o real grievances and
recommended improvements which were necessary to the well-being of the
State, and therefore it ought to be admitted. Mr. Canning was one of
those who insisted upon its rejection, and this was ultimately done by
a majority of 87, 48 being in favour of the petition, and 135 against
it.

Four other petitions presented by Lord Cochrane, being to the same
effect, were also rejected; and two, more moderate in their language,
were accepted. Lord Cochrane thus succeeded, at any rate, in forcing
the House during several hours to take into consideration the troubled
state of the country, and the pressing need, as it seemed to great
masses of the people, of thorough parliamentary reform.

"You will see by the 'Debates,'" he wrote next day to a friend, "that
I presented a number of petitions last night, and had a hard battle to
fight. Today I am quite indisposed, by reason of the corruption of the
Honourable House. It is impossible to support a bad cause by honest
means. God knows where all these base projects will end." That his own
cause was a good one, and that the means used by him were honest, he
had no doubt. In the same letter he referred to the opposition offered
to him, even by some of his own relatives, on account of his conduct.
"Mr. Cochrane has thought proper to disavow, through the public
papers, any connection with my politics. The consciousness that I am
acting as I ought makes that light which I should otherwise feel as a
heavy clog in following that course which I think honour and justice
require."

Therefore he persevered in his Herculean task. Having presented and
spoken upon others in the interval, he presented another monster
petition to the House on the 5th of February. It was signed, he said,
by twenty-four thousand inhabitants of London and the neighbourhood.
It complained of the unbearable weight of taxation and the distresses
of the country, and of the squandering of the money extracted from the
pockets of an oppressed and impoverished people to support sinecure
placemen and pensioners. "It appears to me," he said, "surprising that
there should be any set of men so cruel and unjust as to wallow in
wealth at the public expense while poor wretches are starving at every
corner of the streets." He represented that the petition was drawn
up in temperate, respectful language,--more temperate, indeed, than
he should have employed had he dictated its phrases. He urged that the
people had