fluence, either now, or a little time from now, to prevent a Reform in Parliament. Some years ago, by timely concession, it might have been prevented. If Members had been granted to Birmingham, Leeds, and Manchester, and other great towns as opportunities occurred, a spirit of conciliation would have been evinced, and the people might have been satisfied with a Reform, which though remote would have been gradual; but with the customary blindness and insolence of human beings, the day of adversity was forgotten, the rapid improvement of the people was not noticed; the object of a certain class of politicians was to please the Court and to gratify their own arrogance by treating every attempt to expand. the representation, and to increase the popular influence, with every species of contempt and obloquy: the golden opportunity was lost; and now proud lips must swallow bitter potions.

The arguments and the practices (as I remember to have heard Mr. Huskisson say) which did very well twenty years ago, will not do now. The people read too much, think too much, see too many newspapers, hear too many speeches, have their eyes too intensely fixed upon political events. But if it were possible to put off Parliamentary Reform a week ago, is it possible now? When a Monarch (whose amiable and popular manners have, I verily believe, saved us from a Revolution) approves the measure-when a Minister of exalted character plans and fashions it--when a Cabinet of such varied talent and disposition protects it when such a body of the Aristocracy vote for it-when the hundredhorse power of the Press is labouring for it; - who does not know after this (whatever be the decision of the present Parliament) that the measure is virtually carried and that all the struggle between such annunciation of such a plan, and its completion, is tumult, disorder, disaffection, and (it may be) political ruin?

An Honourable Member of the Honourable House, much connected with this town, and once its representative, seems to be amazingly surprised, and equally

Nobles, and People, against his opinion: like the gentleman who came home from serving on a jury very much disconcerted, and complaining he had met with eleven of the most obstinate people he had ever seen in his life, whom he found it absolutely impossible by the strongest arguments to bring over to his way of thinking.

They tell you, gentlemen, that you have grown rich and powerful with these rotten boroughs, and that it would be madness to part with them, or to alter a constitution which had produced such happy effects. There happens, gentlemen, to live near my parsonage a labouring man, of very superior character and understanding to his fellow-labourers; and who has made such good use of that superiority, that he has saved what is (for his station in life) a very considerable sum of money, and if his existence be extended to the common period, he will die rich. It happens, however, that he is (and long has been) troubled with violent stomachic pains, for which he has hitherto obtained no relief, and which really are the bane and torment of his life. Now, if my excellent labourer were to send for a physician, and to consult him respecting this malady, would it not be very singular language if our doctor were to say to him, "My good friend, you surely will not be so rash as to attempt to get rid of these pains in your stomach. Have you not grown rich with these pains in your stomach? have you not risen under them from poverty to prosperity? has not your situation, since you were first attacked, been improving every year? You surely will not be so foolish and so indiscreet as to part with the pains in your stomach ?"-Why, what would be the answer of the rustic to this nonsensical monition? "Monster of Rhubarb! (he would say) I am not rich in consequence of the pains in my stomach, but in spite of the pains in my stomach; and I should have been ten times richer, and fifty times happier, if I had never had any pains in my stomach at all." Gentlemen, these rotten boroughs are your pains in the stomach- and you would have been a much richer and greater people if you had never had them at all. Your wealth and your

power have been owing, not to the debased and corrupted parts of the House of Commons, but to the many independent and honourable Members, whom it has always contained within its walls. If there had been a few more of these very valuable members for close boroughs, we should, I verily believe, have been by this time about as free as Denmark, Sweden, or the Germanized States of Italy.

