f arms on his milk-white shield in a
field listed against him,--nor brought out the generous offspring of
lions, and said to them,--"Not against that side of the forest! beware
of that!--here is the prey, where you are to fasten your paws!"--and
seasoning his unpractised jaws with blood, tell him,--"This is the milk
for which you are to thirst hereafter!" _We_ furnish at his expense no
holiday,--nor suspend hell, that a crafty Ixion may have rest from his
wheel,--nor give the common adversary (if he be a common adversary)
reason to say,--"I would have put in my word to oppose, but the
eagerness of your allies in your social war was such that I could not
break in upon you." I hope he sees and feels, and that every member sees
and feels along with him, the difference between amicable dissent and
civil discord.

SPEECH

ON A

MOTION MADE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS,

MAY 7, 1782,

FOR

A COMMITTEE TO INQUIRE INTO THE STATE OF THE REPRESENTATION OF THE
COMMONS IN PARLIAMENT.

Mr. Speaker,--We have now discovered, at the close of the eighteenth
century, that the Constitution of England, which for a series of ages
had been the proud distinction of this country, always the admiration
and sometimes the envy of the wise and learned in every other
nation,--we have discovered that this boasted Constitution, in the most
boasted part of it, is a gross imposition upon the understanding of
mankind, an insult to their feelings, and acting by contrivances
destructive to the best and most valuable interests of the people. Our
political architects have taken a survey of the fabric of the British
Constitution. It is singular that they report nothing against the crown,
nothing against the lords: but in the House of Commons everything is
unsound; it is ruinous in every part; it is infested by the dry rot, and
ready to tumble about our ears without their immediate help. You know by
the faults they find what are their ideas of the alteration. As all
government stands upon opinion, they know that the way utterly to
destroy it is to remove that opinion, to take away all reverence, all
confidence from it; and then, at the first blast of public discontent
and popular tumult, it tumbles to the ground.

In considering this question, they who oppose it oppose it on different
grounds. One is in the nature of a previous question: that some
alterations may be expedient, but that this is not the time for making
them. The other is, that no