It is very well to talk
of confronting sedition boldly, and of enforcing the law against those
who would disturb the public peace. No doubt a tumult caused by local
and temporary irritation ought to be suppressed with promptitude and
vigour. Such disturbances, for example, as those which Lord George
Gordon raised in 1780, should be instantly put down with the strong
hand. But woe to the Government which cannot distinguish between a
nation and a mob! Woe to the Government which thinks that a great, a
steady, a long continued movement of the public mind is to be stopped
like a street riot! This error has been twice fatal to the great House
of Bourbon. God be praised, our rulers have been wiser. The golden
opportunity which, if once suffered to escape, might never have been
retrieved, has been seized. Nothing, I firmly believe, can now prevent
the passing of this noble law, this second Bill of Rights. ["Murmurs."]
Yes, I call it, and the nation calls it, and our posterity will long
call it, this second Bill of Rights, this Greater Charter of the
Liberties of England. The year 1831 will, I trust, exhibit the first
example of the manner in which it behoves a free and enlightened people
to purify their polity from old and deeply seated abuses, without
bloodshed, without violence, without rapine, all points freely debated,
all the forms of senatorial deliberation punctiliously observed,
industry and trade not for a moment interrupted, the authority of law
not for a moment suspended. These are things of which we may well be
proud. These are things which swell the heart up with a good hope for
the destinies of mankind. I cannot but anticipate a long series of
happy years; of years during which a parental Government will be firmly
supported by a grateful nation: of years during which war, if war should
be inevitable, will find us an united people; of years pre-eminently
distinguished by the progress of arts, by the improvement of laws,
by the augmentation of the public resources, by the diminution of the
public burdens, by all those victories of peace, in which, far more than
in any military successes, consists the true felicity of states, and the
true glory of statesmen. With such hopes, Sir, and such feelings, I give
my cordial assent to the second reading of a bill which I consider as
in itself deserving of the warmest approbation, and as indispensably
necessary, in the present temper of the public mind, to the repose of
the co