fines and recoveries, the chaos of precedents, and the bottomless pit. of Chancery. Here we see the barbarism of the thirteenth century coupled with the civilization of the nineteenth; and we see, too, that the barbarism belongs to the Government, and the civilization to the l'eople. Then I say that this incongruous state of things cannot continue; and, if we do not terminate it with wisdom, ere long we shall find it ended with violence. I fear, that it may be deemed unbecoming in me to make any application to the fears of Members of this House. But surely I may, without reproach, address myself to their honest fears. It is well to talk of opposing a firm front to sedition. But woe to the Government that cannot distinguish between a Nation and a mob! woe to the Government that thinks a great and steady movement of mind is to be put down like a riot! This error has been twice fatal to the Bourbons; it may be fatal to the Legislature of this country, if they should venture to foster it. I do believe that the irrevocable moment has arrived. Nothing can prevent the passing of this noble law, this second Bill of Rights. I do call it the second Bill of Rights; and so will the country call it, and so will our children. I call it a greater charter of the liberties of England. Eighteen hundred and thirtyone is destined to exhibit the first example of an established, of a deep-rooted system, removed without bloodshed, or violence, or rapine, all points being debated, every punctilio observed, the peaceful industry of the country never for a moment checked or compromised, and the authority of the law not for one instant suspended. 117. PUBLIC OPINION AND THE SWORD, OCT. 10, 1831.-T. B. Macaulay. AT the present moment I can see only one question in the State, the Question of Reform; only two parties - the friends of the Bill, and its enemies. No observant and unprejudiced man can look forward, without great alarm, to the effects which the recent decision of the Lords may possibly produce. I do not predict, I do not expect, open, armed insurrection. What I apprehend is this- that the People may engage in a silent but extensive and persevering war against the law. It is easy to say, "Be bold; be firm; defy intimidation; let the law have its course; the law is strong enough to put down the seditious." Sir, we have heard this blustering before; and we know in what it ended. It is the blustering of little men, whose lot has fallen on a great crisis. Xerxes scourging the waves, Canute commanding the waves to recede from his footstool, were but types of the folly. The law has no eyes; the law has no hands; the law is nothing nothing but a piece of paper printed by the King's printer, with the King's arms at the top-till public opinion breathes the breath of life into the dead letter. We found this in Ireland. The elections of 1826 the Clare election, two years later-proved the folly of those who think that Nations are governed by wax and parchment; and, at length, in the close of 1828, the Government had only one plain alternative before it concession or civil war. I know only two ways in which societies can permanently be gov erned — by Public Opinion, and by the Sword. A Government having at its command the armies, the fleets, and the revenues of Great Britain, might possibly hold Ireland by the Sword. So Oliver Cromwell held Ireland; so William the Third held it; so Mr. Pitt held it; so the Duke of Wellington might, perhaps, have held it. But, to govern Great Britain by the Sword-so wild a thought has never, I will venture to say, occurred to any public man of any party; and, if any man were frantic enough to make the attempt, he would find, before three days had expired that there is no better Sword than that which is fashioned out of a Ploughshare! But, if not by the Sword, how is the people to be governed? I understand how the peace is kept at New York. It is by the assent and support of the People. I understand, also, how the peace is kept at Milan. It is by the bayonets of the Austrian soldiers. But how the peace is to be kept when you have neither the popular assent nor the military force, how the peace is to be kept in England by a Government acting on the principles of the present Opposition, I do not understand./ Sir, we read that, in old times, when the villeins * were driven to revolt by oppression, when the castles of the nobility were burned to the ground, when the warehouses of London were pillaged, when a hundred thousand insurgents appeared in arms on Blackheath, when a foul murder, perpetrated in their presence, had raised their passions to madness, - when they were looking round for some Captain to succeed and avenge him whom they had lost, just then, before Hob Miller, or Tom Carter, or Jack Straw, could place himself at their head, the King rode up to them, and exclaimed, "I will be your leader! "— And, at once, the infuriated multitude laid down their arms, submitted to his guidance, dispersed at his command. Herein let us imitate him. Let us say to the People, "We are your leadwe, your own House of Commons." This tone it is our interest and cur duty to take. The circumstances admit of no delay. Even while I speak, the moments are passing away, -the irrevocable moments, pregnant with the destiny of a great People. The country is in danger; it may be saved: we can save it. This is the way this is the time. In our hands are the issues of great good and great evil - the issues of the life and death of the State! ers, 118. A GOVERNMENT SHOULD GROW WITH THE PEOPLE, DEC. 16, 1831.— Id. Ir is a principle never to be forgotten, that it is not by absolute, but by relative misgovernment, that Nations are roused to madness. Look at our own history. The liberties of the English people were, at least, A word derived from the Latin villa; whence villani, country people. The name was given, in Anglo-Norman times, to persons not proprietors of land, many of whom were attached to the land, and bound to serve the lord of the manor. as much respected by Charles the First as by Henry the Eighth, by James the Second, as by Edward the Sixth. But did this save the crown of James the Second? Did this save the head of Charles tne First? Every person who knows the history of our civil dissensions knows that all those arguments which are now employed by the opponents of the Reform Bill might have been employed, and were actually employed, by the unfortunate Stuarts. The reasoning of Charles, and of all his apologists, runs thus: " What new grievance does the Nation suffer? Did the People ever enjoy more freedom than at present? Did they ever enjoy so much freedom?" But what would a wise and honest counsellor have replied? He would have said: "Though there has been no change in the Government for the worse, there has been a change in the public mind, which produces exactly the same effect which would be produced by a change in the Government for the worse. It may be that the submissive loyalty of our fathers was preferable to that inquiring, censuring, resisting spirit which is now abroad. And so it may be that infancy is a happier time than manhood, and manhood than old age. But God has decreed that old age shall succeed to manhood, and manhood to infancy. Even so have societies their law of growth. As their strength becomes greater, as their experience Decomes more extensive, you can no longer confine them within the swaddling-bands, or lull them in the cradles, or amuse them with the rattles, or terrify them with the bugbears, of their infancy. I do not say that they are better or happier than they were; but this I say, they are different from what they were; you cannot again make them what they were, and you cannot safely treat them as if they continued to be what they were." - I - he would This was the advice which a wise and honest Minister would have given to Charles the First. These were the principles on which that unhappy prince should have acted. But no. He would govern, do not say ill-I do not say tyrannically; I say only this, 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! 