FORE:And truly the prospects of the reign before him were such as might have daunted a much bolder and wiser man than Joseph. The people of Madrid had watched with increasing resentment the spiriting away of the different members of the royal family to Bayonne. They were wrathful that Godoy had been carried beyond the reach of their vengeance, and every day they were on the look-out for news from Bayonne as to the cause of Ferdinand, and this news grew even more unfavourable. On the evening of the 30th of April the populace had retired in gloomy discontent, because no courier had arrived bringing intelligence of Buonaparte's intentions towards Ferdinand. On the morning of the 1st of May numbers of men assembled about the gate of the inn and the post-office, with dark looks, and having, as was supposed, arms under their long cloaks. The French mustered strongly in the streets, and the day passed over quietly. But the next morning, the 2nd of May, the same ominous-looking crowds, as they assembled, were agitated by reports that the only remaining members of the royal family, the widowed Queen of Etruria and her children, and the youngest son of King Charles, Don Francisco, were about to be sent off also to Bayonne. They presently saw these royal personages conducted to their carriages; Don Francisco, a youth of only fourteen, weeping bitterly, and the sight roused the people to instant fury. They fell on the French, chiefly with their long knives, massacred seven hundred soldiers of the line, and wounded upwards of twenty of the Imperial Guard. The French, in return, fired on the people, and killed a hundred and twenty of them. Murat poured in troops to suppress the riot, but could not disperse them till after several volleys of grape-shot and repeated charges of cavalry. Unprepared as the country was, the people felt by no means daunted. The Alcalde of Mostoles, about ten miles south of Madrid, hearing the firing, and understanding the cause, sent a bulletin to the south in these words, "The country is in danger: Madrid is perishing through the perfidy of the French: all Spaniards come to deliver it!" That was all that was necessary. The fact of being in possession of[554] Madrid was a very different thing to being in possession of Paris, Spain consisting of various provinces, having their separate capitals, and everywhere was a martial people, just as ready and able to maintain a struggle against an invader as if Madrid were free. At Valencia, the populace, headed by a priest, fell on the French, and massacred two hundred of them. Solano, the governor of Cadiz, suspected of favouring the French, was dragged out of his house and murdered. Even before the insurrection at Madrid there had been one at Toledo, and the French had been menaced with destruction.After a lengthened and toilsome Session Parliament was at length prorogued by the king in person on the 10th of September. Several important measures which had passed the Commons were rejected by the Lords. Their resistance had caused great difficulty in carrying through the imperatively demanded measures of Municipal Reform; and they had deprived the Irish Church Temporalities Act of one of its principal features. But their obstructive action was not confined to great political measures of that kind. They rejected the Dublin Police Bill, and other measures of practical reform. The consequence was that the Liberal party began to ask seriously whether the absolute veto which the Lords possessed, and which they sometimes used perversely and even factiously, was compatible with the healthful action of the legislature and the well-being of the country. It was roundly asserted that the experience of the last two years had demonstrated the necessity of reform in the House of Lords. The question was extensively agitated, it was constantly discussed in the press, public meetings were held throughout the country upon it, and numerous petitions were presented to Parliament with the same object. On the 2nd of September Mr. Roebuck, while presenting one of these petitions, announced his intention of introducing early in the next Session a Bill to deprive the House of Lords of its veto upon all measures of legislation, and to substitute for it a suspense of power, so that if a Bill thrown out by the Lords should pass the Commons a second time, and receive the Royal Assent, it might become law without the concurrence of the Peers. Mr. Ripon also gave notice of a motion to remove the bishops from the House of Peers; while Mr. Hume indignantly denounced the humiliating ceremonials observed in the intercourse between the Commons and the Lords. Although the whole proceeding at a conference between the two Houses consists of the exchange of two pieces of paper, oral discussions not being permitted, the members of the House of Commons are obliged to wait upon the Lords, standing with their hats off, the members of the Upper House, as if they were masters, remaining seated with their hats on. The state of feeling among the working classes on this subject was expressed in the strongest language in an address to Mr. O'Connell from the "non-franchised inhabitants of Glasgow." They warmly deprecated the unmanly and submissive manner in which the Ministers and the Commons had bowed bare-headed to the refractory Lords. They demanded that responsibility should be established in every department of the State; and they said, "As the House of Lords has hitherto displayed a most astounding anomaly in this enlightened age by retaining the right to legislate by birth or Court favour, and being thereby rendered irresponsible, it follows it must be cut down as a rotten encumbrance, or be so cured as to be made of some service to the State, as well as amenable to the people."
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