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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
trtgtte , tfeichkry , ifltokttw , afad every specie of vexatious and itawcmptrtolis opposition . You know that they * have been < n > posfed to every liberal measure which has been proposed for the fftgt sewn y ^ ars / and you might have said ( with exceptions e&sify explained ) for the last seventy years ; you know that by them ^ darkness is still to be desired ; ' and yet you tell them that their present strength to resist the light shall remain
unbroken . They will scarcely show their gratitude for this enoouraging assurance by remaining inert ; and you trust to pub- * , lie opinion' for their being defeated * as you say they have already been defeated . But how did public opinion obtain its great vie * tory ? Simply by the fear of convulsion * So it was that Catholic Emancipation was obtained ; and so it was that the Reform Bill was carried . Public opinion , without that apprehension would never have won oven the concession of a Member for Manchester .
We were brought to something very like a crisis before they left off l&ttghing at public opinion . We owe everything to the fear of external force , combined with an influx of delegated representatives sent into the Legislature by the people in a state of excitement * and at the cost of enormous exertions and sacrifices ,
That excitement cannot be kept up without moat perilous consequences ; nor ought occasion for the repetition of those exertions and sacrifices to be imposed on the constituency . What * then * becomes of the power of public opinion , ad opposed to Tory in * - flnence ? Your Lordship observed , some time ago , that * the country cannot bear a revolution once a year / Therefore it is
that more popular influence , which can only be derived from organic change , is absolutely necessary . Your Lordship seems to reekoti for little what has been done by the Tories , even during the last session , in defiance of public opinion . You say that , upon all the most important liberal measures which have been proposed during the last seven years , ' resistance has ended in a
confession that the struggle was hopeless / Does your Lordship forget the concessions which were made in the Reform Bill after it had been brought into the House ? or the modifications which ware made in the Cabinet previous to its introduction ? or thfe general policy of the Grey Administration to frame its measures , not according to the avowed principles of it * members , but so as to have some chance of their being carried ? Let these thing *
pass , and look only at the pranent year . The Municipal Reform Bill is , no doubt , notwithstanding the ' amendments * of the Lor d * , a very valuable meaiure ; but was it not , from the very outset , what Sir John Hobhouse described it , a comprmfrisi * 7 Aaftdoe * your Lordship set so lightly by it as to exclude from your ltot of the « most important liberal measures / th « Irish Church B 4 tt ; the Bill to pass whioh you and yotrr eolie&guas beetime Mtnktertir D 9 you put into th * some dan the Imprisonment « W B * n ' Bitt , tha Otthcrito Matriu * Bffl > th » Dribttft P # U <* ,
Untitled Article
( Nf' 6 H % rf § iM 9 & MbBfw flli .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1835, page 698, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2651/page/6/
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