one of their leaders was making a
telling speech against some measure proposed by the opposite party,--and
nearly all measures were party measures. Who were these favored
representatives? Nearly all of them were the sons or brothers or cousins
or political friends of the class to which I have just alluded, with
here and there a baronet or powerful county squire or eminent lawyer or
wealthy manufacturer or princely banker, but all with aristocratic
sympathies,--nearly all conservative, with a preponderance of Tories;
scarcely a man without independent means, indifferent to all questions
except such as affected party interests, and generally opposed to all
movements which had in view the welfare of the middle classes, to which
they could not be said to belong. They did not represent manufacturing
towns nor the shopkeepers, still less the people in their rugged
toils,--ignorant even when they could read and write. They represented
the great landed interests of the country for the most part, and
legislated for the interests of landlords and the gentry, the
Established Church and the aristocratic universities,--indeed, for the
wealthy and the great, not for the nation as a whole, except when great
public dangers were imminent.

At that time, however, the traveller would have heard the most
magnificent bursts of eloquence ever heard in Parliament,--speeches
which are immortal, classical, beautiful, and electrifying. On the front
benches was Canning, scarcely inferior to Pitt or Fox as an orator;
stately, sarcastic, witty, rhetorical, musical, as full of genius as an
egg is full of meat. There was Castlereagh,--not eloquent, but gifted,
the honored plenipotentiary and negotiator at the Congress of Vienna;
the friend of Metternich and the Czar Alexander; at that time perhaps
the most influential of the ministers of state, the incarnation of
aristocratic manners and ultra conservative principles. There was Peel,
just rising to fame and power; wealthy, proud, and aristocratic, as
conservative as Wellington himself, a Tory of the Tories. There were
Perceval, the future prime minister, great both as lawyer and statesman;
and Lord Palmerston, secretary of state for war. On the opposite benches
sat Lord John Russell, timidly maturing schemes for parliamentary
reform, lucid of thought, and in utterance clear as a bell. There, too,
sat Henry Brougham, not yet famous, but a giant in debate, and
overwhelming in his impetuous invectives.