containing twenty or thirty persons, sold to their representatives, who are themselves perhaps sold to the Government: and to put an end to these enormous abuses is called Corporation robbery, and there are some persons wild enough to talk of compensation. This principle of compensation you will consider perhaps in the following instance to have been carried as far as sound discretion permits. When I was a young man, the place in England I remember as most notorious for highwaymen and their exploits was Finchley Common, near the metropolis; but Finchley Common, gentlemen, in the progress of improvement, came to be

semblies can it ever be absent from it. These very same politicians are popular assemblies? I have always now looking in an agony of terror at found that all things, moral or physical, the disfranchisement of Corporations 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 eloquence-and in that soil will it ever flourish and abound-there it will produce those intellectual effects which drive before them whole tribes and nations of the human race, and settle the destinies of man. And, gentlemen, if a few persons of a less elegant and aristocratic description were to become members of the House of Commons, where would be the evil? They would probably understand the common peo-enclosed, and the highwaymen lost by ple a great deal better, and in this way the feelings and interests of all classes of people would be better represented. The House of Commons thus organised will express more faithfully the opinions of the people.

The people are sometimes, it is urged, grossly mistaken; but are Kings never mistaken? Are the higher orders never mistaken? never wilfully corrupted by their own interests? The people have at least this superiority, that they always intend to do what is right.

these means the opportunity of exercising their gallant vocation. I remember a friend of mine proposed to draw up for them a petition to the House of Commons for compensation, which ran in this manner"We, your loyal highwaymen of Finchley Common and its neighbourhood, having, at great expense, laid in a stock of blunderbusses, pistols, and other instruments for plundering the public, and finding ourselves impeded in the exercise of our calling by the said enclosure of The argument of fear is very easily the said Common of Finchley, humbly disposed of: he who is afraid of a knock petition your Honourable House will on the head or a cut on the cheek is a be pleased to assign to us such comcoward; he who is afraid of entailing pensation as your Honourable House greater evils on the country by refusing in its wisdom and justice may think the remedy than by applying it, and fit.”—Gentlemen, I must leave the who acts in pursuance of that convic-application to you. tion, is a wise and prudent man— nothing can be more different than personal and political fear; it is the artifice of our opponents to confound them together.

The right of disfranchisement, gentlemen, must exist somewhere, and where but in Parliament? If not, how was the Scotch Union, how was the Irish Union, effected? The Duke of Wellington's Administration disfranchised at one blow 200,000 Irish voters -for no fault of theirs, and for no other reason than the best of all reasons, that public expediency required

An Honourable Baronet says, if Parliament is dissolved, I will go to my Borough with the bill in my hand, and will say, "I know of no crime you have committed, I found nothing proved against you: I voted against the bill, and am come to fling myself upon your kindness, with the hope that my conduct will be approved, and that you will return me again to Parliament." That Honourable Baronet may, perhaps, receive from his Borough an answer he little expects "We are above being bribed by such a childish and unworthy artifice; we do not choose

