who sit around me, on account of the
zeal and steadiness with which they supported the emancipation of
the Roman Catholics. His reproaches are not more stinging than the
reproaches which, in times not very remote, we endured unflinchingly in
his cause. I can assure him that men who faced the cry of No Popery are
not likely to be scared by the cry of Repeal. The time will come when
history will do justice to the Whigs of England, and will faithfully
relate how much they did and suffered for Ireland; how, for the sake of
Ireland, they quitted office in 1807; how, for the sake of Ireland, they
remained out of office more than twenty years, braving the frowns of
the Court, braving the hisses of the multitude, renouncing power,
and patronage, and salaries, and peerages, and garters, and yet not
obtaining in return even a little fleeting popularity. I see on the
benches near me men who might, by uttering one word against Catholic
Emancipation, nay, by merely abstaining from uttering a word in favour
of Catholic Emancipation, have been returned to this House without
difficulty or expense, and who, rather than wrong their Irish
fellow-subjects, were content to relinquish all the objects of their
honourable ambition, and to retire into private life with conscience
and fame untarnished. As to one eminent person, who seems to be regarded
with especial malevolence by those who ought never to mention his name
without reverence and gratitude, I will say only this: that the loudest
clamour which the honourable and learned gentleman can excite against
Lord Grey will be trifling when compared with the clamour which Lord
Grey withstood in order to place the honourable and learned gentleman
where he now sits. Though a young member of the Whig party, I will
venture to speak in the name of the whole body. I tell the honourable
and learned gentleman, that the same spirit which sustained us in a just
contest for him will sustain us in an equally just contest against him.
Calumny, abuse, royal displeasure, popular fury, exclusion from office,
exclusion from Parliament, we were ready to endure them all, rather than
that he should be less than a British subject. We never will suffer him
to be more.

I stand here, Sir, for the first time as the representative of a
new constituent body, one of the largest, most prosperous, and most
enlightened towns in the kingdom. The electors of Leeds, believing that
at this time the service of the people is not