But the last cannon-shot that was fired on the 18th of June, was in truth the death-knell of the golden age of Toryism.
When the passion and ardour of the war gave place to the discontent engendered by a protracted period of commercial distress, the opponents of progress began to perceive that they had to reckon, not with a small and disheartened faction, but with a clear majority of the nation led by the most enlightened, and the most eminent, of its sons.

Agitators and incendiaries retired into the background, as will always be the case when the country is in earnest; and statesmen who had much to lose, but were not afraid to risk it, stepped quietly and firmly to the front.
The men, and the sons of the men, who had so long endured exclusion from office, embittered by unpopularity, at length reaped their reward.

Earl Grey, who forty years before had been hooted through the streets of North Shields with cries of "No Popery," lived to bear the most respected name in England; and Brougham, whose opinions differed little from those for expressing which Dr.Priestley in 1791 had his house burned about his ears by the Birmingham mob, was now the popular idol beyond all comparison or competition.
In the face of such unanimity of purpose, guided by so much worth and talent, the Ministers lost their nerve, and, like all rulers who do not possess the confidence of the governed, began first to make mistakes, and then to quarrel among themselves.

Throughout the years of Macaulay's early manhood the ice was breaking fast.

He was still quite young when the concession of Catholic Emancipation gave a moral shock to the Tory party from which it never recovered until the old order of things had finally passed away.