I

They tell you of the few men of name and character who have sat for boroughs; but nothing is said of those mean and menial men who are sent down every day by their aristocratic masters to continue unjust and unnecessary wars, to prevent inquiring into profligate expenditure, to take money out of your pockets, or to do any other bad or base thing which the Minister of the day may require at their unclean hands. What mischief, it is asked, have these boroughs done? believe there is not a day of your lives in which you are not suffering in all the taxed commodities of life from the accumulation of bad votes of bad men. But, Mr. Bailiff, if this were otherwise, if it really were a great political invention, that cities of 100,000 men should have no representatives, because those representatives were wanted for political ditches, political walls, and political parks; that the people should be bought and sold like any other commodity; that a retired merchant should be able to go into the market and buy ten shares in the government of twenty millions of his fellow-subjects; yet, can such asseverations be made openly before the people? Wise men, men conversant with human affairs, may whisper such theories to each other in retirement; but can the People ever be taught that it is right they should be bought and sold? Can the vehemence of eloquent democrats be met with such arguments and theories? Can the doubts of honest and limited men be met by such arguments and theories? The moment such a government is looked at by all the people, it is lost. It is impossible to explain, defend, and recommend it to the mass of mankind. And true enough it is, that

excites us from abroad, political Reform is clamoured for by the people—there it stands, and ever will stand, in the apprehension of the multitude-Reform, the cure of every evil-Corruption, the source of every misfortune famine, defeat, decayed trade, depressed agriculture, will all lapse into the Question of Reform. Till that question is set at rest (and it may be set at rest) all will be disaffection, tumult, and perhaps (which God avert!) destruction.

But democrats and agitators (and democrats and agitators there are in the world) will not be contented with this Reform. Perhaps not, Sir; I never hope to content men whose game is never to be contented-but if they are not contented, I am sure their discontent will then comparatively be of little importance. I am afraid of them now; I have no arguments to answer them: but I shall not be afraid of them after this Bill, and would tell them boldly, in the middle of their mobs, that there was no longer cause for agitation and excitement, and that they were intending wickedly to the people. You may depend upon it such a measure would destroy their trade, as the repeal of duties would destroy the trade of the smuggler; their functions would be carried on faintly, and with little profit; you would soon feel that your position was stable, solid, and safe.

All would be well, it is urged, if they would but let the people alone. But what chance is there, I demand of these wise politicians, that the people will ever be let alone; that the orator will lay down his craft, and the demagogue forget his cunning? If many things were let alone, which never will be let alone, the aspect of human affairs would be a little varied. If the winds would let the waves alone, there would be no storms. If gentlemen would let ladies alone, there would be no unhappy marriages, and deserted damsels. If persons who can reason no better than this, would leave speaking alone, the school of eloquence might be improved. I have little hopes, however, of witnessing any of these acts of forbearance, particularly the last, and so we must (however foolish it may appear) proceed

to make laws for a people who we are sure will not be let alone.

We might really imagine from the objections made to the plan of Reform, that the great mass of Englishmen were madmen, robbers, and murderers. The Kingly power is to be destroyed, the House of Lords are to be annihilated, the Church is to be ruined, estates are to be confiscated. I am quite at a loss to find in these perpetrators of crimes—in this mass of pillagers and lunatics

the steady and respectable tradesmen and farmers, who will have votes to confer, and the steady and respectable country gentlemen, who will probably have votes to receive;-it may be true of the tradesmen of Mauritania, it may be just of the country gentlemen of Fez-it is any thing but true of the English people. The English are a tranquil, phlegmatic, money-loving, money-getting people, who want to be quiet-and would be quiet if they were not surrounded by evils of such magnitude, that it would be baseness and pusillanimity not to oppose to them the strongest constitutional resistance.

Then it is said that there is to be a lack of talent in the new Parliament: it is to be composed of ordinary and inferior persons, who will bring the government of the country into contempt. But the best of all talents, gentlemen, is to conduct our affairs honestly, diligently, and economically and this talent will, I am sure, abound as much in the new Parliament as in many previous Parliaments. Parliament is not a school for rhetoric and declamation, where a stranger would go to hear a speech, as he would go to the Opera to hear a song; but if it were otherwise--if eloquence be a necessary ornament of, and an indispensable adjunct to popular assemblies-can it ever be absent from popular assemblies? I have always found that all things, moral or physical, grow in the soil best suited for them. Show me a deep and tenacious earth-and I am sure the oak will spring up in it. In a low and damp soil I am equally certain of the alder and the willow. Gentlemen, the free Parliament of a free People is the native soil of