abuses is called corporation robbery, and there are some persons wild enough to talk of com. pensation. 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 no. torious 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.

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.

The right of disfranchisement, gentlemen, must exist somewhere, and where but in Parliament? If not, how was the Scotch union, how was the Irish union, effected? The Duke of Wellington's administration disfranchised at one blow 200,000 Irish voters-for no fault of theirs, and for no other reason than the best of all reasons, that public expediency required it. These very same politicians are now look ing in an agony of terror at the disfranchisement of corporations containing twenty or thirty persons, sold to their representatives, who are themselves perhaps sold to the govern

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 bo rough in England.

The greater part of human improvements, gentlemen, I am sorry to say, are made after war, tumult, bloodshed, and civil commotion: mankind seem to object to every species of gratuitous happiness, and to consider every advantage as too cheap, which is not purchased by some calamity. I shall esteem it as a singular act of God's providence, if this great nation, guided by these warnings of history, not waiting till tumult for reform, nor trusting reform to the rude hands of the lowest of the people, shall amend their decayed institutions at a period when they are ruled by a popular monarch, guided by an upright minister, and blest with profound peace.

SPEECH AT TAUNTON.

MR. CHAIRMAN,—I am particularly happy to | existing abuses-he subjects himself to the assist on this occasion, because I think that the deepest hatred, and encounters the bitterest op accession of the present king is a marked and position. Auxiliaries he must have, and auxili. important era in English history. Another aries he can only find among the people-not coronation has taken place since I have been the mob-but the great mass of those who have in the world, but I never assisted at its celebra- opinions worth hearing, and property worth de. ion. I saw in it a change of masters, not a fending-a greater mass, I am happy to say, in change of system. I did not understand the joy this country than exists in any other country on which it occasioned. I did not feel it, and I did the face of the earth. Now, before the midnot counterfeit what I did not feel. dling orders will come forward with one great I think very differently of the accession of his impulse, they must see that something is of present majesty. I believe I see in that acces-fered them worth the price of contention; they sion 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 me. 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.

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 anembarrassed 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

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 phlosoper, 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-suffering 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 be lieve 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 yon 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

contempt. The people are waiting in virtuous patience for the completion of the bill, because they know it is in the hands of men who do no mean to deceive them. I do not believe they have given up one atom of reform-I do not believe that a great people were ever before so firmly bent upon any one measure. I put it to any man of common sense, whether he believes it possi

that is this-Are we to be afraid?—is this measure to be carried by intimidation ?-is the House of Lords to be overawed? But this style of argument proceeds from confounding together two sets of feelings which are entirely distinct-personal fear and political fear. If I am afraid of voting against this bill, because a mob may gather about the house of Lords because stones may be flung at my head-be-ble, after the king and Parliament have acted as cause my house may be attacked by a mob, I am a poltroon, and unfit to meddle with public affairs; but I may rationally be afraid of producing great public agitation—I may be honourably afraid of flinging people into secret clubs and conspiracies-I may be wisely afraid of making the aristocracy hateful to the great body of the people. This surely has no more to do with fear than a loose identity of name; it is in fact prudence of the highest order; the deliberate reflection of a wise man who does not like what he is going to do, but likes still less the consequence of not doing it, and who, of two evils, chooses the least.

they have done, that the people will ever be content with much less than the present bill contains. If a contrary principle is acted upon, and the bill attempted to be got rid of altogether, I confess I tremble for the consequences, which I believe will be of the worst and most painful description; and this I say deliberately, after the most diligent and extensive inquiry.Upon that diligent inquiry I repeat again my firm conviction, that the desire of reform has increased, not diminished; that the present repose is not indifference, but the calmness of victory, and the tranquillity of success. When I see all the wishes and appetites of created There are some men much afraid of what is beings changed, when I see an eagle, that after to happen my lively hope of good is, I con- long confinement, has escaped into the air, fess, mingled with very little apprehension, but come back to his cage and his chains,-when of one thing I must be candid enough to say I see the emancipated negro asking again for that I am much afraid, and that is of the opinion the hoe which has broken down his strength, now increasing, that the people are become in- and the lash which has tortured his body, I will different to reform; and of that opinion I am then, and not till then, believe that the English afraid, because I believe in an evil hour it may people will return to their ancient degradation lead sorne misguided members of the upper-that they will hold out their repentant hands house of Parliament to vote against the bill. for those manacles which at this moment lay As for the opinion itself, I hold it in the utmost broken into links at their feet.

