I will say, that whatever I have depends on the stability of existing institutions; and it is as dear to me as the princely possessions of any amongst you. Permit me to say, that in becoming a member of your House, I staked my all on the aristocratic institutions of the state; I abandoned certain wealth, a large income, and much real power in the state, for an office of great trouble, heavy responsibility, and very uncertain duration. I say, I gave up substantial power for the shadow of it, and for distinction depending upon accident. I quitted the elevated situation of representative of Yorkshire, and a leading member of the Commons. I descended from a position quite lofty enough to satisfy any man's ambition, and my lot became bound up in the stability of this House. Then, have I not a right to throw myself on your justice, and to desire that you will not put in jeopardy all I have now left ?

But the populace only, the rabble, the ignoble vulgar, are for the bill? Then what is the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of England? What the Duke of Devonshire? What the Duke of Bedford? I am aware it is irregular to name any noble lord that is a friend to the measure: its adversaries are patiently suffered to call Peers even by their Christian and surnames. Then I shall be as regular as they were, and ask, does my friend John Russell, my friend William Cavendish, my friend Harry Vane, belong to the mob or the aristocracy? Have they no possessions ? Are they modern names? Are they wanting in Norman blood, or whatever else you pride yourselves on? The idea is too ludicrous to be seriously refuted; that the bill is only a favourite with the democracy, is a delusion so wild as to point a man's destiny towards St. Luke's. Yet many, both here and elsewhere, by dint of constantly repeating the same cry, or hearing it repeated, have almost made themselves believe that none of the nobility are for the

measure.

My Lords, I do not disguise the intense solicitude which I feel for the event of this debate, because I know full well that the peace of the country is involved in the issue. I cannot look without dismay at the rejection of the measure. But grievous as may be the consequences of a temporary defeat-temporary it can only be; for its ultimate and even speedy success is certain. Nothing now can stop it. Do not suffer yourselves to be persuaded, that even if the present ministers were driven from the helm, any one could steer you through the troubles that surround you, without reform. But our successors would take up the task in circumstances far less auspicious. Under them, you would be fain to grant a bill, compared with which the one we now proffer is moderate indeed. Hear the parable of the Sybil; for it conveys a wise and wholesome moral. She now appears at your gate, and offers you mildly the volumes-the precious volumes of wisdom and peace. The price she asks is reasonable;-to restore the franchise which, without any bargain, you ought voluntarily to give. You refuse her terms-her moderate terms; she darkens the porch no longer. But soon, for you cannot do without her wares, you call her back. Again she comes, but with

diminished treasures; the leaves of the book are in part torn away by lawless hands-in part defaced with characters of blood. But the prophetic maid has risen in her demands-it is Parliament by the year-it is vote by the ballot-it is suffrage by the million! From this you turn away indignant, and for the second time she departs. Beware of her third visit; for the treasure you must have; and what price she may next demand, who shall tell? It may be even the mace which rests upon that woolsack. What may follow your course of obstinacy, if persisted in, I cannot take upon me to predict, nor do I wish to conjecture. But this I know full well, that as sure as man is mortal, and to err is human, justice deferred enhances the price at which you must purchase safety and peace; nor can you more expect to gather in another crop than they did who went before you, if you persevere in their utterly abominable husbandry of sowing injustice and reaping rebellion.

But among the awful considerations that now bow down my mind, there is one which stands pre-eminent above the rest. You are the highest judicature in the realm; you sit here as judges, and decide all causes, civil and criminal, without appeal. It is a judge's first duty never to pronounce sentence, in the most trifling case, without hearing. Will you make this the exception? Are you really prepared to determine, but not to hear, the mighty cause upon which a nation's hopes and fears hang? You are! Then beware of your decision! Rouse not, I beseech you, a peace-loving, but a resolute people-alienate not from your body the affections of a whole empire. As your friend, as the friend of my order, as the friend of my country, as the faithful servant of my sovereign, I counsel you to assist with your utmost efforts in preserving the peace, and upholding and perpetuating the constitution. Therefore pray and I exhort you not to reject this measure. By all you hold most dear-by all the ties that bind every one of us to our common order and our common country, I solemnly adjure you—I warn you-I implore you-yea, on my bended knees, Ï supplicate you-Reject not this bill!

