his motion. Ay, and Brougham supported him. He said that the people for some years now had not wished for any such thing as Parliamentary reform; therefore he would support his right honourable friend, notwithstanding that he objected to Parliamentary reform. Burdett, too, said he would support the right honourable gentleman, notwithstanding his declaration. That, then, was their conduct in 1827, only three years ago; and is any one to believe-is any man so foolish as to believe-that they are now sincere when they talk about reform? All of them, however, dislike the ballot, and for the reasons I have upon a former occasion had the honour to state to you-because they know that it would be the great security of the independence of the people. This, gentlemen, will be their conduct, and against that we must be upon our guard. If we be not, we shall be cheated with some shuffling thing. My idea is, that the duke may come to the House and propose a national kind of reform. Not a wild and visionary reform; oh, no, to be sure not. Our answer will be: "No, my lord duke, we are for nothing wild and visionary, we only want that every man able to carry a musket should have a vote, if he be in his senses, and be not tainted by indelible crime; we want this, because our bodies are liable to be forced out in defence of your estates, my lord duke, if they should be placed in danger. Then we want that Parliaments should be shorter, because we perceive that the members grow very slack in their duties in the course of seven years, until they are just on the eve of an election. Twelve years is the average of a man's life, and therefore we think that seven years is too long for which to return a member to Parliament. And then we want the ballot, because of many things; among the rest because it would put an end to canvassing and bribery; and all those infamies which are practised once in about four or five years. We want, my lord duke, to put an end to this infamy, and if you call this wild and visionary

bility to give a man £4000 a year for auditing his own accounts-to be so incongruous, that it was, as the poet says, making impossibilities coalesce. The next thing they did was-not to propose excise laws, for those they had passed long before-but it was to propose a law by Lord Henry Petty, now the Marquis of Landsdowne, to bring the exciseman into every private house; to lay a tax upon the beer brewed by any man for his own consumption. So that an Englishman's house would have been his castle with a vengeance, if that law had passed. We complain of the Tories pressing us down with taxes, but they have never, though bad enough, God knows, they have never been half so bad as the others. The Whigs say they are for retrenchment and economy; how did they show that in the income tax which they created? that most unjust of all taxes. They laid a tax of 10 per cent. on all property, as they called it, including in it every tradesman, and making him, in fact, pay seven times as much as the lord. At the same time they passed a law to augment the incomes of the royal family, and relieve them from the operation of the property tax. Yes, and they did more; for the law under which that family reigns-the law of settlement-stipulates positively and absolutely that no foreigner shall enjoy any pension or place of emolument under the Crown, but these Whigs appointed scores of foreigners, who are on the pension list to this day. Gentlemen, the Tories, bad as they are, never committed such indecencies as these. And how have these same men acted recently. They have now and then had a pretty little motion for Parliamentary reform-such as my Lord Jolm Russell's scheme. But in 1827 mark their conduct. At that time Canning came into power, and he made a kind of coalition with them: he who had opposed the reformers all his lifetime, though he had taken £150,000 of our money. Well, they amalgamated with him. Oh, yes, they would all support the right honourable gentleman. To be sure, because he had got places and pensions-if you, who belong to three or four Bible to bestow. Brougham, you recollect, thought to get made Master of the Rolls, and Lord John Russell was, perhaps, to have been made an ambassador. One night when the House was sitting (for they do all their work by owl-light)— one night Mr Peel asked how the honourable gentlemen, who had taken their seats on the Treasury benches, would agree with one another on the question of Parliamentary reform, Canning got up and said he would oppose reform in that House to the last moment of his life, let it come in what shape it might. Very well, that was all very well and very consistent in Canning, but how did the Whigs act? Why, Lord John Russell, who had a notice of motion for reform before the House, got up, and said he had discovered the people did not want reform now, and therefore he should beg to withdraw

societies-call it wild and visionary to put an end to that bribery and perjury which God has denounced and held up to execration-if you call this wild and visionary, my lord duke, we can only say that we have not the same dictionary to explain our words by." Gentlemen, if you stand to this firmly, let them go on with their projects; they may pass a law-and it would not be right to resist it; let us see the operation of it first. But this is the course I think the thing will take after they have been discussing parliamentary reform for some time; some man among them will get up, and will have the honesty and the boldness to make a point of the ballot. "There," he will say, “all the people understand that; give them the ballot." Yes, gentlemen, William IV. and the ballot, all the world over! And my opinion is,

EARL GREY

1764-1845.

