First. These are the principles on which that unhappy prince should have acted. But no. He would govern, I do not say ill, I do not say tyrannically; I say only this; he would govern the men of the seventeenth century as if they had been the men of the sixteenth century; and therefore it was, that all his talents and all his virtues did not save him from unpopularity, from civil war, from a prison, from a bar, from a scaffold. These things are written for our instruction. Another great intellectual revolution has taken place; our lot has been cast on a time analogous, in many respects, to the time which immediately preceded the meeting of the Long Parliament. There is a change in society. There must be a corresponding change in the government. We are not, we cannot, in the nature of things, be, what our fathers were. We are no more like the men of the American war, or the men of the gagging bills, than the men who cried 'privilege' round the coach of Charles the First, were like the men who changed their religion once a year at the bidding of Henry the Eighth. That there is such a change, I can no more doubt than I can doubt that we have more power looms, more steam engines, more gas lights, than our ancestors. That there is such a change, the Minister will surely find who shall attempt to fit the yoke of Mr. Pitt to the necks of the Englishmen of the nineteenth century. What then can you do to bring back those times when the constitution of this House was an object of veneration to the people? Even as much as Strafford and Laud could do to bring back the days of the Tudors; as much as Bonner and Gardiner could do to bring back the days of Hildebrand; as much as Villèle and Polignac could do to bring back the days of Lewis the Fourteenth. You may make the change tedious; you may make it violent; you may-God in his mercy forbid !-you may make it bloody; but avert it you cannot. Agitations of the public mind, so deep and so long continued as those which we have witnessed, do not end in nothing. In peace or in convulsion, by the law, or in spite of the law, through the Parliament, or over the Parliament, Reform must be carried. Therefore be content to guide that movement which you cannot stop. Fling wide the gates to that force which else will enter through the breach. Then will it still be, as it has hitherto been, the peculiar glory of our Constitution that, though not exempt from the decay which is wrought by the vicissitudes of fortune, and the lapse of time, in all the proudest works of human power and wisdom, it yet contains within it the means of self-reparation. Then will England add to her manifold titles of glory this, the noblest and the purest of all; that every blessing which other nations have been forced to seek, and have too often sought in vain, by means of violent and bloody revolutions, she will have attained by a peaceful and a lawful Reform. INDEX ACRE, Napoleon's siege of, 448 of the Hon. R. Bingham in an action Africa, America's whale fishery on coast Alfred the Great, body of common law Algiers, 48 Alienation of Land, statute limiting the Althorpe, Lord, moved second reading of Bill on Parliamentary Reform, 582 America-continued creasing population a cause of resist- Amherst, Lord, 22 n Amusements of the People, Windham Ancaster, Duke of, 8 n Appalachian Mountains, 49 Arcot, Nabob of, 83, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95 Aristocracy, duties of the, 301 Aristotle, quoted by Fox, 210; referred Army, The, Windham's speech on im- provement of, 238-42; Sheridan's speech on the augmentation of, 352-4 442-4; Brougham's speech on, 517-20 BACON, Lord, 127, 143; his trial and Balance of Power, Grattan on the, 171 Barnave, his reply to Mirabeau, 558 Barras, 396 Bathurst, Lord, 44 Beauchamp, Lord, 180 n Bedford, Duke of, 537 Begums, The, their treatment by Warren Burke, Edmund-continued 439; on Chatham and his administra- Burke's Reflections on the French Revolu- Burnet's History of the Reformation, Burns, 263 CADER IDRIS, 65 Camden, Lord Chancellor, 8 n Caste, rule of, 104 Castlereagh, Lord, 405, 445 n, 517 n; his motion that the thanks of the Catholic Association, Sheil's speech to Catholic disabilities, see Roman Catho- Cavalry debt, the, 90 Cavendish, Lord John, 170 Celibacy, Fox on, 187-8 Charles I., 290, 585, 587; imposed a Charles, Archduke, referred to by Chatham, 1st Earl of, see Pitt, William, Chatham, 2nd Earl of, see Pitt, John Chittery, The, 104 Christianity, Erskine on the truth of, 321; progress of the world under, Constitution, The-continued 201; its peculiarity, 258; see English Cornwall, Duke of, 64 Cowley, quoted by Curran, 271 Crawford, Colonel, 398 n Cromwell, Oliver, 290; his sagacity re- to limit pensions, 253-6; speech in Curwen, Mr., his motion to postpone Custom and Excise, reform of, 77 |