SPEECH AT TAUNTON.

[FROM THE "TAUNTON COURIER" of October 12TH, 1831.]

entered into human imagination. I do not mean to be disrespectful, but the attempt of the lords to stop the progress of reform, reminds me very forcibly of the great storm of Sidmouth, and of the conduct of the excellent Mrs. Part. ington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824. there set in a great flood upon that town-the tide rose to an incredible height--the waves rushed in upon the houses, and every thing was threatened with destruction. In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm, Dame Part ington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit was up; but I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop, or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest. Gentlemen, be at your ease-be quiet and steady. You will beat Mrs. Partington.

THE REVEREND SYDNEY SMITH rose and said: | hold it to be the most absurd notion that ever Mr. Bailiff, I have spoken so often on this subject, that I am sure both you and the gentlemen here present will be obliged to me for saying but little, and that favour I am as willing to confer, as you can be to receive it. I feel most deeply the event which has taken place, because, by putting the two houses of Parliament in collision with each other, it will impede the public business, and diminish the public prosperity. I feel it as a churchman, because I cannot but blush to see so many dignitaries of the church arrayed against the wishes and happiness of the people. I feel it more than all, because I believe it will sow the seeds of deadly hatred between the aristocracy and the great mass of the people. The loss of the bill I do not feel, and for the best of all possible reasons-because I have not the slightest idea that it is lost. I have no more doubt, before the expiration of the winter, that this bill will pass, than I have that the annual tax bills will pass, and greater certainty than this no man can have, for Franklin tells us, there are but two things certain in this world-death and taxes. As for the possibility of the House of Lords preventing ere long a reform of Parliament, I

They tell you, gentlemen, in the debates by which we have been lately occupied, that the bill is not justified by experience. I do not

think this true, but if it were true, nations are whom you govern are changed. After all, and sometimes compelled to act without experience to be short, I must say that it has always ap for their guide, and to trust to their own saga-peared to me to be the most absolute nonsense city for the anticipation of consequences. The that we cannot be a great, or a rich and happy instances where this country has been compel-nation, without suffering ourselves to be boughi led thus to act have been so eminently success- and sold every five years like a pack of negrc ful, that I see no cause for fear, even if we slaves. I hope I am not a very rash man, but were acting in the manner imputed to us by our I would launch boldly into this experiment enemies. What precedents and what experi- without any fear of consequences, and I believe ence were there at the Reformation, when the there is not a man here present who would not country, with one unanimous effort, pushed out cheerfully embark with me. As to the enemies the pope, and his grasping and ambitious cler- of the bill, who pretend to be reformers, I know gy -What experience, when, at the Revolu- them, I believe, better than you do, and I eartion, we drove away our ancient race of kings, nestly caution you against them. You will have and chose another family more congenial to no more of reform than they are compelled to our free principles ?-And yet to those two grant-you will have no reform at all, if they events, contrary to experience, and unguided can avoid it—you will be hurried into a war to by precedents, we owe all our domestic happi-turn your attention from reform. They do not ness, and civil and religious freedom-and having got rid of corrupt priests and despotic kings, by our sense and our courage, are we now to be intimidated by the awful danger of extinguishing boroughmongers, and shaking from our necks the ignominious yoke which their baseness has imposed upon us? Go on, they say, as you have done for these hundred years last past. I answer, it is impossiblefive hundred people now write and read where one hundred wrote and read fifty years ago. The iniquities and enormities of the borough system are now known to the meanest of the people. You have a different sort of men to deal with-you must change because the beings

understand you-they will not believe in the improvement you have made-they think the English of the present day are as the English of the times of Queen Anne or George the First. They know no more of the present state of their own country, than of the state of the Esquimaux Indians. Gentlemen, I view the ignorance of the present state of the country with the most serious concern, and I believe they will one day or another waken into conviction with horror and dismay. I will omit no means of rousing them to a sense of their danger; for this object I cheerfully sign the petition proposed by Dr. Kinglake, which I consider to be the wisest and most moderate of the two.