ON MOVING THE SECOND READING OF than those of the people at large. Such a

maintain that the king's ministers are not to blame; and I do not impute it as blame to those who have opposed them. It was, perhaps, the unavoidable consequence of conflicting opinions on a great measure of constitutional policy. But that these consequences have taken place is certain; and it must be equally the desire, as it is the interest of us all, to put an end to a state of things so embarrassing and so afflicting. You have now an opportunity of doing so, which, if lost, it may be difficult to recover. But if you reject the bill, what will be the consequence? Will the question be set at rest? The acknowledgment of all, even of those who have been most opposed to this bill, that a reform is necessary-still more, the undiminished force of public opinion-show this to be impossible. If this bill is not allowed to go into committee, another-let who will be ministersmust be introduced. Then follows another period of suspense and agitation, exempt, I trust, from violence and tumult, but still most prejudicial to the interests and to the tranquillity of the country.

My Lords, I forbear to press further the consequences of a second rejection; what I have said is enough to induce you to weigh well those which I have pointed out, which are sufficiently serious to demand the most anxious reflection. To the country, and to your Lordships, therefore, the result of this night is important in a degree scarcely paralleled in your records as a legislative assembly. To myself, everything depends upon it. I knew all the difficulties to which I exposed myself when I

undertook this measure-a sense of the duty which I owed to my sovereign and my country commanded me to brave them.

Having introduced the measure, I have endeavoured to conduct it through the various embarrassments with which it was beset, with a steady adherence to its principles, and to the views upon which I had originally acted. I have been exposed to much injustice-to many, I will confidently say, undeserved attacks—to much misrepresentation; and, I must add, to much suspicion, from which I should have thought I might have been protected. But I have not been deterred from doing what I thought right, or allowed myself to be forced and driven into any measures, which, while a hope existed, I could not approve. I have felt, I say, the attacks to which I have been exposed, and I know what further I have to expect. In the event of its failure, a personal responsibility rests upon me, which, perhaps, never was before sustained by any former minister. I may sink under it-that is nothing; I shall have the support of an approving conscience, which has always instructed me to do what is right, and to leave the consequences to God. What I pray for is, that I may be the only victim, and that the consequences of my failure may affect neither the prosperity nor the peace of my country, nor that union between your Lordships and the people on which the welfare of both-and what is necessary to the welfare of both, your Lordships' authority, and character, and usefulness— essentially depend. I now move that this bill be read a second time.

LORD PLUNKET.

1764-1854.

poisoned and his judgment perverted, the most flagitious crimes lose their names, robbery and murder become moral good. He is taught not to startle at putting to death a fellow-creature, if it be represented as a mode of contributing to the good of all. In pursuit of those phantoms and chimeras of the brain, they abolish feelings and instincts which God and nature have planted in our hearts for the good of human kind. Thus, by the printed plan for the establishment of liberty and a free republic, murder is pro

ON THE PROSECUTION OF EMMETT, 1803. | LIBERTY and equality are dangerous names to make use of; if properly understood, they mean enjoyment of personal freedom under the equal protection of the laws; and a genuine love of liberty inculcates a friendship for our friends, our king, and country-a reverence for their lives, an anxiety for their safety; a feeling which advances from private to public life, until it expands and swells into the more dignified name of philanthropy and philosophy.hibited and proscribed; and yet you heard how But in the cant of modern philosophy these affections, which form the ennobling distinctions of man's nature, are all thrown aside; all the vices of his character are made the instrument of moral good-an abstract quantity of vice may produce a certain quantity of moral good. In a man whose principles are thus

this caution against excesses was followed up by the recital of every grievance that ever existed, and which could excite every bad feeling of the heart, the most vengeful cruelty and insatiate thirst of blood.

