The counties had declared for the Whigs by a majority of eight to five, and the great cities by a majority of eight to one.
Of the close boroughs in Tory hands many were held by men who had not forgotten Catholic Emancipation, and who did not mean to pardon their leaders until they had ceased to be Ministers.
In the debate on the Address the Duke of Wellington uttered his famous declaration that the Legislature possessed, and deserved to possess, the full and entire confidence of the country; that its existing constitution was not only practically efficient but theoretically admirable; and that, if he himself had to frame a system of representation, he should do his best to imitate so excellent a model, though he admitted that the nature of man was incapable at a single effort of attaining to such mature perfection.

His bewildered colleagues could only assert in excuse that their chief was deaf, and wish that everybody else had been deaf too.

The second ministerial feat was of a piece with the first.

Their Majesties had accepted an invitation to dine at Guildhall on the 9th of November.

The Lord Mayor elect informed the Home Office that there was danger of riot, and the Premier, (who could not be got to see that London was not Paris because his own political creed happened to be much the same as Prince Polignac's,) advised the King to postpone his visit to the City, and actually talked of putting Lombard Street and Cheapside in military occupation.