ABSTRACT
A political position which throws international affairs into high relief is not normally the best one for securing domestic reforms. So at least it proved in March 1860 when timid English, Scottish, and Irish Reform Bills were introduced at a time when the Italian situation was growing ever more absorbing and ominous developments in the United States portended the outbreak of a great struggle on slavery. There was, of course, some sporadic Radical effort to arouse an outcry capable of saving the Reform Bills of 1860, but it had no wonderful success. For one thing Radical energy in the political sphere had to be divided between the Reform outcry and one which it was necessary to raise almost simultaneously against the Lords for venturing to reject that reduction of the Paper Duties to which Gladstone had been brought as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
