acterised as Revolution
in the guise of a statute. Next morning as Sir Robert was walking into
town over Westminster Bridge, he told his companion that up to the
previous night he had been very anxious, but that his fears were now
at an end, inasmuch as the shock caused by the extravagance of the
ministerial proposals would infallibly bring the country to its senses.
On the evening of that day Macaulay made the first of his Reform
speeches. When he sat down the Speaker sent for him, and told him that
in all his prolonged experience he had never seen the House in such a
state of excitement. Even at this distance of time it is impossible to
read aloud the last thirty sentences without an emotion which suggests
to the mind what must have been their effect when declaimed by one who
felt every word that he spoke, in the midst of an assembly agitated by
hopes and apprehensions such as living men have never known, or have
long forgotten. ["The question of Parliamentary Reform is still behind.
But signs, of which it is impossible to misconceive the import, do most
clearly indicate that, unless that question also be speedily settled,
property, and order, and all the institutions of this great monarchy,
will be exposed to fearful peril. Is it possible that gentlemen long
versed in high political affairs cannot read these signs? Is it possible
that they can really believe that the Representative system of England,
such as it now is, will last to the year 1860? If not, for what would
they have us wait? Would they have us wait, merely that we may show to
all the world how little we have profited by our own recent experience?
Would they have us wait, that we may once again hit the exact point
where we can neither refuse with authority, nor concede with grace?
Would they have us wait, that the numbers of the discontented party may
become larger, its demands higher, its feelings more acrimonious, its
organisation more complete? Would they have us wait till the whole
tragicomedy of 1827 has been acted over again? till they have been
brought into office by a cry of 'No Reform,' to be reformers, as they
were once before brought into office by a cry of 'No Popery', to be
emancipators? Have they obliterated from their minds--gladly, perhaps,
would some among them obliterate from their minds--the transactions
of that year? And have they forgotten all the transactions of the
succeeding year? Have they forgotten how the spirit of liberty in
Ire