ches that I
ever had the pleasure of hearing. His audience was small; but the few
who formed that audience cannot have forgotten the effect which his
arguments and his eloquence produced. The Ministers had come down to
resist his motion: but their courage failed them: they hesitated: they
conferred together: at last they consented that he should have leave
to bring in his bill. Such, indeed, was the language which they held on
that and on a subsequent occasion, that both my honourable and learned
friend and myself gave them more credit than they deserved. We really
believed that they had resolved to offer no opposition to a law which it
was quite evident that they perceived to be just and beneficial. But
we have been disappointed. It has been notified to us that the whole
influence of the Government is to be exerted against our bill. In such
discouraging circumstances it is that I rise to move the second reading.

Yet, Sir, I do not altogether despair of success. When I consider what
strong, what irresistible reasons we have to urge, I can hardly think
it possible that the mandate of the most powerful administration can
prevail against them. Nay, I should consider victory, not merely
as probable, but as certain, if I did not know how imperfect is the
information which English gentlemen generally possess concerning Scotch
questions. It is because I know this that I think it my duty to depart
from the ordinary practice, and, instead of simply moving the second
reading, to explain at some length the principles on which this bill has
been framed. I earnestly entreat those English Members who were not so
fortunate as to hear the speech of my honourable and learned friend, the
Member for Leith to favour me with their attention. They will, I think,
admit, that I have a right to be heard with indulgence. I have been sent
to this house by a great city which was once a capital, the abode of a
Sovereign, the place where the Estates of a realm held their sittings.
For the general good of the empire, Edinburgh descended from that high
eminence. But, ceasing to be a political metropolis, she became an
intellectual metropolis. For the loss of a Court, of a Privy Council, of
a Parliament, she found compensation in the prosperity and splendour of
an University renowned to the farthest ends of the earth as a school of
physical and moral science. This noble and beneficent institution is now
threatened with ruin by the folly of the Governme