way which determined me to take
the other. I have not, in newspapers, to derogate from his fair fame
with the nation, printed the first rude sketch of his bill with
ungenerous and invidious comments. I have not, in conversations
industriously circulated about the town, and talked on the benches of
this House, attributed his conduct to motives low and unworthy, and as
groundless as they are injurious. I do not affect to be frightened with
this proposition, as if some hideous spectre had started from hell, which
was to be sent back again by every form of exorcism, and every kind of
incantation. I invoke no Acheron to overwhelm him in the whirlpools of
his muddy gulf. I do not tell the respectable mover and seconder, by a
perversion of their sense and expressions, that their proposition halts
between the ridiculous and the dangerous. I am not one of those who
start up three at a time, and fall upon and strike at him with so much
eagerness, that our daggers hack one another in his sides. My honourable
friend has not brought down a spirited imp of chivalry, to win the first
achievement and blazon of arms on his milk-white shield in a field listed
against him, nor brought out the generous offspring of lions, and said to
them, "Not against that side of the forest, beware of that--here is the
prey where you are to fasten your paws;" and seasoning his unpractised
jaws with blood, tell him, "This is the milk for which you are to thirst
hereafter." We furnish at his expense no holiday, nor suspend hell that
a crafty Ixion may have rest from his wheel; nor give the common
adversary, if he be a common adversary, reason to say, "I would have put
in my word to oppose, but the eagerness of your allies in your social war
was such that I could not break in upon you." I hope he sees and feels,
and that every member sees and feels along with him, the difference
between amicable dissent and civil discord.

SPEECH ON REFORM OF REPRESENTATION IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
JUNE, 1784

Mr. Speaker,--We have now discovered, at the close of the eighteenth
century, that the Constitution of England, which for a series of ages had
been the proud distinction of this country, always the admiration, and
sometimes the envy, of the wise and learned in every other nation--we
have discovered that this boasted Constitution, in the most boasted part
of it, is a gross imposition upon the understanding of mankind, an insult
to their feelings, and a