of society proceeds, and must proceed. The
feeble efforts of individuals to bear back are lost and swept away in
the mighty rush with which the species goes onward. Those who appear to
lead the movement are, in fact, only whirled along before it; those who
attempt to resist it, are beaten down and crushed beneath it.

It is because rulers do not pay sufficient attention to the stages of
this great movement, because they underrate its force, because they are
ignorant of its law, that so many violent and fearful revolutions have
changed the face of society. We have heard it said a hundred times
during these discussions, we have heard it said repeatedly in the course
of this very debate, that the people of England are more free than ever
they were, that the Government is more democratic than ever it was; and
this is urged as an argument against Reform. I admit the fact; but
I deny the inference. It is a principle never to be forgotten, in
discussions like this, that it is not by absolute, but by relative
misgovernment that nations are roused to madness. It is not sufficient
to look merely at the form of government. We must look also to the state
of the public mind. The worst tyrant that ever had his neck wrung in
modern Europe might have passed for a paragon of clemency in Persia or
Morocco. Our Indian subjects submit patiently to a monopoly of salt. We
tried a stamp duty, a duty so light as to be scarcely perceptible,
on the fierce breed of the old Puritans; and we lost an empire. The
Government of Louis the Sixteenth was certainly a much better and milder
Government than that of Louis the Fourteenth; yet Louis the Fourteenth
was admired, and even loved, by his people. Louis the Sixteenth died on
the scaffold. Why? Because, though the Government had made many steps in
the career of improvement, it had not advanced so rapidly as the nation.
Look at our own history. The liberties of the people were at least as
much respected by Charles the First as by Henry the Eighth, by James the
Second as by Edward the Sixth. But did this save the crown of James the
Second? Did this save the head of Charles the First? Every person
who knows the history of our civil dissensions knows that all those
arguments which are now employed by the opponents of the Reform Bill
might have been employed, and were actually employed, by the unfortunate
Stuarts. The reasoning of Charles, and of all his apologists, runs
thus:--"What new grievance does the