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 whom 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,

I

and an indispensable adjunct to, popular assemblies— can it ever be absent from popular assemblies? 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 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 people 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.

The argument of fear is very easily disposed of: he who is afraid of a knock on the head or a cut on the cheek is a coward; he who is afraid of entailing greater evils on the country by refusing the remedy than by applying it, and who acts in pursuance of that conviction, 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 it. These very same politicians are now looking in an agony of terror at the disfranchisement of Corporations 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 enclosed, and the highwaymen lost by 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 said Common of Finchley, humbly petition your Honourable House will be pleased to assign to us such compensation as your Honourable House in its wisdom and justice may think fit." Gentlemen, I must leave the application to you.

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 expense of the genéral peace and happiness of the country; we are thoroughly convinced a Reform ought to take place; we are very willing to sacrifice a privilege we ought never to have possessed to the good of the community, and we will return no one to Parliament who is not deeply impressed with the same feeling." This I hope is the answer that gentleman will receive, and this, I hope, will be the noble and generous feeling of every Borough in England.

The greater part of human improvements, gentlemen, I am sorry to say, are made after war, tumult, bloodshed, and civil commotion: mankind seem to object to every species of gratuitous happiness, and to consider every advantage as too cheap, which is not purchased by some calamity. I shall esteem it as a singular act of God's providence, if this great nation, guided by these warnings of history, not waiting till tumult for Reform, nor trusting Reform to the rude hands of the lowest of the people, shall amend their decayed institutions at a period when they are ruled by a popular Monarch, guided by an upright Minister, and blest with profound peace.

SPEECH AT TAUNTON.

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 men are now universally admitted. The public feeling, which has been so often appealed to, is now intensely excited. The remedies which have so often been called for are now at last vigorously, wisely, and faithfully applied. I admire, gentlemen, in the present King, his love of peace-I admire in him his disposition to economy, and I admire in him, above all, his faithful and honourable conduct to those who happen to be his ministers. He was, I believe, quite as faithful to the Duke of Wellington as to Lord Grey, and would, I have no doubt, be quite as faithful to the political enemies of Lord Grey (if he thought fit to employ them) as he is to Lord Grey himself. There is in this reign no secret influence, no double ministry-on whomsoever he confers the office, to