style and content of his contributions changed completely. For almost twenty years he had been content generally to make short contributions, usually delivering himself of his considered opinions or changed notions (for he sometimes altered his initial stance during debate) in the chamber of the house in a few unmemorable phrases. From 1830 he became closely involved in committee work on important reforms. As his opinions became more radical, he adopted an increasingly trenchant and discursive style, speaking frequently in long, argued statements, laden with factual detail. On one day in September 1831, for example, he made eight speeches of varying length in the House. One of the important factors in this change of style and focus seems to have been his increasingly close contact with middle and working class opinion in the growing Staffordshire towns – Stoke on Trent, Wolverhampton and Walsall. He frequently presented petitions and deployed arguments and reports drawn directly from these disfranchised towns and people. As he became more combative and forensic in his contributions, he was increasingly regarded as a Radical rather than merely a Whig. After the 1830 General Election ended Tory domination, and brought in a minority Whig government under Earl Grey, Littleton took up the campaign against the truck system. This was the practice by which employees were forced to accept payment or advances in kind, often becoming effectively enslaved to the company store. First he presented numerous petitions against the system from workers in Staffordshire and Gloucestershire. He asked and obtained leave to introduce a bill against the truck system at the end of the year. The 1831 general election completely changed the electoral landscape, ushering in a reforming Whig ministry under Grey, and allowing Littleton to proceed with his bill with a fair certainty of success. Moving the vote on the bill in September 1831, he pointed out that "it was notorious that the universal feeling of the working classes was in favour of some attempt to put down this odious system." He summarised its main purpose simply as that "the workmen must be paid in money." Consolidating and extending numerous earlier acts on the subject, the Truck Act of 1831 (actually the Money Payment of Wages Act) was a landmark piece of social legislation, which was invoked as still relevant in Parliament as recently as 2003. The campaign for the Truck Act had revealed an important weakness in