my
friend, 'I did not.' 'Oh! but I did,' said the poor gentleman, 'and I
am convinced there was an attempt made to poison me, and it is a very
curious thing that I never go to an hotel without I discover some
attempt to do me mischief.' The unfortunate man was labouring under
one of the greatest calamities which can befall a human creature.

But what are we to say of a nation which lives under a perpetual
delusion that it is about to be attacked, a nation which is the most
combined on the face of the earth, with little less than 30,000,000 of
people all united under a Government which, though we intend to reform
it, we do not the less respect, and which has mechanical power and
wealth to which no other country offers any parallel? There is no
causeway to Britain; the free waves of the sea flow day and night for
ever round her shores, and yet there are people going about with whom
this hallucination is so strong that they do not merely discover it
quietly to their friends, but they write it down in double-leaded
columns, in leading articles. Nay, some of them actually get up on
platforms and proclaim it to hundreds and thousands of their fellow
countrymen. I should like to ask you whether these delusions are to
last for ever, whether this policy is to be the perpetual policy of
England, whether these results are to go on gathering and gathering
until there come, as come there must inevitably, some dreadful
catastrophe on our country?

I should like to-night, if I could, to inaugurate one of the best and
holiest revolutions that ever took place in this country. We have had
a dozen revolutions since some of us were children. We have had one
revolution in which you had a great share, a great revolution of
opinion on the question of the suffrage. Does it not read like madness
that men, thirty years ago, were frantic at the idea of the people of
Birmingham having a L10 franchise? Does it not seem something like
idiotcy to be told that a banker in Leeds, when it was proposed to
transfer the seats of one rotten borough to the town of Leeds, should
say (and it was repeated in the House of Commons on his authority)
that if the people of Leeds had the franchise conferred upon them it
would not be possible to keep the bank doors open with safety, and
that he should remove his business to some quiet place out of danger
from the savage race that peopled that town? But now all confess that
the people are perfectly competent to have