to consult our own interest at the ex-men are now universally admitted. pense of the general peace and happi- The public feeling, which has been so ness of the country; we are thoroughly often appealed to, is now intensely convinced a Reform ought to take place; excited. The remedies which have so we are very willing to sacrifice a privi- often been called for are now at last, lege we ought never to have possessed vigorously, wisely, and faithfully apto the good of the community, and we plied. I admire, gentlemen, in the will return no one to Parliament who present King, his love of peace-I is not deeply impressed with the same admire in him his disposition to econfeeling." This, I hope, is the answer omy, and I admire in him, above all, that gentlemen will receive; and this, his faithful and honourable conduct to I hope, will be the noble and generous those who happen to be his ministers. feeling of every Borough in England. He was, I believe, quite as faithful to The greater part of human improve- the Duke of Wellington as to Lord ments, gentlemen, I am sorry to say, Grey, and would, I have no doubt, be are made after war, tumult, bloodshed, quite as faithful to the political enemies and civil commotion: mankind seem of Lord Grey (if he thought fit to to object to every species of gratuitous employ them) as he is to Lord Grey happiness, and to consider every ad- himself. There is in this reign no vantage as too cheap, which is not secret influence, no double ministrypurchased by some calamity. I shall on whomsoever he confers the office, to esteem it as a singular act of God's him he gives that confidence without providence, if this great nation, guided which the office cannot be holden with by these warnings of history, not wait- honour, nor executed with effect. He ing till tumult for Reform, nor trusting is not only a peaceful King, and an Reform to the rude hands of the lowest economical King, but he is an honest of the people, shall amend their de- King. So far, I believe, every indicayed institutions at a period when vidual of this company will go with they are ruled by a popular Monarch, me. There is another topic of euloguided by an upright Minister, and gium, on which, before I sit down, I blest with profound peace. should like to say a few words - I mean the willingness of our present King to investigate abuses, and to reform them. If this subject be not unpleasant, I will offer upon it a very few observations a few, because the subject is exhausted, and because, if it were not, I have no right, from my standing or my situation in this county, to detain you long upon that or any other subject.

SPEECH AT TAUNTON.

[From the Taunton Courier.] MR. CHAIRMAN, -I am particularly happy to assist on this occasion, because I think that the accession of the present King is a marked and important era in English history. Another coronation has taken place since I have been in the world, but I never assisted at its celebration. I saw in it a change of masters, not a change of system. I did not understand the joy which it occasioned. I did not feel it, and I did not counterfeit what I did not feel.

I think very differently of the accession of his present Majesty. I believe I see in that accession a great probability of serious improvement, and a great increase of public happiness. The evils which have been long complained of by bold and intelligent

In criticising this great question of Reform, I think there is some injustice done to its authors. Men seem to suppose that a minister can sit down and make a plan of reform with as much ease and as much exactness, and with as complete a gratification of his own will, as an architect can do in building or altering a house. But a minister of state (it should be in justice observed) works in the midst of hatred, injustice, violence, and the worst of human passions-his works are not the works of calm and unembarrassed wisdom-they are not the best that a dreamer of dreams can imagine. It is

them

66

'No

enough if they are the best plans which | ness." But was not gradation tenthe passions, parties, and prejudices of dered? Was it not said by the friends the times in which he acts will permit. of reform—“ Give us Birmingham and In passing a Reform Bill the minister Manchester, and we will be satisfied"? overthrows the long and deep interest and what was the answer? which powerful men have in existing Manchester, no Birmingham, no reform abuses-he subjects himself to the in any degree-all abuses as they are deepest hatred, and encounters the all perversions as we have found bitterest opposition. Auxiliaries he the corruptions which our must have, and auxiliaries he can only fathers bequeathed us we will hand find among the people-not the mob- down unimpaired and unpurified to our but the great mass of those who have children." But I would say to the opinions worth hearing, and property graduate philosopher,-"How often worth defending- a greater mass, I does a reforming minister occur ?" and am happy to say, in this country than if such are so common that you can exists in any other country on the face command them when you please, how of the earth. Now, before the middling often does a reforming monarch occur? orders will come forward with one great and how often does the conjunction of impulse, they must see that something both occur? Are you sure that a is offered them worth the price of con- people, bursting into new knowledge, tention; they must see that the object and speculating on every public event, is great and the gain serious. If you will wait for your protracted reform? call them in at all, it must not be to Strike while the iron is hot-up with displace one faction at the expense of the arm and down with the hammer, another, but to put down all factions- and up again with the arm, and down to substitute purity and principle for again with the hammer. The iron is corruption- -to give to the many that hot-the opportunity exists now — - if political power which the few have unyou neglect it, it may not return for a justly taken to themselves-to get rid hundred years to come. of evils so ancient and so vast that any other arm than the public arm would be lifted up against them in vain. This, then, I say, is one of the reasons why ministers have been compelled to make their measure a little more vigorous and decisive than a speculative philosopher, sitting in his closet, might approve of. They had a mass of opposition to contend with, which could be encountered only by a general exertion of public spirit-they had a long suffering and an often deceived public to appeal to, who were determined to suffer no longer, and to be deceived no more. The alternative was to continue the ancient abuses, or to do what they have done and most firmly do I believe that you and I, and the latest posterity of us all, will rejoice in the decision they have made. Gradation has been called for in reform: we might, it is said, have taken thirty or forty years to have accomplished what we have done in one year. "It is not so much the magnitude of what you are doing we object to, as the sudden

