Separation implies the possibility at least of conflict. That it was avoided, ...

Separation implies the possibility at least of conflict. That it was avoided, that, for all the hostility of the Radicals to the Peers, neither reform nor abolition of the Lords was seriously mooted, followed from the fact that socially the landed interest ascendant in the Commons had no hostility towards its chiefs in the Lords, and that politically the Duke could always induce the Tory Lords, in a crisis, to give way to the Whig Commons.

They yielded in 1832; they yielded in 1846; and by neither surrender did the Lords as a House, or the aristocracy as a class, lose any particle of real power.

After the first shock of dismay they had rallied to the land, and the upward tilt of prices gave them the confidence they needed. Rents did not fall; they even began to rise; between '53 and '57, helped by the war,

they rose by

more than a tenth.

The basis of mid-Victorian prosperity-and, indeed, of society-was a balance of land and industry, an ever enlarging market for English manufactures, and a still restricted market for foreign produce. The home harvest was dominant: a short crop meant high prices, low prices meant an abundant crop.

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