SPEECH BY THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.

STICK to the bill-it is your Magna Charta, | and your Runnymede. King John made a present to the barons. King William has made a similar present to you. Never mind, common qualities good in common times. If a man does not vote for the bill he is unclean-the plague-spot is upon him; push him into the iazaretto of the last century, with Wetherell and Saddler; purify the air before you approach him; bathe your hands in chloride of lime, if you have been contaminated by his touch.

14

profound lawyers decayed and mouldering in the inns of court, because the parsons, warriors, and advocates of boroughmongers must be crammed to saturation, before there is a morsel of bread for the man who does not sell his votes, and put his country up to auction; and though this is of every day occurrence, the borough system, we are told, is no practical evil.

Who can bear to walk through a slaughterhouse? blood, garbage, stomachs, entrails, legs, tails, kidneys, horrors--I often walk a mile about to avoid it. What a scene of disgust and horror is an election-the base and infamous traffic of principles-a candidate of high character reduced to such means--the perjury and evasion of agents-the detestable rapacity of voters-the ten days' dominion of mammon and Belial. The bill lessens it-begins the destruction of such practices-affords some chance, and some means of turning public opinion against bribery, and of rendering it in famous.

So far from its being a merely theoretical improvement, I put it to any man, who is himself embarked in a profession, or has sons in the same situation, if the unfair influence of boroughmongers has not perpetually thwarted him in his lawful career of ambition, and professional emolument? "I have been in three general engagements at sea," said an old sailor have been twice wounded;-I commanded the boats when the French frigate, the ASTROLABE, was cut out so gallantly." "Then you are made a post captain?" "No. I was very But the thing I cannot, and will not bear, it near it; but-Lieutenant Thomson cut me out, this;-what right has this lord, or that marquis as I cut out the French frigate; his father is to buy ten seats in Parliament, in the shape of town clerk of the borough of which Lord boroughs, and then to make laws to govern me? F. is member, and there my chance And how are these masses of power re-distri was finished." In the same manner, all over buted? The eldest son of my lord is just come England, you will find great scholars rotting on from Eton-he knows a good deal about Æneas curacies--brave captains starving in garrets-and Dido, Apollo, and Daphne--and that is all

jail. No sooner is Lord Althorp chancellor of the exchequer, than he turns out of the house a trumpery and (perhaps) an insidious bill for the improvement of the game laws; and in an instant offers the assistance of government for the abolition of the whole code.