There is an argument I have often heard, and that is this- Are we to be afraid?—is this measure to be carried by intimidation ? is the House of Lords to be overawed? But this style of argument proceeds from confounding together two sets of feelings which are entirely distinct personal fear and political fear. If I am afraid of voting against this bill, because a mob may gather about the House of Lords because stones may be flung at my

head- because my house may be attacked by a mob, I am a poltroon, and unfit to meddle with public affairs; but I may rationally be afraid of producing great public agitation-I may be honourably afraid of flinging people into secret clubs and conspiracies - I may be wisely afraid of making the aristocracy hateful to the great body of the people. This surely has no more to do with fear than a loose identity of name; it is in fact prudence of the highest order; the deliberate reflection of a wise man, who does not like what he is going to do, but likes still less the

consequences of not doing it, and who this moment lie broken into links at of two evils chooses the least.

seen at the door of her house with mop | you must change because the beings and pattens, trundling her mop, squeez- whom you govern are changed. After ing out the sea-water, and vigorously all, and to be short, I must say that it pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit was up; but I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop, or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest. Gentlemen, be at your ease— be quiet and steady. You will beat Mrs. Partington.

They tell you, gentlemen, in the debates by which we have been lately occupied, that the bill is not justified by experience. I do not think this true; but if it were true, nations are sometimes compelled to act without experience for their guide, and to trust to their own sagacity for the anticipation of consequences. The instances where this country has been compelled thus to act have been so eminently successful, that I see no cause for fear, even if we were acting in the manner imputed to us by our enemies. What precedents and what experience were there at the Reformation, when_the country, with one unanimous effort, pushed out the Pope, and his grasping and ambitious clergy? What experience, when at the Revolution we drove away our ancient race of kings, and chose another family, more congenial to our free principles ? And yet to those two events, contrary to experience, and unguided by precedents, we owe all our domestic happiness, and civil and religious freedomand having got rid of corrupt priests, and despotic kings, by our sense and our courage, are we now to be intimidated by the awful danger of extinguishing Boroughmongers, and shaking from our neck the ignominious yoke which their baseness has imposed upon it? Go on, they say, as you have done for these hundred years last past. I answer it is impossible: five hundred people now write and read, where one hundred wrote and read fifty years ago. The iniquities and enormities of the borough system are now known to the meanest of the people. You have a different sort of men to deal with

has always appeared to me to be the most absolute nonsense that we cannot be a great, or a rich and happy nation, without suffering ourselves to be bought and sold every five years like a pack of negro slaves. I hope I am not a very rash man, but I would launch boldly into this experiment without any fear of consequences, and I believe there is not a man here present who would not cheerfully embark with me. As to the enemies of the bill, who pretend to be reformers, I know them, I believe, better than you do, and I earnestly caution you against them. You will have no more of reform than they are compelled to grant you will have no reform at all, if they can avoid ityou will be hurried into a war to turn your attention from reform. They do not understand you- they will not believe in the improvement you have made. - they think the English of the present day are as the English of the times of Queen Anne or George the First. They know no more of the present state of their own country, than of the state of the Esquimaux Indians. Gentlemen, I view the ignorance of the present state of the country with the most serious concern, and I believe they will one day or another waken into conviction with horror and dismay. I will omit no means of rousing them to a sense of their danger;. - for this object, I cheerfully sign the petition proposed by Dr. Kinglake, which I consider to be the wisest and most moderate of the two.