m 
 
 *' 
 
 •ts 
 
 * v3 fe 
 
 "''V - . 
 
 •I 
 
 i 
 
 •v 
 
 i?m 
 
 
 -■ 
 
 y . /,'j ' . 
 
 . 
 
 **** 
 
 ar? 1 
 
 $E 
 
 • v! 
 
 5 CLVfi 
 
 
 
 ^r-. v ' 
 
 fe?<& 
 
 ^u 
 
 j*^jfe V ^^, «, 
 
 b M^ 
 
 W
 
 OF THE 
 U N IVERSITY 
 
 Of ILLI NOIS
 
 SPEECH 
 
 ©elibmtr in Xty Ifyomt of Commons 
 
 On Wednesday, June 3, 1841 ; 
 
 ON SIR ROBERT PEEL'S RESOLUTION 
 
 OF 
 
 WANT OF CONFIDENCE IN MINISTERS. 
 
 BY 
 
 T. N. TALFOURD, 
 
 Sergeant at lUto. 
 
 LONDON: 
 EDWARD MOXON, DOVER STREET. 
 
 MDCCCXLI.
 
 jLONDON : 
 BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIAh 3.
 
 SPEECH. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, 
 
 If when the Right Hon. Baronet, the Member for 
 Pembroke, closed his speech and the debate on Friday, I 
 regarded with surprise the indications of the spirit which 
 inspired it, I own that it appears yet more remarkable when 
 surveyed in the cool light of reflection. From the first 
 sentence, in which he offered his ironical congratulations to 
 the Noble Secretary for Ireland on the "complacent tone 
 in which he had spoken of the acts of a Government in its 
 last extremity" — as if even the satisfaction of a moment 
 were an intolerable offence — through all its varieties of 
 invective, down to its close, where piety came to the aid 
 of failing language, and he blessed God for the approaching 
 downfall of his sometime comrades, it presents a specimen 
 of curious animosity, which I believe is without example, 
 and I hope will be without copy in the annals of political 
 warfare. Fortunately for those who are the objects of such 
 attacks, there is a tendency in all violent emotions to over- 
 leap their objects — the certainty of the aim is not in pro- 
 portion to the eagerness of the marksman ; and the spring 
 which is animated by the most fiery venom sometimes carries 
 the deadly stroke beyond its intended victim. Such I hope to 
 show is the result of the attack which the once Lord of the 
 Admiralty has made on those who shared with him in the 
 excitements, in the dangers, in the agitations, and in the 
 triumphs, of far more critical times than those which now 
 
 a 2
 
 await us. The substance of his charge —amidst the imagery of 
 desperate pirates, of incendiary tenants, and ofburningbrands 
 — is, that the Ministers have carried the principal measures 
 in which they have succeeded, by the concurrence of their 
 political opponents, and that they have failed to carry other 
 measures when they have wanted that aid. To obtain "ample 
 room and verge enough" to trace the characters in which he 
 would write his accusations of successes obtained by too 
 great concurrence of opinion, and failures not produced by 
 want of merit, but by deficiency of strength, the Right Hon. 
 Baronet complains, that the Noble Secretary for Ireland 
 has sought to limit the question to the exposition of the 
 Budget, and has claimed to himself the right of finding 
 matter for his changes in former years. I will not deny 
 that right; but I, in my turn, must request the Right Hon. 
 Baronet to carry his retrospective review a little further, 
 and take one glance at earlier days, when he shared in 
 struggles which he has not forgotten, because assuredly he 
 has not forgiven. Many of the Hon. Members who now 
 encircle him may be justified in looking back, with a fond 
 regret, at those buttresses of Ministerial strength which 
 were destroyed in 1832; may yet entertain some busy, 
 though indistinct hope, that the seasons of Tory domination, 
 which they so long sustained, may return ; may regard 
 those as the palmy days of administrations, when taxation, 
 coercion, and war, were extended by mighty majorities — 
 when paper credit was maintained by frequent and bloody 
 execution — when the sanctities of private life were beset 
 by spies and violated by domestic treason — and when the 
 expression of public opinion only gave to the Government 
 a sterner aspect ; impelled it to new severities ; and ex- 
 cused it in fresh inroads on the remains of freedom. But 
 the Right Hon. Baronet can scarcely believe this grim 
 front of authority to have been desirable then, or to be pos- 
 sible now; — he was associated with those followers of 
 Mr. Fox, whose name he has ventured to introduce, and 
 