119. REFORM IRRESISTIBLE.-T. B. Macaulay. Dec. 16, 1831. SIR, I have, from the beginning of these discussions, supported Reform, on two grounds: first, because I believe it to be in itself a good thing; and, secondly, because I think the dangers of withholding. it to be so great, that, even if it were an evil, it would be the less of two evils. I shall not relinquish the hope that this great contest may be conducted, by lawful means, to a happy termination. But, of this I am assured, that, by means lawful or unlawful, to a termination, happy or unhappy, this contest must speedily come. All that I know of the history of past times, all the observations that I have been able to make on the present state of the country, have convinced me that the time has arrived when a great concession must be made to the Democracy of England; that the question, whether the change be in itself good or bad, has become a question of secondary importance: hat, good or bad, the thing must be done; that a law as strong as the laws of attraction and motion has decreed it. I well know that history, when we look at it in small portions, may be so construed as to mean anything; that it may be interpreted in as many ways as a Delphic oracle. The French Revolution," says one expositor," was the effect of concession." "Not so," cries another; "the French Revolution was produced by the obstinacy of an arbitrary Govern. ment." These controversies can never be brought to any decisive test, or to any satisfactory conclusion. But, as I believe that history, when we look at it in small fragments, proves anything or nothing, so I believe that it is full of useful and precious instruction when we contemplate it in large portions, when we take in, at one view, the whole life-time of great societies. We have heard it said a hundred times, during these discussions, that the People of England are more free than ever they were; that the Government is more Democratic than ever it was; and this is urged as an argument against Reform. I admit the fact, but I deny the inference. The history of England is the history of a Government constantly giving way, sometimes peaceably, sometimes after a violent struggle, but constantly giving way before a Nation which has been constantly advancing. It is not sufficient to look merely at the form of Government. We must look to the state of the public mind. The worst tyrant that ever had his neck wrung in modern Europe might have passed for a paragon in Persia or Morocco. Our Indian subjects submit patiently to a monopoly of salt. We tried a stamp-duty -a duty so light as to be scarcely perceptible - on the fierce breed of the old Puritans: and we lost an Empire! The Government of Louis the Sixteenth was certainly a much better and milder Government than that of Louis the Fourteenth yet Louis the Fourteenth was admired, and even loved, by his People; Louis the Sixteenth died on the scaffold! Why? Because. though the Government had made many steps in the career of improve ment, it had not advanced so rapidly as the Nation. These things are written for our instruction. There is a change in society. There must be a corresponding change in the Government. 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. 120 REPLY TO THE FOREGOING, DEC. 16, 1831. -John W on Croker HAS the learned gentleman, who has been so eloquent on the necessity of proceeding forward, -- who has told the House that argument is vain; that there is no resisting the mighty torrent; that there is dire necessity for the whole measure, has he given the slightest intimation of what would be, even in his opinion, the end of the career, the result of the experiment, the issue of the danger? Has he scanned with the eye of a philosopher the probable progress of future events? Not at all. Anything more vague, anything more indefinite, anything more purely declamatory, than the statements of the learned gentleman on that point, has never fallen from human lips. It is true that the learned gentleman has told the House that the town is besieged by superior forces, and has advised them to open the gates of the fortress, lest it should be stormed at the breach. But did he tell them that they could open the gates with safety? - without exposing their property to plunder, and their persons to massacre? They were not, under the learned gentleman's advice, to attempt to make any terms; but they were at once to throw open the gates, and await the consequences, however fatal; and submit to the tender mercies of the victors, even though there should be pillage, bloodshed and extermination. The present state of the ream is unparalleled in history. The danger to which the Government is exposed is greater than the Ministers themselves have ever imagined. As the progress of agitation may be tracked through fire and blood, the pusillanimity of Ministers can be also traced through every act of their administration, even those that seemed the boldest. There is no word that they say, no act that they do, no act that they abstain from doing, that is not carefully calculated to offend as little as possible, when they cannot altogether conciliate, the Political Unions, and similar illegal and anarchical associations. Ministers have raised a storm which it is beyond their power, beyond the scope of their minds, to allay. In conclusion, I can assure the House that, in the censures I have passed on His Majesty's Ministers, and in the appalling prospects I have laid before the House, I have urged nothing but what springs from the most imperious sense of the danger of the country; a danger for which I confess that I do not see a remedy, although convinced that there are no means so calculated to aggravate it to a tremendous extent as passing a Reform Bill. 121. PERILS OF PARLIAMENTARY REFORM, MARCH 4, 1831.-John Wilson Croker. SIR, what is to be gained by this change in the Representation? Are we to throw away admitted and substantial benefits, in the pursuit of an undefined, inexplicable, and, to my view, most perilous fantasy? Sir, the learned Lord, after exhausting his eloquence in the praise of the general prospects of the country, turned short round on us, and drew a frightful and metaphorical picture of the present state of the |