he other House, has saved
the country from a great calamity. Sir, even if this charge were well
founded, there are those who should have been prevented by prudence, if
not by magnanimity, from bringing it forward. I remember an Opposition
which took a very different course. I remember an Opposition which,
while excluded from power, taught all its doctrines to the Government;
which, after labouring long, and sacrificing much, in order to effect
improvements in various parts of our political and commercial system,
saw the honour of those improvements appropriated by others. But the
members of that Opposition had, I believe, a sincere desire to promote
the public good. They, therefore, raised no shout of triumph over the
recantations of their proselytes. They rejoiced, but with no ungenerous
joy, when their principles of trade, of jurisprudence, of foreign
policy, of religious liberty, became the principles of the
Administration. They were content that he who came into fellowship with
them at the eleventh hour should have a far larger share of the reward
than those who had borne the burthen and heat of the day. In the year
1828, a single division in this House changed the whole policy of the
Government with respect to the Test and Corporation Acts. My noble
friend, the Paymaster of the Forces, then sat where the right honourable
Baronet, the member for Tamworth, now sits. I do not remember that, when
the right honourable Baronet announced his change of purpose, my noble
friend sprang up to talk about palinodes, to magnify the wisdom and
virtue of the Whigs, and to sneer at his new coadjutors. Indeed, I am
not sure that the members of the late Opposition did not carry their
indulgence too far; that they did not too easily suffer the fame of
Grattan and Romilly to be transferred to less deserving claimants; that
they were not too ready, in the joy with which they welcomed the tardy
and convenient repentance of their converts, to grant a general amnesty
for the errors of the insincerity of years. If it were true that we had
recanted, this ought not to be made matter of charge against us by men
whom posterity will remember by nothing but recantations. But, in truth,
we recant nothing. We have nothing to recant. We support this bill. We
may possibly think it a better bill than that which preceded it. But
are we therefore bound to admit that we were in the wrong, that the
Opposition was in the right, that the House of Lords has co