Gentlemen, I am anxious to suppose that the mind of the prisoner recoiled at the scenes of

murder which he witnessed, and I mention one circumstance with satisfaction-it appears he saved the life of Farrell; and may the recollection of that one good action cheer him in his last moments! But, though he may not have planned individual murders, there is no excuse to justify his embarking in treason which must be followed by every species of crimes. It is supported by the rabble of the country, while the rank, the wealth, and the power of the country are opposed to it. Let loose the rabble of the country from the salutary restraints of the law, and who can take upon him to limit their barbarities? Who can say he will disturb the peace of the world, and rule it when wildest? Let loose the winds of heaven, and what power less than omnipotent can control them? So it is with the rabble; let them loose, and who can restrain them? What claim, then, can the prisoner have upon the compassion of a jury, because, in the general destruction which his schemes necessarily produce, he did not meditate individual murder? In the short space of a quarter of an hour, what a scene of blood and horror was exhibited! I trust that the blood which has been shed in the streets of

Dublin upon that night, and since upon the scaffold, and which may hereafter be shed, will not be visited upon the head of the prisoner. It is not for me to say what are the limits of the mercy of God, or what a sincere repentance of those crimes may effect; but I do say, that if this unfortunate young gentleman retains any of the seeds of humanity in his heart, or possesses any of those qualities which a virtuous education in a liberal seminary must have planted in his bosom, he will make an atonement to his God and his country, by employing whatever time remains to him in warning his deluded countrymen from persevering in their schemes. Much blood has been shed, and he perhaps would have been immolated by his followers if he had succeeded. They are a bloodthirsty crew, incapable of listening to the voice of reason, and equally incapable of obtain. ing rational freedom, if it were wanting in this country, as they are of enjoying it. They imbrue their hands in the most sacred blood of the country, and yet they call upon God to prosper their cause, as it is just! but, as it is atrocions, wicked, and abominable, I most devoutly invoke that God to confound and overwhelm it.

SIR JAMES MACKINTOSHI.

1765-1832.

DEFENCE OF JEAN PELTIER,* 1803. is a proud and melancholy distinction. Before THERE is one point of view in which this case the great earthquake of the French Revolution seems to me to merit your most serious attention. had swallowed up all the asylums of free discusI consider it as the first of a long series of consion on the Continent, we enjoyed that privilege, flicts between the greatest power in the world indeed, more fully than others; but we did not and the only free press remaining in Europe. enjoy it exclusively. In great monarchies, the No man living is more thoroughly convinced press has always been considered as too formidthan I am that my learned friend, Mr Attorney-able an engine to be entrusted to unlicensed General, will never degrade his excellent character; that he will never disgrace his high magistracy by mean compliances, by an immoderate and unconscientious exercise of power; yet I am convinced, by circumstances which I shall now abstain from discussing, that I am to consider this as the first of a long series of conflicts between the greatest power in the world and the only free press now remaining in Europe. Gentlemen, this distinction of the English press is new; it

* Peltier was editor of L'Ambigu, a French newspaper published in London, intended to expose the ambiguous conduct of Napoleon Bonaparte. He was tried for libel, at the instigation of the emperor himself, who took advantage of the peace subsisting between Britain and France. The above is part of the speech delivered in his defence in the Court of King's Bench, 21st February 1803. Peltier was found guilty by the jury, but as war broke out immediately, sentence was never passed upon him.

individuals. But in other Continental countries,
either by the laws of the state, or by long habits
of liberality and toleration in magistrates, a
liberty of discussion has been enjoyed, perhaps
sufficient for most useful purposes. It existed,
in fact, where it was not protected by law; and
the wise and generous connivance of governments
was daily more and more secured by the growing
civilisation of their subjects. In Holland, in
Switzerland, in the imperial towns of Germany,
the press was either legally or practically free.
Holland and Switzerland are no more; and since
the commencement of this prosecution, fifty im-
perial towns have been erased from the list of
independent states by one dash of the pen.
Three or four still preserve a precarious and
trembling existence. I will not say by what
compliances they must purchase its continuance.
I will not insult the feebleness of states, whose
unmerited fall I do most bitterly deplore.

Call to mind, if ages crowded into years have not effaced them from your memory, that happy period when we scarcely dreamed more of the subjugation of the feeblest republic of Europe than of the conquest of her mightiest empire; and tell me, if you can imagine a spectacle more beautiful to the moral eye, or a more striking proof of progress in the noblest principles of true civilisation.