I

14.-SIR ROBERT PEEL ON THE CONSTITUTION.

[From his Speech at the Merchant Tailors' Hall, May 11th, 1835. Born 1788. Died 1850.]

GENTLEMEN, with the deep feelings of pride and satisfaction by which I must necessarily be animated, there does mix, as you may well believe, one painful feeling that springs from the consciousness that any language of mine must be totally inadequate to express. the intensity of my sensations in addressing you upon the present occasion. Gentlemen, I well know that these are the trite and ordinary excuses made by all speakers on occasions like the present; but if you will only place yourselves in my situation, if you will only recollect that I was alone, as it were, in this company, that I remained seated while all the rest of you were standing, that I re

mained silent while all the rest of you were enthusiastically vociferating your generous approbation, that I was conscious that all your kindly attention, and consideration, and deep feeling, were concentrated upon myself; if you will recollect that I am a public man, that I am a man of the people, that I derive, I will not say my chief, my only strength from public applause and public confidence, that I am moreover a man who looks forward to no reward for public services excepting only public approbation, who aspires to no dignity except in all honesty and purity the good opinion of his fellow-subjects-the sound good opinion I mean, as distinguished from the paltry and fleeting popularity which may be gained at the moment, even by the weakest and most contemptible, in pandering or succumbing to faction, or even in more meekly and gently attempting at once to flatter and inflame the people's prejudices;-I say, then, that if you will take all these considerations and circumstances into your attention, you may be well able to believe, that although the excuse I have offered you for my deficiency in power adequately to respond to your great kindness may be trite, though it may be the ordinary phraseology of speakers in complimentary assemblages: yet upon this peculiar occasion it is perfectly consistent with truth, that I am unable to do justice to my feelings, in pouring forth to you my heartfelt thanks for the honour which you have conferred upon me.

But let me not be suspected of idle egotism. Let it not be thought that I have been so misled by the suggestions of personal vanity as to attribute to myself, or any deserts of mine, the origin of this meeting, or the feelings which you have this evening expressed. I agree with our worthy chairman in thinking that the address which I received from so large a body of the merchants, bankers, and traders of this city, was a sufficient compliment and reward for any services and exertions of mine. It asserted the principle by which I was animated: it bore with it the true reward of public services-the approbation of my fellow-citizens. I wanted no other demonstration of public feeling; and if I had regarded this meeting as merely a demonstration of personal compliment, I should almost have discouraged it, as being, after the address, a superfluous token of public esteem. No, Sir, the object of this meeting is a demonstration of public feeling in the metropolis. I do think that public interests may be promoted by it. I do think that the impulse which has been given from this centre of the commercial world, the vital impulse, must thrill to every extremity of the British empire.

Gentlemen, what I shall say will be spoken by me as one of yourselves, not as one anxious for triumph as a party man-still less as a candidate for office: I shall speak to you as a British subject in a private capacity, feeling a tenfold greater interest in the cause of good government than in any emoluments or advantages he could possibly derive from office; a man who has a tenfold greater desire, on public grounds, for the maintenance of the principles he professes and conscientiously believes to be essential to the welfare of the coun

