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upon me to affirm, that if the Crown were to issue a writ to the Sheriff, commanding him to send his precept to Birmingham or Manchester, requiring those towns to send burgesses to Parliament, the votes of all inhabitant householders must needs be taken, according to the exigency of the writ and precept-the right of voting at common law, and independent of any usurpation upon it, belonging to every resident householder. Are, then, the King's Ministers innovators-revolutionists-wild projectors-idle dreamers of dreams and feigners of fancieswhen they restore the ancient common law right-but not in its ancient common law extent, for they limit, fix, and contract it? They add a qualification of £10. to restrain it, as our forefathers, in the fifteenth century, restrained the county franchise by the freehold qualification.

But then we hear much against the qualification adopted—that is, the particular sum fixed upon-and the Noble Earl* thinks it will only give us a set of constituents busied in gaining their daily bread, and having no time to study, and instruct themselves on State affairs. My Noble Friend,† too, who lives near Birmingham, may therefore be supposed to know his own + Earl of Dudley.

and

The Earl of Harrowby.

neighbours better than we can, sneers at the statesmen of Birmingham and at the philosophers of Manchester. He will live-I tell him, he will live to learn a lesson of practical wisdom from the statesmen of Birmingham, and a lesson of forbearance from the philosophers of Manchester. My Noble Friend was ill-advised, when he thought of displaying his talent for sarcasm upon 120,000 people in the one place, and 180,000 in the other. He did little, by such exhibitions, towards gaining a stock of credit for the order he belongs to little towards conciliating for the aristocracy which he adorns, by pointing his little epigrams against such mighty masses of the people. Instead of meeting their exemplary moderation, their respectful demeanour, their affectionate attachment, their humble confidence, evinced in every one of the petitions, wherewithal they have in myriads approached the House, with a return of kindness-of courtesy-even of common civility:-he has thought it becoming and discreet to draw himself up in the pride of hexameter and pentameter verse,skill in classic authors,-the knack of turning fine sentences, and to look down with derision upon the knowledge of his unrepresented fellowcountrymen in the weightier matters of practical legislation. For myself, I too know where they are defective; I have no desire ever to hear

them read a Latin line, or hit off in the mother tongue any epigram, whether in prose or in numerous verse. In these qualities they and I freely yield the palm to others. I, as their representative, yield it.-I once stood as such elsewhere, because they had none of their own; and though a Noble Earl* thinks they suffer nothing by the want, I can tell him they did severely suffer in the greatest mercantile question of the day, the Orders in Council, when they were fain to have a professional advocate for their representative, and were only thus allowed to make known their complaints to Parliament. Again representing them here, for them I bow to my Noble Friend's immeasurable superiority in all things, classical or critical. In book lore-in purity of diction-in correct prosody-even in elegance of personal demeanour, I and they in his presence hide, as well we may, our diminished heads. But to say that I will take my Noble Friend's judgment on any grave practical subject, on any thing touching the great interests of our commercial country,—or any of those manly questions which engage the statesman, the philosopher in practice :-to say that I could ever dream of putting the Noble Earl's opinions, aye, or his knowledge, in any comparison with the bold, rational, judicious, reflecting, natural, and

* The Earl of Harrowby.

because natural the trustworthy opinions of those honest men, who always give their strong natural sense of fair play, having no affectations to warp their judgment to dream of any such comparison as this, would be, on my part, a flattery, far too gross for any courtesy-or a blindness which no habits of friendship could excuse!

If there is the mob, there is the people also. I speak now of the middle classes of those hundreds of thousands of respectable personsthe most numerous, and by far the most wealthy order in the community; for if all your Lordships' castles, manors, rights of warren, and rights of chase, with all your broad acres, were brought to the hammer, and sold at fifty years purchase, the price would fly up and kick the beam, when counterpoised by the vast and solid riches of those middle classes, who are also the genuine depositaries of sober, rational, intelligent, and honest English feeling. Unable though they be to round a period, or point an epigram, they are solid, right judging men, and, above all, not given to change. If they have a fault, it is that error on the right side, a suspicion of state quacks—a dogged love of existing institutions—a perfect contempt of all political nostrums. They will neither be led astray by

false reasoning, nor deluded by impudent flattery; but so neither will they be scared by classical quotations, or brow-beaten by fine sentences; and as for an epigram, they care as little for it as they do for a cannon ball. Grave -intelligent-rational-fond of thinking for themselves-they consider a subject long before they make up their minds on it; and the opinions they are thus slow to form, they are not swift to abandon.

They who are constantly taunting us with subverting the system of the representation, and substituting a parliamentary constitution unknown in earlier times, must be told that we are making no change that we are not pulling down, but building up-or, at the utmost, adapting the representation to the altered state of the community. The system which was hardly fitted for the fourteenth century, cannot surely be adapted to the nineteenth. The innovations of time, of which our detractors take no account, are reckoned upon by all sound statesmen; and in referring to them, my Noble Friend has only followed in the footsteps of the most illustrious of philosophers. "Stick "to your ancient parliamentary system," it is said; "make no alteration; keep it exactly

The Earl of Radnor.

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