alone. The House of Commons were astonished by the union of the Irish Catholics. They saw that Catholic Ireland had discovered her strength, and stretched out her limbs, and felt manly powers, and called for manly treatment; and the House of Commons wisely and practically yielded to the innovations of time, and the shifting attitude of human affairs. are the dreadful consequences, which those laws your petition prays may be continued, have produced upon Ireland. From the principles of that system, from the cruelty of those laws, I turn, and turn with the homage of my whole heart, to that memorable proclamation which the head of our church-the present monarch of these realms-has lately made to his I admit the church, sir, to be in great danger. hereditary dominions of Hanover-That no man I am sure the state is so also. My remedy for should be subjected to civil incapacities on account of these evils is, to enter into an alliance with the religious opinions. Sir, there have been many Irish people-to conciliate the clergy, by giving memorable things done in this reign. Hostile them pensions-to loyalize the laity, by putting armies have been destroyed; fleets have been them on a footing with the Protestant. My captured; formidable combinations have been remedy is the old one, approved of from the broken to pieces—but this sentiment, in the mouth beginning of the world, to lessen dangers, by of a king, deserves more than all glories and increasing friends, and appeasing enemies. I victories the notice of that historian who is desthink it most probable, that under this system tined to tell to future ages the deeds of the Engof crown patronage, the clergy will be quiet. lish people. I hope he will lavish upon it A Catholic layman, who finds all the honours of every gem which glitters in the cabinet of genius, the state open to him, will not, I think, run into and so uphold it to the world that it will be re. treason and rebellion-will not live with a rope membered when Waterloo is forgotten, and about his neck, in order to turn our bishops out, when the fall of Paris is blotted out from the and put his own in; he may not, too, be of memory of man. Great as it is, sir, this is not opinion that the utility of his bishop will be the only pleasure I have received in these latfour times as great, because his income is four ter days. I have seen, within these few weeks, times as large; but whether he is or not, he a degree of wisdom in our mercantile laws, will never endanger his sweet acres (large mea- such superiority to vulgar prejudice, views so sure) for such questions as these. Anti-Trini- just and so profound, that it seemed to me as if tarian Dissenters sit in the House of Com-I was reading the works of a speculative economons, whom we believe to be condemned to the punishments of another world. There is no limit to the introduction of Dissenters into both houses-Dissenting Lords or Dissenting Commons. What mischief have Dissenters for this last century and a half plotted against the Church of England? The Catholic lord and the Catholic gentleman (restored to their fair rights) will never join with levellers and Iconoclasts. You will find them defending you hereafter against your Protestant enemies.The crosier in any hand, the mitre on any head, are more tolerable in the eyes of a Catholic than doxological Barebones and tonsured Cromwell. mist, rather than the improvement of a practical politician, agreed to by a legislative assembly, and upon the eve of being carried into execution, for the benefit of a great people. Let who will be their master, I honour and praise the ministers who have learnt such a lesson. I rejoice that I have lived to see such an improvement in English affairs-that the stubborn resistance to all improvement-the contempt of all scientific reasoning, and the rigid adhesion to every stupid error which so long characterized the proceedings of this country, are fast giving away to better things, under better men, placed in better circumstances. I confess it is not without severe pain that, We preach to our congregations, sir, that a in the midst of all this expansion and improvetree is known by its fruits. By the fruits it ment, I perceive that in our profession we are produces I will judge your system. What has still calling for the same exclusion—still askit done for Ireland? New Zealand is emerging that the same fetters may be riveted on our ing-Otaheite is emerging-Ireland is not fellow-creatures-still mistaking what constiemerging-she is still veiled in darkness-her children, safe under no law, live in the very shadow of death. Has your system of exclusion made Ireland rich? Has it made Ireland loyal? Has it made Ireland free? Has it made Ireland happy? How is the wealth of Ireland proved? Is it by the naked, idle, suffering savages, who are slumbering on the mud floor of their cabins? In what does the loyalty of Ireland consist? Is it in the eagerness with which they would range themselves under the hostile banner of any invader, for your destruction and for your distress? Is it liberty when men breathe and move among the bayonets of English soldiers? Is their happiness and their history any thing but such a tissue of murders, burnings, hanging, famine, and disease, as never existed before in the annals of the world?This is the system which, I am sure, with very different intentions, and different views of its effects, you are met this day to uphold. These tutes the weakness and misfortune of the church, for that which contributes to its glory, its dignity, and its strength. Sir, there are two petitions at this moment in this house, against two of the wisest and best measures which ever came into the British Parliament, against the impending corn law and against the Catholic emancipation-the one bill intended to increase the comforts, and the other to allay the bad passions of man.