given
them the opportunity of acquiring education, wealth, and power. We have
removed with our own hands the seal from the vessel in which a mighty
spirit was enclosed; but it will not, like the genius in the fable,
return within its narrow confines to gratify our curiosity, and to
enable us to cast it back into the obscurity from which we evoked it."
Here is another specimen from his speech on the Reform Bill of 1832. He
opposed that Bill with all his energy, as is well known. Lord Durham, a
very advanced reformer for his time, and son-in-law to Earl Grey, the
Prime Minister, was known to have influenced that nobleman in retaining
the most liberal clauses of the bill. For his years he was a very
juvenile looking man, which gave point to Sir Robert Peel's words when
he said so happily: "It would appear as if the reins of the State had
been confided to some youthful and inexperienced hands; and who, left
without any guiding principle, or any controlling sense of duty, were
rushing on with headlong violence which wiser men could neither moderate
nor restrain.... They should have said to any one of these persons,
whose ambition made him press for an employment so fraught with danger
to himself and injury to others,

' ---- non est tua tuta voluntas.
Magna petis, Phaeton, et quae nec viribus istis
Munera conveniant, nec tam puerilibus annis!'

They should have given him the salutary caution that the fiery steeds
which he aspired to guide required the hand of restraint and not the
voice of incitement--

'Sponte sua properant; labor est inhibere voluntas;
Parce, puer, stimulis, ac fortius uteri loris.'

If the caution had not been given, or if it had been disregarded, let
them hope, at least, that the example of their suffering might be a
warning to others, and that another lesson to the folly and rashness of
mankind might be read by the light of their conflagration."

The manner in which he dealt with the potato blight, and consequent
Irish Famine, is indefensible. His policy from first to last was a
policy of delay--delay in a case in which delay was ruin. He went on by
slow and almost imperceptible degrees preparing his colleagues for his
altered views on the Corn duties; talking and writing all the time
pathetically, about the deep apprehensions he entertained of an
impending famine in Ireland, while his whole heart was set on quite
another object. To aid this masked policy of his, there was