ulation had no real grievances to complain of, but that none
among the English population would have fancied that they were
suffering from grievances if it had not been for the evil advice and
turbulent agitation of mob orators. To these wicked persons, the mob
orators, Sir Robert ascribed all the disturbances which were setting
the country in commotion. If only these mob orators could be kept from
spouting everything would go well and no subject of the sovereign would
ever get it into his head that he was suffering from the slightest
grievance.

This is an argument which had just been used with regard to Catholic
Emancipation; which was afterwards to {146} be used with regard to
free-trade and the introduction of the ballot and household suffrage;
and which will probably be used again and again so long as any sort of
reform is demanded. Of course it need hardly be said that when Sir
Robert Inglis referred to mob orators he used the phrase as a term of
contempt applying to all speakers who advocated principles which were
not the principles represented by the Tory aristocracy. A Tory
landlord spouting any kind of nonsense to the most ignorant crowd would
not have been, according to this definition, a mob orator; he would
have been a high-bred Englishman, instructing his humbler brethren as
to the way they ought to go. Sir Robert also indulged in the most
gloomy prophecies about the evils which must come upon England as the
direct result of the Reform Bill if that Bill were to be passed into
law. The influence of rank and property would suddenly and completely
cease to prevail; education would lose its power to teach and to guide;
the House of Commons would no longer be the place for men of rank,
culture, and statesmanship, but would be occupied only by mob orators.
Art after art would go out and all would be night, if we may adopt the
famous line of Pope's which Sir Robert somehow failed to introduce.

[Sidenote: 1831--Peel's speech on the Reform Bill]

The second speech in the debate to which we may refer was that of Sir
Robert Peel. It was a necessity of Peel's position just then, and of
the stage of political development which his mind had reached, that he
should oppose the Reform Bill. But in the work of opposition he had to
undertake a task far more difficult to him in the artistic sense than
the task which the destinies had appointed for Sir Robert Inglis to
attempt. Inglis, although a man of ability and