Then look at the gigantic Brougham, sworn

and to this boy, his father gives a six hundredth | time, for every ten pheasants which fluttered in part of the power of making laws, as he would the wood, one English peasant was rotting ir give him a horse, or a double-barreled gun. Then Vellum, the steward, is put in-an admirable man; he has raised the estates-watched the progress of the family road, and canal bills -and Vellum shall help to rule over the people of Israel. A neighbouring country gentleman, Mr. Plumpkin, hunts with my lord-opens him a gate or two, while the hounds are running-in at 12 o'clock, and before 6, has a bill on the dines with my lord-agrees with my lord- table abolishing the abuses of a court which wishes he could rival the Southdown sheep of has been the curse of the people of England my lord-and upon Plumpkin is conferred a for centuries. For twenty-five long years did portion of the government. Then there is a Lord Eldon sit in that court, surrounded with distant relation of the same name, in the coun- misery and sorrow, which he never held up a ty militia, with white teeth, who calls up the finger to alleviate. The widow and the orphan carriage at the opera, and is always wishing cried to him as vainly as the town crier cries O'Connell was hanged, drawn, and quartered when he offers a small reward for a full purse; then a barrister, who has written an article in the bankrupt of the court became the lunatic of the Quarterly, and is very likely to speak, and the court; estates mouldered away, and manrefute M'Culloch; and these five people, in sions fell down; but the fees came in, and all whose nomination I have no more agency than was well. But in an instant the iron mace of I have in the nomination of the toll-keepers of Brougham shivered to atoms this house of the Bosphorus, are to make laws for me and fraud and of delay; and this is the man who my family to put their hands in my purse, and will help to govern you; who bottoms his reputo sway the future destinies of this country; tation on doing good to you; who knows, that and when the neighbours step in, and beg per- to reform abuses is the safest basis of fame and mission to say a few words before these persons the surest instrument of power; who uses the are chosen, there is an universal cry of ruin, highest gifts of reason, and the most splendid confusion, and destruction;-we have become efforts of genius, to rectify those abuses, which a great people under Vellum and Plumpkin- all the genius and talent of the profession* have under Vellum and Plumpkin our ships have hitherto been employed to justify, and to pro covered the ocean-under Vellum and Plump-tect. Look to Brougham, and turn you to that kin our armies have secured the strength of the hills-to turn out Vellum and Plumpkin is not reform, but revolution.

side where he waves his long and lean finger. and mark well that face which nature has mark ed so forcibly-which dissolves pensionsWas there ever such a ministry? Was there turns jobbers into honest men-scares away ever before a real ministry of the people? Look the plunderer of the public-and is a terror to at the condition of the country when it was him who doeth evil to the people. But, above placed in their hands: the state of the house all, look to the northern earl, victim, before this when the incoming tenant took possession: honest and manly reign, of the spitefulness of windows broken, chimneys on fire, mobs round the court. You may now, for the first time, the house threatening to pull it down, roof tum-learn to trust in the professions of a minister; bling, rain pouring in. It was courage to occu- you are directed by a man who prefers charac py it; it was a miracle to save it; it will be the ter to place, and who has given such unequivoglory of glories to enlarge and expand it, and to cal proofs of honesty and patriotism, that his make it the eternal palace of wise and temperate image ought to be amongst your household freedom. gods, and his name to be lisped by your children; two thousand years hence it will be a le. gend like the fable of Perseus and Andromeda; Britannia changed to a mountain-two hundred rotten animals menacing her destruction, till a tall earl, armed with schedule A., and followed by his page Russell, drives them into the deep, and delivers over Britannia in safety to crowds of ten-pound renters, who deafen the air with their acclamations. Forthwith, Latin verses upon this-school exercises-boys whipt, and all the usual absurdities of education. Don't part with an administration composed of Lord Grey and Lord Brougham; and not only these, but look at them all—the mild wisdom of Lans. downe-the genius and extensive knowledge of Holland, in whose bold and honest life there is no varying or shadow of change-the unexpect ed and exemplary activity of Lord Melbourne

Proper examples have been made among the unhappy and misguided disciples of Swing: a rope had been carried round O'Connell's legs, and a ring inserted in Cobbett's nose. Then the game laws!!! Was ever conduct so shabby as that of the two or three governments which preceded that of Lord Grey? The cruelties and enormities of this code had been thoroughly exposed; and a general conviction existed of the necessity of a change. Bills were brought in by various gentlemen, containing some trifling alteration in this abominable code, and even these were sacrificed to the tricks and manœuvres of some noble Nimrod, who availed himself of the emptiness of the town in July, and flung out the bill. Government never stirred a step. The fulness of the prisons, the wretchedness and demoralization of the poor, never came across them. The humane and considerate Peel never once offered to extend ais ægis over them. It had nothing to do with he state of party; and some of their double barreled voters might be offended. In the mean

and the rising parliamentary talents of Stan ley. You are ignorant of your best interests,

had no wish to perpetuate the abuses of the Court of

* Lord Lyndhurst is an exception; I firmly believe he

Chancery.