e country.

The usual addresses were carried in both houses, though not without
signs of opposition to ministers on the subjects of reform and
retrenchment. Earl Grey, in allusion to that part of the address which
spoke of the proceedings in Belgium as a revolt against an enlightened
government, and expressed our determination to maintain in regard to it
those general treaties by which the political system of Europe had been
fixed, said, that all this sounded like threatened interference,
while our principle should have been, as in the case of France,
non-interference. He could not conceive why we should be bound by
treaties to interfere between Holland and the Low Countries. We ought to
learn wisdom from what had passed before our eyes; and when the spirit
of liberty was breaking out all around, it was our duty to secure our
own institutions by introducing into them a temperate reform. Unless we
did so, he was persuaded that we must make up our minds to witness the
destruction of the constitution. He had been a reformer all his life;
but at no period had he been inclined to go further than he would be
prepared to go now, if the opportunity offered. He did not found this
on abstract right. It was said that every man who paid taxes, nay,
that every man arrived at years of discretion, had a right to vote for
representatives. He denied this. The right of the people was to have
a good government, one calculated to secure their privileges and
happiness; and if that was incompatible with universal suffrage, then
the limitation, and not the extension, was the true right of the people.
In reply to Earl Grey on this subject, the Duke of Wellington went
beyond his usual prudence and reserve. He remarked:--"The noble earl has
alluded to something in the shape of a parliamentary reform; but he
has been candid enough to acknowledge that he is not prepared with any
measure of reform. I have as little scruple to say, that his majesty's
government is as totally unprepared as the noble lord. Nay, on my part
I will go further, and say, that I have never read or heard of any
measure, up to the present moment, which could in any degree satisfy
my mind that the state of the representation could be improved, or be
rendered more satisfactory to the country at large than at the present
moment. I will not, however, at such an unseasonable time enter upon
the subject, or excite discussion; but I shall not hesitate to declare
unequivocally what a