-Sir, I am not in a situation of life to do much good, but I will take care that I will not willingly do any evil.—The wealth of the Riding should not tempt me to petition against either of those bills. With the corn bill, I have nothing to do at this time. Of the Catholic emancipation bill, I shall say, that it will be the foundation stone of a lasting religious peace; that it will give to Ireland not all that it wants, but what it most wants, and without which no other boon will be of any avail. When this bill passes, it will be a signal to all the religious sects of that unhappy country | other flag will fly in the land of Erin than that to lay aside their mutual hatred, and to live in flag which blends the lion with the harp-that peace, as equal men should live under equal flag which, wherever it does fly, is the sign of law-when this bill passes, the Orange flag freedom and of joy-the only banner in Europe will fall-when this bill passes, the Green flag which floats over a limited king and a free of the rebel will fall-when this bill passes, no people. SPEECH AT THE TAUNTON REFORM MEETING.* MR. BAILIFF, This is the greatest measure which has ever been before Parliament in my time, and the most pregnant with good or evil to the country; and though I seldom meddle with political meetings, I could not reconcile it to my conscience to be absent from this. Every year, for this half century, the question of reform has been pressing upon us, till it has swelled up at last into this great and awful combination; so that almost every city and every borough in England are at this moment assembled for the same purpose, and are doing the same thing we are doing. It damps the ostentation of argument and mitigates the pain of doubt, to believe (as I believe) that the measure is inevitable; the consequences may be good or bad, but done it must be; I defy the most determined enemy of popular influence, either now or a little time from now, to prevent a reform in Parliament. Some years ago, by timely concession, it might have been prevent ed. 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 * 1 was a sincere friend to reform; I am so still. It was a great deal too violent-but the only justification is, that you cannot reform as you wish, by degrees; you must avail yourself of the few opportunities that present themselves. The reform carried, it became the business of every honest man to turn it to good, and to see that the people (drunk with their new power) did not ruin our ancient institutions. We have been in considerable danger, and that danger is not over. What alarms me most is the large price paid by both parties for popular favour. The yeomanry were put down nothing could be more grossly absurd-the people were rising up against the poor-laws, and such an excellent and permanent force was abolished because they were not deemed a proper force to deal with popular insurrections. You may just as well object to put out a fire 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 was 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 hundred-horse 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 dissatisfied, at this combination of king, ministers, 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, with pond water because pump water is better for the purpose: I say, put out the fire with the first water you and that it would be madness to part with can get; but the truth is, radicals don't like armed yeo- them, or to alter a constitution which had promen: they have an ugly homicide appearance. Again, duced such happy effects. There happens, -a million of revenue is given up in the nonsensical penny-post scheme, to please my old, excellent, and gentlemen, to live near my parsonage a labour universally dissentient friend, Noah Warburton. Iad-ing man, of very superior character and under mire the whig ministry, and think they have done more standing to his fellow-labourers; and who has good things than all the ministries since the Revolution; but these concessions are sad and unworthy made such good use of that superiority, that marks of weakness, and fill reasonable men with just he has saved what is (for his station in life) alarm. All this folly has taken place since they have a very considerable sum of money, and if his become ministers upon principles of chivalry and gallantry; and the tories, too, for fear of the people, have existence is extended to the common period, been much too quiet. There is only one principle of he will die rich. It happens, however, that he public conduct-Do what you think right, and take place is (and long has been) troubled with violent stomachic pains, for which he has hitherto ob. and power as an accident. Upon any other plan, office is shabbiness, labour, and sorrow. true enough it is, that as often as misfortune threatens us at home, or imitation excites us from abroad, political reform is clamored for by the people-there it stands, and ever will stand, in the apprehension of the multitudereform, 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. tained no relief, and which really are the bane | recommend it to the mass of mankind. And 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 sure. ly 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. 