 *UIUC 
 
 \~*<f 
 
 'acrifA^
 
 who, I think, would look with astonishment on the position 
 in which he stands, and, though in his benignity he would not 
 call him " a recreant Whig," would regard him with sorrow 
 rather than anger. In that school, where the hopes of huma- 
 nity were entrusted to small minorities, he might have learned 
 to feel that might is not always right ; that truth is not 
 always with numbers; and that the wisdom of true states- 
 manship may be embodied in efforts which only generations 
 unborn shall fully recognise ! When the tremendous force 
 of public opinion broke down those awful barriers — when 
 the agitation in which the then Lord of the Admiralty was 
 a leader was triumphant — when the pillared rottenness of 
 ancient corruption lay prostrate before him and his col- 
 leagues — the great practical question arose, whether the 
 renovated and purified Constitution should be administered 
 by those who had struggled in that work of majestic rege- 
 neration, or by those who had opposed it — by those whose 
 fondest hopes attended its prosperity, or those wdiose honest 
 fears still prophesied its ruin. Happily, as I think, the 
 authors of the Reform Bill became its guardians ; but it 
 was no easy task for those who, resting from organic change, 
 desired fairly to apply and liberally to construe its blessings, 
 to*maintain, in the calm of victory, the position they had 
 acquired during the passion of the struggle. Not to dwell 
 on the absence of those palpable appliances which their 
 success had deprived ail Governments for all time — which 
 has been repeatedly adverted to in this debate, and is too 
 obvious to be dwelt on — they stood in a glorious but anxious 
 position, between their discomfited opponents and their too 
 sanguine allies. They found themselves, then, on the table- 
 land they had achieved — desirous of consolidating and 
 sustaining the advantages they had gained, but contented 
 there — between two parties, one of whom hated their suc- 
 cess, while the other was jealous of their pause;— and could 
 they expect that, in the maintenance of the fruits of their 
 victory, they should either succeed to the majorities of their
 
 predecessors, or maintain that impulse which had been great 
 in action ? In this position they have felt that the elements 
 of power itself were changed — that it must seek new sources 
 of strength from a wider sphere— and finding those elements 
 not in one party but in each, they must avail themselves of 
 them in support of the measures which not one party alone 
 would support, but to which each might by turns contribute 
 its honest sanction. If this appeal for support, not to 
 persons alone but also to principles, is dishonourable, 
 it follows that the powers of the state can never be 
 justly administered except by an extreme party; and the 
 Right Hon. Member for Tamworth will find as little 
 consolation in that doctrine as the Ministers whom he 
 now seeks to displace. Between the claims of Chartism on the 
 one hand, and those of the Toryism of deepest Orange hue 
 on the other, are immoveable gradations : and the Ministry 
 which now would take any course but the wildest, must often 
 appeal to elements to be found in those who differ in some 
 points with themselves. If, indeed, the view which the Right 
 Hon. Baronet, the Member for Pembroke, seems to adopt 
 of a stateman's duties be just — if the simile in which, among 
 the toys and fantasies of his passion, he likens the position of 
 adverse parties to gamblers, where one party may shuffle, 
 and cut, and deal, and the other hide their cards, justly 
 explains it — if the game of politics is animated by no 
 nobler inspiration than personal spite, and addressed to no 
 greater rewards than the emoluments of office — if princi- 
 ples are only the counters with which the gamesters play ; 
 then it is correct to assume that these principles are pro- 
 perty for the purpose of the ignoble contest; that all Conser- 
 vatism belongs to one side of the table, and all Progression 
 to the other. But if Statesmanship is a nobler game, I see 
 no just cause of complaint against the Minister who intro- 
 duces measures, which he knows that even his opponents 
 will recognise as just and wise, and who relies on their 
 honesty to support him. The Hon. Baronet may call this
 
