e, according to
him, most intemperate and dangerous. Now, Sir, it happens, curiously
enough, that my noble friend has himself asserted, in his speech of this
night, those very doctrines, in language so nearly resembling mine that
I might fairly accuse him of plagiarism. I said that laws have no force
in themselves, and that, unless supported by public opinion, they are
a mere dead letter. The noble Lord has said exactly the same thing
to-night. "Keep your old Constitution," he exclaims; "for, whatever may
be its defects in theory, it has more of the public veneration than your
new Constitution will have; and no laws can be efficient, unless they
have the public veneration." I said, that statutes are in themselves
only wax and parchment; and I was called an incendiary by the
opposition. The noble Lord has said to-night that statutes in themselves
are only ink and parchment; and those very persons who reviled me have
enthusiastically cheered him. I am quite at a loss to understand how
doctrines which are, in his mouth, true and constitutional, can, in
mine, be false and revolutionary.

But, Sir, it is time that I should address myself to the momentous
question before us. I shall certainly give my best support to this bill,
through all its stages; and, in so doing, I conceive that I shall act in
strict conformity with the resolution by which this House, towards
the close of the late Session, declared its unabated attachment to the
principles and to the leading provisions of the First Reform Bill. All
those principles, all those leading provisions, I find in the
present measure. In the details there are, undoubtedly, considerable
alterations. Most of the alterations appear to me to be improvements;
and even those alterations which I cannot consider as in themselves
improvements will yet be most useful, if their effect shall be to
conciliate opponents, and to facilitate the adjustment of a question
which, for the sake of order, for the sake of peace, for the sake of
trade, ought to be, not only satisfactorily, but speedily settled. We
have been told, Sir, that, if we pronounce this bill to be a better bill
than the last, we recant all the doctrines which we maintained during
the last Session, we sing our palinode; we allow that we have had a
great escape; we allow that our own conduct was deserving of censure;
we allow that the party which was the minority in this House, and, most
unhappily for the country, the majority in t