ABSTRACT
Among opponents of the 1867 Reforrn Act prophecies of doom and accusations of betrayal flew thick and fast. Cranborne used the third reading to dampen Tory euphoria and to launch a wounding personal attack on Disraeli:
I see with enormous astonishment that the passing of this Bill is spoken of as a Conservative triumph ... if it be a Conservative triumph to have introduced a Bill guarded with precautions and securities, and to have abandoned every one of those precautions and securities at the bidding of your opponents, then in the whole course of your annals I will venture to say that the Conservative party has won no triumph so signal as this.... If you borrow your political ethics from the ethics of the political adventurer, you may depend upon it, the whole of your representative institutions will crumble beneath your feet.