 weakness — I call it wisdom. His party feeling may be so 
 intense, that he may think it objection enough to any mea- 
 sure, that it will be cursed with the approval of his opponents; 
 but in this his feeling cannot be shared by the Right Hon. 
 Baronet, the Member for Tarn worth. Yet even he has 
 taunted the Ministers with the support he gave them on the 
 Privilege question, and on the Chartist petition of the other 
 night, as if they had not a right to expect his support on 
 those questions — as if he could have done otherwise than 
 support them without forfeiting his high character, even in 
 his own esteem ; and, in truth, his ground of want of confi- 
 dence, because his support has been required and given, 
 amounts to this complaint, that on many occasions they have 
 agreed with him. If he should succeed to office, let him be 
 assured he will very soon require — and I trust he will re- 
 ceive — when he seeks to restrain his Orange allies, or his 
 Chartist opponents — the same support which he has so 
 frankly given to the Ministers; and of which, I trust, they 
 will not so often remind him. I, therefore, translate the 
 censure — that the Ministers have passed no great measure 
 without the support of their political opponents — to mean no 
 other than that their great measures have been such as to 
 secure the approval of the wisest and the best, and thatsome of 
 them are so good, that even the Right Hon. Baronet, the 
 Member for Pembroke, claims them for his own ! But the 
 Risrht Hon. Baronet further accuses Ministers, that, be- 
 sides committing the crime of passing measures so good 
 that even he concurs in their adoption, they have pro- 
 posed others which he and his friends have opposed, and 
 which thus opposed the Ministry have been unable to 
 carry ; and he first instances the attempt to settle the ques- 
 tion of Church Rates. Now, if the old lesson is to be read 
 backwards — if to command success is nobler than to deserve 
 it — I grant they are liable to the Right Hon. Baronet's 
 censure. But their position, in relation to this question, is 
 precisely that which I would instance as exemplifying the
 
 8 
 
 difficulties of a Ministry, who, anxious to preserve the prin- 
 ciple on which the noblest institutions of the country rest, 
 are yet desirous of preventing that principle from being 
 exercised to the vexation of those who conscientiously 
 differ from its application. If they had been studious only 
 of acquiring popularity from the great body of Dissenters 
 who take an interest in political affairs, they would have 
 adopted their doctrine — that those who do not desire to 
 attend the services of the Church, ought to be exempted 
 from the duty of contributing to the repairs of its fabrics — 
 but they have not done so; they have attempted to reconcile 
 the great doctrine, that the first and most sacred duty of the 
 state is to provide for the religious instruction of all her 
 people, with the removal of those obstacles which render 
 the execution of the laws always vexatious, often difficult, 
 sometimes impossible. Believing that the Church of Eng- 
 land exists, not only for the blessing of those who resort to 
 her services, but of all who desire to see religion and piety 
 established on sure foundations : admitting that her fabrics 
 scattered through the land do not, as they point to heaven 
 " with silent finger," bear with them only the aspirations of 
 those who worship within them, but of all those whose 
 thoughts rise from earth heavenwards : admitting that it is 
 just that a national charge should arise out of a national 
 duty, I yet think that the effort to extend her foundations 
 by a wider charity, was worthy of those, who, by the repeal 
 of the Test and Corporation Acts, had admitted the Protes- 
 tant Dissenters to civil rights. True, it has failed; but, 
 strange as it may seem to the Right Hon. Baronet, I believe 
 that one generous attempt to break down the bonds which 
 sever the brotherhood of mankind — nay, one earnest hope for 
 the perfect union of those who are " made of one blood" — 
 is better — is nobler — is more efficacious — and exerts a wider 
 influence, even its failure, than the most energeticexpressions 
 of hatred, or the most vigorous acts of coercion. The Right 
 Hon. Baronet, the Member for Pembroke, having taken
 
