nnell nor any one else could surpass him.
There are few finer speeches in the language than that in which he took
Lord Lyndhurst to task for applying the term "aliens" to the Irish in a
speech on municipal reform:--

"Aliens! Good God! was Arthur Duke of Wellington in the House of Lords,
and did he not start up and exclaim, 'Hold! I have seen the aliens do
their duty'?... I appeal to the gallant soldier before me, from whose
opinions I differ, but who bears, I know, a generous heart in an
intrepid bosom--tell me, for you needs must remember, on that day when
the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance, while death fell
in showers--tell me if for an instant, when to hesitate for an instant
was to be lost, the 'aliens' blenched.... On the field of Waterloo the
blood of England, of Scotland, and of Ireland flowed in the same stream
and drenched the same field. When the chill morning dawned their dead
lay cold and stark together; in the same deep pit their bodies were
deposited; the green corn of spring is now breaking from their
commingled dust; the dew falls from heaven upon this union in the grave.
Partakers in every peril, in the glory shall we not be permitted to
participate? And shall we be told as a requital that we are 'aliens'
from the noble country for whose salvation our life-blood was poured
out?"

By the time which we are now considering there had risen to eminence a
man who, if he could not be ranked with the great orators of the
beginning of the century, yet inherited their best traditions and came
very near to rivalling their fame. I refer to the great Lord Derby. His
eloquence was of the most impetuous kind, corresponding to the sensitive
fierceness of the man, and had gained for him the nickname of "The
Rupert of Debate." Lord Beaconsfield, speaking in the last year of his
life to Mr. Matthew Arnold, said that the task of carrying Mr. Forster's
Coercion Bill of 1881 through the House of Commons "needed such a man as
Lord Derby was in his youth--a man full of nerve, dash, fire, and
resource, who carried the House irresistibly along with him"--no mean
tribute from a consummate judge. Among Lord Derby's ancillary
qualifications were his musical voice, his fine English style, and his
facility in apt and novel quotation, as when he applied Meg Merrilies's
threnody over the ruins of Derncleugh to the destruction of the Irish
Church Establishment. I turn to Lord Lytton again for a description:--