brother, what nephew, what cousin, what remote unconjectural
relative in the genesis of the Greys," wrote a contemporary of
the family of the Premier who had carried the Reform Bill, "has
not fastened his limpet to the rock of the national expenditure?"
The civil service, such as it was, was still staffed almost exclu-
sively by the fortunate nominees of high political personages,
and opportunities for nepotism were considerable. They were
almost universally taken.