station, and all the other
circumstances which create a title to respect. It would take power from
individuals, and give it to a class; it would cut off the secret and
subterraneous conduit-pipes through which aristocratic influence was
now conveyed to that house, and would make it flow in a broad, open,
constitutional, and natural channel. Mr. Charles Grant followed on the
same side. The solicitor-general said that the whole argument against
the bill seemed to proceed on the assumption that there was something in
the British constitution inconsistent with change, and that to make
an alteration would be to effect its destruction. The history of this
country, however, and its institutions, showed that there had been
an almost uninterrupted series of conflicts between the principle
of democracy and despotism, with alternations of success, and the
inevitable consequences of that, a system of perpetual change. The
present bill, therefore, was in every point of view in perfect harmony
with the whole current of our legislation. In six years after the
Revolution, he said, the triennial act was passed, distinctly admitting
on the part of the legislature of that period that the Revolution
was not a settlement to be permanently unchangeable. Neither was the
triennial act itself treated with undeviating respect, for, in the year
1715, its repeal was sanctioned by some of the very men who had brought
about the Revolution; then the septennial act was passed, and another
great change effected in the constitution of parliament. Did any one at
that period hold that the septennial bill was a revolutionary measure?
So far from any such character being imputed to it, the measure had
always been treated as one within the constitution of parliament to
enact. Sir Edward Sugden complained that the solicitor-general had gone
back to the bill of rights, instead of attempting to explain and justify
this bill of wrongs. It was perfectly true that the septennial act did
not spring from the Revolution; it was brought in by Whig ministers
for the same purpose for which the present bill was brought in by Whig
ministers--as the only means by which they could retain their places.
Mr. Pendarvis warmly supported the bill; and Mr. Cavendish declared his
intention of voting for it, although his constituents at Cambridge had
petitioned against it; many of them, he said, were not hostile to the
whole measure, but objected to the new qualification as being too