 occasion to taunt the Right Hon. President of the Board 
 of Control, with an imaginary failure at the hustings 
 at Nottingham — forbearance from which he might have 
 learned in his own journey from Cumberland to Pem- 
 broke — with a courage which I cannot sufficiently ad- 
 mire, adverted to a subject which the Member for 
 Tam worth with wiser caution omitted — and breathed 
 that name of " Ireland" which if whispered in the 
 ear of his illustrious leader, when he shall ascend the 
 triumphal chariot of administration amidst the cheers of 
 his friends, shall send such chilliness to his hopes as the 
 warnings of mortality, by the monitory slave, shed into the 
 soul of the Roman Conqueror. He taunted us with the 
 failure of our efforts to do justice to Ireland. I admit we 
 have failed — not in applying such consolation to that 
 afflicted country as our adversaries have permitted us to 
 employ — not in our endeavour to curb the pride of her 
 oppressors; to administer the laws with equal justice; 
 to make emancipation a living truth instead of an empty 
 boast ; but we have failed in our hope to give to* her that 
 just equality of political rights with ours, which nature 
 entitles her to claim, and both charity and wisdom enjoin 
 us to yield. 
 
 But which think you will she prefer? The vain hope, the 
 futile wish, and unsuccessful struggle to save her, or the 
 power that shall crush her affections and turn her hopes 
 into despair ? Ireland is ready with her answer ! Ages of 
 oppression have quickened her sensibilities, and she hails 
 the expression of kindness as an unwonted, but most 
 welcome, boon. Next, the Right Hon. Baronet refers 
 to the Poor Law Amendment Bill, which to me, if not 
 the unkindest, is the most astonishing cut of all. Here 
 is an Act which he himself has assisted to introduce ; which 
 he has seen renewed from the pressure of these party de- 
 bates without objection ; which, as far as I know, he has 
 never assisted to improve ; and which he seizes with eager 
 hand to hurl against those who have been associated with
 
 10 
 
 his noblest friends in sustaining it against long popular 
 censure. Why ? O, it is too fearful a weapon — it is en- 
 venomed too deeply with the hatred of class against class 
 to be rejected at such a season. And on what right does 
 he who helped to fashion now claim thus to use it ? He says 
 it does not contain suggested ameliorations — has he sought 
 to apply them ? He complains especially that it does not pro- 
 vide for the medical relief of the sick, or prohibit the odious 
 system of advertisements for tender. Where is the clause 
 placed or the votes to be moved by him to remedy this evil ? 
 The Government have considered it — they have not decided 
 upon it — clauses have been framed to meet it after great care 
 and consideration. I have placed them on the votes, and they 
 would have been debated but for those party strifes which 
 seem inevitable while the balance of parties is so equally poised 
 in this House. For three years I have been in correspondence 
 with the Provincial Medical Association on this subject: and, 
 strange to say, I was never made aware till Friday that our 
 cause had so distinguished a well-wisher as the Right Hon. 
 Baronet. I know not whether the Member for Finsbury, 
 who is connected with the other great organ of the medical 
 body, the London Medical Association, has been more 
 fortunate ; but I rather think that he is equally surprised 
 with me at the hidden virtue which the warmth of the 
 debate has quickened into life. Good things as well as 
 evil may thus be developed: — " it is the bright day which 
 brings forth the adder ;" and on the other hand, it is the 
 enthusiasm of a feeling which is not love which has prompted 
 into day our unknown and hitherto unsuspected friend. 
 For one measure the Hon. Baronet does give us credit; he 
 says, "The Post-office is all your own" — and wishes us joy of 
 the issue. Yes, Sir, the Post-office is ours ; and even the 
 wish of the Right Hon. Gentleman cannot impair the gift 
 or arrest the blessing ! It has been ours to take off a tax on 
 the affections — it has been ours to give to the poor the be- 
 nefit of those powers which annihilate space and time : it 
 has been ours to give freedom to the intercourse of mind
 
