...Lord Derby, who said in the House of Lords on the final stage of the Reform Bill of 1867 (Aug. 6), " No doubt we are making a great experiment and taking a leap in the dark." Mr. Justin McCarthy, in his " History of Our Own Times ", says the phrase had been previously used...

...the conservative leaders, the Earl of Derby, in the discussions upon the Reform Bill of 1867, said, "No doubt we are making a great experiment, and taking a leap in the dark." Just seventeen years after the passage of that bill the British people were ready to take anothei FIG....

...half-hearted support. "No doubt," said he, on the third reading of the bill in the House of Lords, "no doubt we are making a great experiment and taking...have the greatest confidence in the sound sense of my countrymen." The phrase was used eight years before by Lord Palmerston, In a private letter to Lord...

...Derby expressed "the greatest confidence in the sound sense of my fellow-countrymen" and entertained "a strong hope that the extended franchise which we...the institutions of this country on a firmer basis." Disraeli talked also of strengthening the institutions of the country. To the members of a workingmen's...

...support a moderate reform proposal. In the circumstances he introduced a reform package with the words: 'No doubt we are making a great experiment and "taking a leap in the dark" ' but he hoped that the extended franchise would place 'the institutions of this country on a firmer basis,...

...country.' Source B. From a speech by Lord Derby, Prime Minister, at the time of the Second Reform Act. No doubt we are making a great experiment and 'taking...have the greatest confidence in the sound sense of my fellow countrymen, and I entertain a strong hope that the extended franchise which we are now conferring...