The Once and Future King. F. H. Buckley

but Grey had a stratagem to break the gridlock which Americans lack when the House of Representatives and the Senate disagree. On the advice of his ministers the King could appoint new peers who would vote with the government, and this had been done in 1711, when the Tory ministry needed to overcome the opposition of Whig peers to the Treaty of Utrecht. With this precedent in mind, Grey had Parliament prorogued (or suspended), and a third reform bill was introduced on December 12, 1831. This included several amendments that had been proposed by the Tories, and was carried on second reading by 324 to 162 votes, exactly two to one. For the bill to pass, however, Grey needed the support of a nervous William IV, and the riots that had broken out across England on the defeat of the second reform bill had done little to calm the King, who personally did not much care for parliamentary reform.

      As the King shilly-shallied, Grey’s cabinet let William know that they would resign if new peers were not created. To their surprise, William took them at their word, and approached Wellington to see whether the Tories might form a government. They lacked the support to do so, however, and the Whigs remained in office. At this point, the gridlock embraced all three branches of the British government. Now, however, the King gave in, and signed an agreement with the Whigs that he would create as many peers as they wished. Faced with the degradation of their institution, the House of Lords blinked. In the midst of debate fifty to sixty Tory peers walked out, Wellington in their lead, giving the Whigs their majority; and so the Great Reform Act at last was passed.⁶⁴

      The Reform Act extended the franchise, but stopped well short of giving everyone the vote. Only male householders living in properties worth at least £10 a year were enfranchised; even so, this increased the British electorate threefold. The new voters were the members of the middle class whom Lord Brougham memorably described as:

       the genuine depositaries of sober, rational, intelligent, and honest English feeling. . . . If they have a fault, it is that error on the right side, a suspicion of State quacks—a dogged love of existing institutions—a perfect contempt of all political nostrums. . . . . Grave—intelligent—rational—fond of thinking for themselves—they consider a subject long before they make up their minds on it; and the opinions they are thus slow to form, they are not swift to abandon. ⁶⁵