 11 
 
 with mind, of heart with heart ; and the people will not 
 reject the boon even though the Right Hon. Baronet 
 blesses it. One other measure, too, is ours, in which I do 
 not think he can claim a share — one great moral reform, 
 which, emanating from the legal profession, has shed its 
 blessings among the wretched throughout the land — the 
 Abolition of Imprisonment for Debt on Mesne Process. 
 For this great and good work we are mainly indebted to 
 the comprehensive sagacity and the unwearied zeal of the 
 Attorney-General ; and whether he shall sooner or later 
 retire from the laborious, the painful, the invidious duties 
 which he has discharged for a longer period than any of his 
 predecessors throughout English history, he will carry with 
 him not only the recollection of those years of strenuous 
 industry which he has devoted to the public service — not 
 only the consciousness which he shares with his illustrious 
 predecessors, Lord Abinger and Lord Lyndhurst, of having 
 sparingly and gently wielded the powers of the Crown in 
 their relations to the Press — not only the great testimony 
 borne to the judgment and the wisdom of those painful 
 proceedings which he directed when the country's peace 
 was lately endangered by misguided men, in the verdicts of 
 juries, and in the tranquillity which has followed them ; but 
 he will retain the enduring satisfaction that he has left the 
 law, in a most important point, better than he found it — that 
 he has narrowed the limits within which misfortune is con- 
 founded with crime — that he has annihilated a thousand 
 petty oppressions at a stroke, and with them a thousand 
 practices in which cunning preyed upon distress, and 
 debased at once the practitioner and the sufferer — that 
 he has deserved the thanks of the mercantile interest 
 for additional security, and " the blessings of those who 
 are ready to perish.'" And if from the reform, I may 
 turn for a moment to the administration of the law, 
 I have a right to claim for those who have performed the 
 most delicate and painful duties of the Executive Govern- 
 ment — the supervision of criminal sentences, those first
 
 12 
 
 duties of a Ministry — a degree of care and attention, a 
 firmness when firmness was needed, a wise and humane 
 discrimination in all, to which their opponents have often 
 borne testimony, and which their opponents, I believe, will 
 emulate, but which they can never surpass. 
 
 Sir, the Right Hon. Baronet, in approaching the financial 
 scheme of the Government, which has directly induced the 
 present attempt to visit them with Parliamentary censure, 
 has wholly omitted to say a word on its essential merits ; 
 whether, therefore, he wishes us to regard his opinions on 
 what he calls " the maddening question of the Corn-laws " 
 as those which he has advocated in an elaborate pamphlet, 
 and enforced in former speeches — or whether he has re- 
 nounced his principles, now that they are adopted by his 
 early friends, and is now prepared to defend the Sliding 
 Duty as essential to the prosperity of agriculture, we must 
 wait to learn another day. I will not, therefore, fatigue the 
 House by attempting to discuss their merits now, further 
 than to complain of the injustice which, I think, has been 
 done to that scheme, not only by the Right Hon. Member 
 for Pembroke, but by others who have considered only 
 its abstract merits, and have compared it with nothing. 
 I know they insist on the right to conceal their cards — 
 they have a right to do as gamesters, who, when the cards are 
 dealt and honours are divided, look for nothing but the odd 
 trick ; but have they a right to do so, or rather are they 
 ri^ht in doing: so, as statesmen, candidates for the confi- 
 dence of the House of Commons, and for the Administra- 
 tion of an empire? A great exigency has arrived — how 
 created is immaterial to the question of the remedy;— but, 
 if I must answer, I will say, by the acts of those who, during 
 long years of misrule, mortgaged the industry of this country 
 for ages yet unborn, in the vain attempt to extinguish liberty 
 throughout the world. But the true wisdom is to look, not 
 to the past, but to the future; the statesman who would 
 govern must legislate for that future. Something must be 
 done ; for I can scarcely think the Right Hon. Member for
 
