t. And measures which had that tendency could
not be foreign to the constitution, properly understood. A constitution
which confines its benefits to one-half of a nation hardly merits the
title of a constitution at all. For every constitution ought to extend
its protection and its privileges equally to every portion of the
people, unless there be some peculiarity in the principles or habits of
any one portion which makes its participation in them dangerous to the
rest. It had undoubtedly been the doctrine of Pitt, and of the greater
part of those who since his time had held the reins of government, that
if any portion of the King's subjects did cherish a temper dangerous to
the rest, it was because they were debarred from privileges to which
they conceived themselves to have a just right, and that their
discontent and turbulence were the fruit of the restrictions imposed on
them. In proposing to remove such a grievance Pitt certainly conceived
himself to be acting in accordance with the strictest principles of the
constitution, and not so much innovating upon it as restoring it to its
original comprehensiveness. And so of the measure, as it was now
carried, it will apparently be correct to say that, though it did make
an important change in the practical working of the constitution, it
made it only by reverting to the fundamental principles of civil and
religious liberty, to which every subject had a right; which had only
been temporarily restrained under the apprehension of danger to the
state, and which the cessation of that apprehension made it a duty to
re-establish in all their fulness.

But it is by no means clear that in the conduct of the measure the
constitution was not violated in one very important point, the proper
relation subsisting between a constituency and its representative, by
Mr. Peel's resignation of his seat for the University of Oxford. That he
was sensible that the act stood in need of explanation is proved by the
careful statement of the motives and considerations that determined him
to it, which he drew up twenty years afterward. They were of a twofold
character. To quote his own words: "When I resolved to advise, and to
promote to the utmost of my power, the settlement of that question, I
resolved at the same time to relinquish, not only my official
station,[213] but the representation of the University of Oxford. I
thought that such decisive proofs that I could have no object, political
or pe