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 ora tor will lay down his craft, and the demagogue forget his cunning? If many things were let 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. 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 aristo-alone, which never will be let alone, the aspect cratic 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? I 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 We might really imagine, from the objecwanted for political ditches, political walls, and tions made to the plan of reform, that the great political parks; that the people should be mass of Englishmen were madmen, robbers, bought and sold like any other commodity; and murderers. The kingly power is to be dethat a retired merchant should be able to go stroyed, the House of Lords is to be annihilatinto the market and buy ten shares in the go-ed, the church is to be ruined, estates are to be vernment of twenty millions of his fellow-confiscated. I am quite at a loss to find in subjects; yet can such asseverations be made these perpetrators of crimes-in this mass of 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 Jest. It is impossible to explain, defend, and 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 | ment: and to put an end to these enormous 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 eloquenceand 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 organized, 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. 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 general 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: The right of disfranchisement, gentlemen, mankind seem to object to every species of must exist somewhere, and where but in Par- gratuitous happiness, and to consider every liament? If not, how was the Scotch union, advantage as too cheap, which is not purchased how was the Irish union, effected? The Duke by some calamity. I shall esteem it as a sinof Wellington's administration disfranchised gular act of God's providence, if this great at one blow 200,000 Irish voters-for no fault nation, guided by these warnings of history, of theirs, and for no other reason than the best not waiting till tumult for reform, nor trusting of all reasons, that public expediency required reform to the rude hands of the lowest of the it. These very same politicians are now look-people, shall amend their decayed institutions ing in an agony of terror at the disfranchise- at a period when they are ruled by a popular ment of corporations containing twenty or monarch, guided by an upright minister, and thirty persons, sold to their representatives, blest with profound peace. who are themselves perhaps sold to the govern 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 honorable 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 him he gives that confidence without which the office cannot be holden with honour, nor executed with effect. He is not only a peaceful king, and an economical king, but he is an honest king. So far, I believe, every individual of this company will go with There is another topic of eulogium, on which, before I sit down, I 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 is 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. me. 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 enough if they are the best plans which the passions, parties, and prejudices of the times in which he acts will permit. In passing a reform bill, the minister overthrows the long and deep interest which powerful men have in existing abuses-he subjects himself to the deepest hatred, and encounters the bitterest opposition. Auxiliaries he must have, and auxiliaries he can only find among the people-not the mob-but the great mass of those who have opinions worth hearing, and property worth defending-a greater mass, I am happy to say, in this country than exists in any other country on the face of the earth. Now, before the middling orders will come forward with one great impulse, they must see that something is of fered them worth the price of contention; they must see that the object is great and the gain serious. If you call them in at all, it must not be to displace one faction at the expense of another, but to put down all factions-to substitute purity and principle for corruption-to give to the many that political power which the few have unjustly taken to themselves-to get rid 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 measures a little more vigorous and decisive than a speculative philosoper, 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-suf fering 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 suddenness.' But was not gradation tendered? Was it not said by the friends of reform-Give us Birmingham and Manchester, and we will be satisfied?' and what was the answer? No Manchester, no Birmingham, no reform in any degree-all abuses as they are-all perversions as we found them-the corruptions which our fathers bequeathed us we will hand down unimpaired and unpurified to our children.' But I would say to the gra duate philosopher,-How often does a reforming minister occur?' and if such are so com mon that you can command them when you please, how often does a reforming monarch occur? and how often does the conjunction occur? Are you sure that a people, bursting into new knowledge, and speculating on every public event, will wait for your protracted reform? Strike while the iron is hot-up with the arm, and down with the hammer, and up again with the arm, and down again with the hammer. The iron is hot-the opportunity exists now-if you neglect it, it may not return for an hundred years to come. There is an argument I have often heard, and |