dangerous you leave undiminished; nay, you make it more dangerous
still. For by refusing to let eight or nine hundred thousand people
express their opinions and wishes in a legal and constitutional way, you
increase the risk of disaffection and of tumult. It is not necessary to
have recourse to the speeches or writings of democrats to show that
a represented district is far more likely to be turbulent than an
unrepresented district. Mr Burke, surely not a rash innovator, not
a flatterer of the multitude, described long ago in this place
with admirable eloquence the effect produced by the law which gave
representative institutions to the rebellious mountaineers of Wales.
That law, he said, had been to an agitated nation what the twin stars
celebrated by Horace were to a stormy sea; the wind had fallen; the
clouds had dispersed; the threatening waves had sunk to rest. I have
mentioned the commotions of Madrid and Constantinople. Why is it that
the population of unrepresented London, though physically far more
powerful than the population of Madrid or of Constantinople, has been
far more peaceable? Why have we never seen the inhabitants of the
metropolis besiege St James's, or force their way riotously into this
House? Why, but because they have other means of giving vent to their
feelings, because they enjoy the liberty of unlicensed printing, and the
liberty of holding public meetings. Just as the people of unrepresented
London are more orderly than the people of Constantinople and Madrid, so
will the people of represented London be more orderly than the people of
unrepresented London.

Surely, Sir, nothing can be more absurd than to withhold legal power
from a portion of the community because that portion of the community
possesses natural power. Yet that is precisely what the noble Marquess
would have us do. In all ages a chief cause of the intestine disorders
of states has been that the natural distribution of power and the legal
distribution of power have not corresponded with each other. This is
no newly discovered truth. It was well known to Aristotle more than two
thousand years ago. It is illustrated by every part of ancient and of
modern history, and eminently by the history of England during the last
few months. Our country has been in serious danger; and why? Because
a representative system, framed to suit the England of the thirteenth
century, did not suit the England of the nineteenth century; because an
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