Coningsby or the New Generation

Towards the end of the session of 1836, the hopes of the Conservative / party were again in the ascendant. The Tadpoles and the Tapers had / infused such enthusiasm into all the country attorneys, who, in their / turn, had so bedeviled the registration, that it was whispered in the / utmost confidence, but as a flagrant truth, that Reaction was at length / ‘a great fact.' All that was required was the opportunity; but as the / existing parliament was not two years old, and the government had an / excellent working majority, it seemed that the occasion could scarcely / be furnished. Under these circumstances, the backstairs politicians, / not content with having by their premature movements already seriously / damaged the career of their leader, to whom in public they pretended to / be devoted, began weaving again their old intrigues about the court, and / not without effect.

It was said that the royal ear lent itself with no marked repugnance to / suggestions which might rid the sovereign of ministers, who, after all, / were the ministers not of his choice, but of his necessity. But William / IV., after two failures in a similar attempt, after his respective / embarrassing interviews with Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne, on their / return to office in 1832 and 1835, was resolved never to make another / move unless it were a checkmate. The king, therefore, listened and / smiled, and loved to talk to his favourites of his private feelings and / secret hopes; the first outraged, the second cherished; and a little of / these revelations of royalty was distilled to great personages, who / in their turn spoke hypothetically to their hangers-on of royal / dispositions, and possible contingencies, while the hangers-on and / go-betweens, in their turn, looked more than they expressed; took / county members by the button into a corner, and advised, as friends, the / representatives of boroughs to look sharply after the next registration.