 13 
 
 the University of Cambridge can have been rightly under- 
 stood, when he was thought to propose to equalise our 
 income with our expense, by letting things alone, — in 
 which he would resemble that ingenious gentleman, Sir 
 Abel Handy, in the play, who, when his house is in flames, 
 and none of his various inventions are at hand to quench it, 
 triumphantly exclaims to his son, — " I have hit it, Bob ! 
 Perhaps it may go out of itself !" Now, it may be that the 
 scheme proposed for meeting the deficiency, not by in- 
 creasing, but by lightening the burdens of the people, 
 is in itself an evil — still it may be a less evil than the defi- 
 ciency it proposes to remedy, and a less evil than the sub- 
 stitute which will be applied. Can we judge, in ignorance 
 of what that substitute is ? Are we prepared to affirm this 
 Bill of Indictment in the dark ? On all other great ques- 
 tions the principles and purposes of public men stand open 
 to the day; why are the financial questions, now the most 
 urgent of all, to be exceptions to this rule ? Above all, 
 how, — when the objection rather relates to the time when 
 the scheme is propounded, than to its essential merits, — 
 can we judge of the exigency, of the urgency of the 
 call, unless we knew what other resources may be in store? 
 But the Right Hon. Baronet, the Member for Pembroke, 
 says, that great excitement prevails on one of the questions 
 involved in the scheme — in which, by the way, he differs 
 from some of the ablest organs of his party, who assure us 
 there is no excitement at all worth mentioning, and that 
 the attempt to raise it has been a signal failure — and, quot- 
 ing the expression of Mr. Tierney, " that the malice of the 
 Devil himself could not have thought of preparing for a 
 dissolution with the false cry of the Church in danger," 
 still would impute this malice of the Devil to those whom 
 he charges with raising the cry of cheap bread. Now I 
 will not discuss the malice of the Devil with the Right 
 Hon. Baronet — I will make no invidious comparisons — I 
 will do injustice to no one, present or absent; but I will 
 fearlessly assert that there is nothing more malicious or
 
 14 
 
 more devilish in the cry of cheap bread than in the cry of 
 No Popery, or in that which the Hon. Baronet seems about 
 to echo of No Poor Law ! I can scarcely tell what he desires 
 when he speaks of excitement and dissolution ; at one time 
 he says, " Do not emulate the malice of the Devil by pre- 
 paring for dissolution during excitement, 11 and the next mo- 
 ment, he says, " Dissolve instantly !" Is it that his eagerness 
 gets the better of his judgment — that he is so tremulously 
 anxious to realise his triumph in the downfall of his friends, 
 that he grudges the least delay, and thus he is led into 
 these inconsistent wishes ? But how idle it is to admit the 
 justice, nay the necessity, of an appeal to the people, and 
 then complain that excitement prevails through the land ! 
 Why, such an appeal without excitement is almost a con- 
 tradiction in terms. The appeal to a great people cannot 
 be pronounced or answered in whispers. It must rouse — 
 it must excite — it must awaken — it must rapidly present 
 those vivid truths which it seeks to attest — it must call to 
 its aid, not only the result of long studies and examinations, 
 but the wants, the feelings, the affections of a great people. 
 The Government will make the appeal, and will seek the 
 solution of the true constitutional doctrine — not whether 
 they have the confidence of Parliament, but the confidence 
 of those who create it. 
 
 I now approach to the close of the Right Hon. Baronet's 
 speech, and with it the termination of this trespass on the 
 patience of the House. I leave him in the undisturbed 
 possession of his comparison of the Ministers to tenants, 
 who, under notice to quit, in vengeance set fire to the pro- 
 perty of the landlord ; and to pirates who rush with torches 
 to the magazine ; — but when he brandishes that flaring 
 simile of the enemy of the Philistines, who sent three hun- 
 dred foxes with firebrands among his foes, I must take leave 
 to restore that comparison to its original occasion, and 
 to its rightful owner, and leave the Right Hon. Baronet 
 nothing but the boldness with which he has seized it, and 
 the charity and the grace with which it was applied. It was
 
