support of the rights of the crown and the liberties of the people, both
which extremities they touch. My Lords, we have a great hereditary
peerage here,--those who have their own honor, the honor of their
ancestors and of their posterity to guard, and who will justify, as they
have always justified, that provision in the Constitution by which
justice is made an hereditary office. My Lords, we have here a new
nobility, who have risen and exalted themselves by various merits,--by
great military services which have extended the fame of this country
from the rising to the setting sun. We have those who, by various civil
merits and various civil talents, have been exalted to a situation which
they well deserve, and in which they will justify the favor of their
sovereign, and the good opinion of their fellow-subjects, and make them
rejoice to see those virtuous characters that were the other day upon a
level with them now exalted above them in rank, but feeling with them in
sympathy what they felt in common with them before. We have persons
exalted from the practice of the law, from the place in which they
administered high, though subordinate, justice, to a seat here, to
enlighten with their knowledge and to strengthen with their votes those
principles which have distinguished the courts in which they have
presided.

My Lords, you have here also the lights of our religion, you have the
bishops of England. My Lords, you have that true image of the primitive
Church, in its ancient form, in its ancient ordinances, purified from
the superstitions and the vices which a long succession of ages will
bring upon the best institutions. You have the representatives of that
religion which says that their God is love, that the very vital spirit
of their institution is charity,--a religion which so much hates
oppression, that, when the God whom we adore appeared in human form, He
did not appear in a form of greatness and majesty, but in sympathy with
the lowest of the people, and thereby made it a firm and ruling
principle that their welfare was the object of all government, since the
Person who was the Master of Nature chose to appear Himself in a
subordinate situation. These are the considerations which influence
them, which animate them, and will animate them, against all
oppression,--knowing that He who is called first among them, and first
among us all, both of the flock that is fed and of those who feed it,
made Himself "the serva