Melbourne and the Years of Reform: Part III

Melbourne had need of consolation during the next few years. For the political scene was not such as to cheer his foreboding spirit. To anyone, but especially to any member of the governing class, the atmosphere of England after the passing of the Reform Bill was tense, dark and uneasy. It was obscurely realized that the Bill marked the beginning of a completely new epoch; but what that epoch was going to be like, no one could tell. In consequence, those who had anything to lose felt all the time jumpy and apprehensive. The pessimists among them, like the Duke of Wellington, even took the view that they were in for a period of violent revolution, that now, with the citadel of aristocratic power surrendered, it would only be a few years before King, peers and private property were swept away in a storm of bloodshed. Certainly, as Melbourne had expected, extreme parties were already showing themselves angrily disappointed by the results of reform.