These feeble states-these monuments of the justice of Europe-the asylum of peace, of industry, and of literature-the organs of public

persecuted truth-have perished with those ancient principles which were their sole guardians and protectors. They have been swallowed up by that fearful convulsion which has shaken the uttermost corners of the earth. They are destroyed and gone for ever.

These governments were in many respects one industry and literature, while Louis XIV. was of the most interesting parts of the ancient sys-pouring his myriads into Italy before her gates. tem of Europe. Unfortunately for the repose of mankind, great states are compelled, by regard to their own safety, to consider the military spirit and martial habits of their people as one of the main objects of their policy. Frequent hostilities seem almost the necessary condition of their greatness; and, without being great, they cannot long remain safe. Smaller states exempted from this cruel necessity-a hard condition of greatness, a bitter satire on human nature-devoted themselves to the arts of peace, to the cultivation of literature, and the improve-reason-the refuge of oppressed innocence and ment of reason. They became places of refuge for free and fearless discussion; they were the impartial spectators and judges of the various contests of ambition which from time to time disturbed the quiet of the world. They thus became peculiarly qualified to be the organs of that public opinion which converted Europe into a great republic, with laws which mitigated, though they could not extinguish ambition; and with moral tribunals to which even the most despotic sovereigns were amenable. If wars of aggrandisement were undertaken, their authors were arraigned in the face of Europe. If acts of internal tyranny were perpetrated, they resounded from a thousand presses throughout all civilised countries. Princes on whose will there were no legal checks, thus found a moral restraint which the most powerful of them could not brave with absolute impunity. They acted before a vast audience, to whose applause or condemnation they could not be utterly indifferent. The very constitution of human nature, the unalterable laws of the mind of man, against which all rebellion is fruitless, subjected the proudest tyrants to this control. No elevation of power, no depravity, however consummate, no innocence, however spotless, can render man wholly independent of the praise or blame of his fellowmen.

These governments were, in other respects, one of the most beautiful and interesting parts of our ancient system. The perfect security of such inconsiderable and feeble states, their undisturbed tranquillity amid the wars and conquests that surrounded them, attested, beyond any other part of the European system, the moderation, the justice, the civilisation to which Christian Europe had reached in modern times. Their weakness was protected only by the habitual reverence for justice, which, during a long series of ages, had grown up in Christendom. This was the only fortification which defended them against those mighty monarchs to whom they offered so easy a prey. And till the French Revolution, this was sufficient. Consider, for instance, the situation of the republic of Geneva. Think of her defenceless position, in the very jaws of France; but think also of her undisturbed security, of her profound quiet, of the brilliant success with which she applied to

One asylum of free discussion is still inviolate. There is still one spot in Europe where man can freely exercise his reason on the most important concerns of society, where he can boldly publish his judgment on the acts of the proudest and most powerful tyrants. The press of England is still free. It is guarded by the free constitution of our forefathers. It is guarded by the hearts and arms of Englishmen, and I trust I may venture to say that if it be to fall, it will fall only under the ruins of the British empire.

It is an awful consideration, gentlemen. Every other monument of European liberty has perished. That ancient fabric which has been gradually reared by the wisdom and virtue of our fathers still stands. It stands, thanks be to God! solid and entire; but it stands alone, and it stands amid ruins.

In these extraordinary circumstances, I repeat that I must consider this as the first of a long series of conflicts between the greatest power in the world and the only free press remaining in Europe. And I trust that you will consider yourselves as the advanced guard of liberty, as having this day to fight the first battle of free discussion against the most formidable enemy that it ever encountered.

CHARACTER OF CHARLES J. FOX.

Mr Fox united in a most remarkable degree the seemingly repugnant characters of the mildest of men and the most vehement of orators. In private life he was gentle, modest, placable, kind; of simple manners, and so averse from parade and dogmatism as to be not only unostentatious, but even somewhat inactive in conversation. His superiority was never felt but in the instruction which he imparted, or in the attention which his generous preference usually directed to the more obscure members of the company. The simplicity of his manners was far from excluding that perfect urbanity and amenity which