 15 
 
 used, indeed, against another Government on a parallel 
 occasion — on a charge precisely similar; one of its objects 
 was the Right Honourable Baronet, the Member for Pem- 
 broke ; the speaker who applied it was the Right Honourable 
 Baronet, the Member for Tamworth, who now sits beside 
 him. On the 3d of March 1831, Sir Robert Peel, addressing 
 the Treasury Bench, where the Right Hon. Baronet, the 
 Member for Pembroke, then sat beside some of the Minis- 
 ters whom he now assails, thus concluded one of his greatest 
 speeches : — " It is the duty of a Government to calm, not 
 to stimulate, the fever of popular excitement. They have 
 adopted a different course ; they have sent through the land 
 the firebrand of agitation, and no one can now recall it. 
 But let us hope there may be limits to their powers of mis- 
 chief. They have, like the giant enemy of the Philistines, 
 lighted three hundred brands and scattered through the 
 country discord and dismay ; but God forbid that they 
 should, like him, have the power to concentrate in death all 
 the energies which belong to life, and to signalise their own 
 destruction by bowing to the earth the pillars of tjhat sacred 
 edifice which contains within its walls, according to their 
 own admission, the noblest society of freemen in the world 1" 
 Thus has the Right Hon. Baronet, in generous oblivion of 
 the past assault, seized the extinguished torch which once 
 flashed before him, and relumined it with other light than 
 that of genius, to brandish before those who with him 
 endured its ancient fire. But I would turn for a moment 
 to the true author of this splendid passage, and ask him 
 whether the apprehensions which were then so honestly 
 conceived, and so nobly expressed, have not proved to be 
 visionary fears? The threatened administration did not 
 expire — they appealed in the equipoise of the parties to the 
 people — the people answered to the call — the majority of 
 one became one hundred and thirty-six, and the second 
 Charter of our Liberties became the law of the land. And 
 are not those pillars, to which eloquent reference was made, 
 as majestic and as stable as ever ? Can the Right Hon.
 
 16 
 
 Baronet look at the great body of gentlemen who now 
 encircle him returned to a Parliament under that law — to 
 the state of Municipal Corporations — nay, even to the very- 
 vote which he hopes to carry in a reformed House of Com- 
 mons, and not admit that these fears were vain ? And why ? 
 Because the true Conservatism of England is not merely 
 that which arrays itself under the banner of one party, 
 however mighty — it is sheltered in the million homes of 
 England — it is blended with all the " high endeavours ' 
 which are open to all, and the security of the " glad success" 
 when obtained ; it is associated with the piety, not of church- 
 men only, but of all ; it is cherished by the consciousness 
 which the humblest, as knowledge expands his vision, may 
 enjoy, that he is a sharer in the triumphs of Humanity and 
 Freedom throughout the world ; and therefore, it is safe 
 amidst the crash of parties and the change of laws. What 
 may be the issue of this motion, or what the issue of that 
 greater appeal which it is believed awaits us, I will not pre- 
 tend to conjecture ; but of this I feel assured, that when 
 those heats inseparable from the present state of parties shall 
 have subsided, and we have passed away from this busy 
 scene ; when even the resentments of the Right Hon. 
 Baronet themselves shall at last be still ; that those who shall 
 look with undazzledgaze on the events of these stirring times, 
 will recognise among the men who have been now charged 
 with weakness, a strength not born amidst great majorities 
 nor dependent on them ; a strength, not of the giant but of 
 the enchanter ; a strength, not composed of confederated 
 monopolies ; not cemented by borrowed hypocrisies ; not 
 envenomed by the poison extracted from old and blighted 
 regards ; but born of good hopes for man amidst glooms ; 
 matured by the just blending of the elements of conserva- 
 tism and progression ; which no temporary failure can 
 destroy ; for it chose the happiness and freedom of a world 
 for its aim, and posterity for its arbiters ! 
 
 THE END.

 
 feirfl 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 i V'' * 
 
 fe«ffl& 
 
 
 ;^,-h. 
 
 V > " • ' ^. - icr-^T' 
 
 W^