iplied, taxes increased, loans made, and the sums of
money which every year the Government has to expend augmented, and
that so the patronage at the disposal of Ministers must have increased
also, and the families who were enthroned and made powerful in the
legislation and administration of the country must have had the first
pull at, and the largest profit out of, that patronage? There is no
actuary in existence who can calculate how much of the wealth, of the
Strength, of the supremacy of the territorial families of England
has been derived from an unholy participation in the fruits of the
industry of the people, which have been wrested from them by every
device of taxation, and squandered in every conceivable crime of which
a Government could possibly be guilty.

The more you examine this matter the more you will come to the
conclusion which I have arrived at, that this foreign policy, this
regard for 'the liberties of Europe', this care at one time for 'the
Protestant interests', this excessive love for 'the balance of power',
is neither more nor less than a gigantic system of out-door relief for
the aristocracy of Great Britain. (Great laughter.) I observe that
you receive that declaration as if it were some new and important
discovery. In 1815, when the great war with France was ended, every
Liberal in England whose politics, whose hopes, and whose faith had
not been crushed out of him by the tyranny of the time of that war,
was fully aware of this, and openly admitted it, and up to 1832, and
for some years afterwards, it was the fixed and undoubted creed of the
great Liberal party. But somehow all is changed. We who stand upon the
old landmarks, who walk in the old paths, who would conserve what is
wise and prudent, are hustled and shoved about as if we were come to
turn the world upside down. The change which has taken place seems
to confirm the opinion of a lamented friend of mine, who, not having
succeeded in all his hopes, thought that men made no progress
whatever, but went round and round like, a squirrel in a cage. The
idea is now so general that it is our duty to meddle everywhere,
that it really seems as if we had pushed the Tories from the field,
expelling them by our competition.

I should like to lay before you a list of the treaties which we have
made, and of the responsibilities under which we have laid ourselves
with respect to the various countries of Europe. I do not know where
such an enumerat