try, than for any benefits, if benefits they can be called, which he could derive from the acquisition of office. I believe, indeed, that there is no greater mistake than that people situated as I happen to be are so very anxious for office. Some fancy that the wholesome rest of every politician is broken by his feverish longing for office. If I were to speak from my own experience, I should tell a different tale. There is to me and to many others nothing in office, so far as mere personal feelings or interests are concerned, to compensate for its labours and its annoyances, and its deep anxieties, its interruption of domestic repose and happiness. Away, then, Sir, with the ridiculous assertion that men who are really qualified for the first trusts of the state would consent to procure them by any dishonest sacrifice of opinion, by any compromise of character. We hear constantly the professions of great alarm about court intrigue and court favouritism, and base coalitions of public men for the promotion of their private ends. The country quite mistakes the real danger in this respect; the danger is, not that public men, fit for public trusts, and worthy of public confidence, will seek office by unworthy means, but that they will seek excuses for declining it-will refuse to bear the heavy sacrifices of time, and labour, and repose, which it imposes. That office holds out great advantages to the ambitious minds of some, I will not deny; but are there not out of office equal, if not greater, means of distinction in public life? For myself, in taking office, in submitting to its drudgery, I was urged by nothing but a sense of public duty, and by the desire not to shrink from that obligation which every British subject incurs when called upon to serve his king, to the utmost of his ability and power. I hope that his Majesty has not a more devoted servant than I; but this I can say with truth, that when I entered the king's service I entered it with the consciousness that I neither sought nor desired any favour, any honour, any reward which the king has in his power to bestow. Office is no doubt a legitimate object of ambition. I think it anything but a reflection on a public man to seek it, when he can hold it consistently with his public principles, and when the holding of it will advance those principles; but speaking for myself, I repeat that I do not covet it, and that nothing has reconciled me to it but the imperative sense of public duty. The chief consolation I have had in holding it, the chief reward I retain on relinquishing it, is the proud reflection that I have had the good fortune in being connected in civil life with that illustrious man* whose fame exceeds that of any other conqueror a man from whom I never have been one moment estranged by any difference on political subjects, and with whom my connexion never has been embittered by the slightest infusion of paltry jealousy. I am gratified by the thought, connected as I have been with him in the civil service of the Crown, I shall have my name transmitted with his to after-ages. This is the chief pride, the dearest gratification of my heart.

Allow me to speak to you, not as a party man, but as one of yourselves, and to submit to you plain opinions in plain language. I prefer this, and I am sure so will you, to that elaborate concatenation of phrases which is sometimes called eloquence, in which you have the smallest possible quantity of common sense enveloped in the greatest multitude of equivocal words. I say to you, then, that there is danger to the institutions of this country, danger to the mixed and happily balanced form of government under which we have lived and prospered. But it is in your power, and in the power of those who think with you, and fill situations in the country corresponding to yours, to avert the danger. It is in your power, by unremitting activity and by the exercise of those functions which the constitution has left to you, to mitigate, if not altogether to remove, the evil. My fixed opinion is, that the danger can only be met by your gaining for your principles an effectual influence in the popular branch of the legislature. We shall only aggravate the evil if we attempt to deceive ourselves as to the nature of the instruments we can employ. Let us not indulge in useless lamentations. Let us waste no time in regretting that which is beyond our remedy. This is quite idle. The first step towards safety is a knowledge of the real source of our strength, a just confidence in it, and a firm resolution to exert it. If we cease to take a desponding view of public affairs all will yet be well. Though you may not be able to exercise that full share of influence to which you are legitimately entitled, yet hesitate not to strain every nerve to acquire all that can be acquired. Act like Englishmen, and if you will do so, I am confident, from the national spirit and indomitable resolution, that the country will be rescued from the dangers by which it is at present threatened. The government of the country, allow me to tell you, must be mainly conducted with the goodwill and through the immediate agency of the House of Commons. The royal prerogative, the authority of the House of Lords, are most useful, nay, necessary, in our mixed and balanced constitution. But you must not strain those powers. You would not consider that to be worthy of the name of government, which is nothing but a series of jealousies and hostile collisions between two branches of the legislature. You wish to see all branches of the legislature maintaining each its independent authority, but moving, through mutual confidence, in harmonious concert towards the great end of civil society and civil government the public good. I ask you, then, not to underrate, not to misunderstand the power and authority of the House of Commons, not to trust to the controlling checks which may theoretically exist upon that power and authority; but to secure, through the legitimate exercise of constitutional privileges, that degree of influence for your principles in the House of Commons, which will be ten times more powerful for the establishment of what is good, and the resistance of what is evil, than any extrinsic control of the Crown or the House of Lords. Let us stand by the constitution as it exists at present. Let us never hint at alteration, or by our conduct raise a secret doubt, even in the minds of the most sus