Sir Robert Inglis led the attack upon a measure that he characterised as Revolution in the guise of a statute.

Next morning as Sir Robert was walking into town over Westminster Bridge, he told his companion that up to the previous night he had been very anxious, but that his fears were now at an end, inasmuch as the shock caused by the extravagance of the ministerial proposals would infallibly bring the country to its senses.
On the evening of that day Macaulay made the first of his Reform speeches.

When he sat down the Speaker sent for him, and told him that in all his prolonged experience he had never seen the House in such a state of excitement.

Even at this distance of time it is impossible to read aloud the last thirty sentences without an emotion which suggests to the mind what must have been their effect when declaimed by one who felt every word that he spoke, in the midst of an assembly agitated by hopes and apprehensions such as living men have never known, or have long forgotten.

["The question of Parliamentary Reform is still behind.
But signs, of which it is impossible to misconceive the import, do most clearly indicate that, unless that question also be speedily settled, property, and order, and all the institutions of this great monarchy, will be exposed to fearful peril.