members are not formidable as speakers, but very much so as an audience; because in so numerous a body there may be little eloquence (after all, there were but two thorough orators in all antiquity, and, I suspect, still fewer in modern times), but there must be a leaven of thought and good sense sufficient to make them know what is right, though they can't express it nobly. Horne Tooke and Roscoe both are said to have declared that they left Parliament with a higher opinion of its aggregate integrity and abilities than that with which they entered it. The general amount of both in most Parliaments is probably about the same, as also the number of speakers and their talent. I except orators, of course, because they are things of ages, and not of septennial or triennial reunions. Neither House ever struck me with more awe or respect than the same number of Turks in a divan, or of Methodists in a barn, would have done." LORD BROUGHTON. 66 Sent to Newgate.-Mr. John Cam Hobhouse (afterwards Lord Broughton), the friend and fellow-traveller of Byron, incurred, in 1819, the high displeasure of the House of Commons under the following circumstances:-On December the 10th, Mr. Courtenay rose to complain of a pamphlet which had been published, entitled "A Trifling Mistake in Thomas Lord Erskine's recent Preface shortly noticed, and respectfully corrected, in a Letter to his Lordship, by the author of The Defence of the People."" The following extract, amongst others, was read from the pamphlet: "What prevents the people from walking down to the House and pulling out the members by the ears, locking up their doors, and flinging the key into the Thames?" On a subsequent day, the publisher of the brochure having been summoned to the bar, and the name of the writer divulged, it was moved and carried That John Cam Hobhouse, Esq., be, for his said offence, committed to his Majesty's gaol of Newgate." The offender remained in confinement till the death of George III., in the following January, occasioned a dissolution of Parliament. Shortly after this, Mr. Hobhouse took his seat as one of the members for Westminster, in the assembly he had denounced in such strong language, and delivered his maiden speech May 9, 1820. The occasion was on Mr. Alderman Wood's motion respecting the criminal conduct and proceedings of George Edwards, said to have been connected with the Cato Street Conspiracy. In the course of his address he referred to his own case in these terms: "Now let me recall to the honourable member for Corfe Castle the dreadful alarms, the prompt proceedings adopted against the author of a pamphlet in which it seemed possible that some recommendations to a dispersion of this House might be found. Here was no plot, no grenades, no mischief either done or meditated; but though this Edwards is to walk at large, the author of a single passage of disputable meaning is to be sent to prison without trial and without citation." His Majesty's Opposition.-It was Mr. Hobhouse who first spoke of "His Majesty's Opposition." Canning accepted the appellation as appropriate. A distinguished member of the Opposition gave it the stamp of his approval, while adding a pithy exposition of its meaning. Tierney said, "No better phrase could be adopted; for we are certainly a branch of his Majesty's Government. Although the gentlemen opposite are in office, we are in power. The measures are ours, but all the emoluments are theirs." SIR FRANCIS BURDETT. (1770-1844.) A Favourite.-"Burdett," said Byron, "is sweet and silvery as Belial himself, and, I think, the greatest favourite in Pandemonium; at least, I always heard the country gentlemen and the ministerial devilry praise his speeches upstairs, and run down from Bellamy's when he was upon his legs." Lord Lytton also must be quoted as to Burdett and his powers: "Too rich to bribe, and much too proud for power, And as to fear-a fico for the Tower! In youth more popular than Fox; in age, And pose logicians with a line from Pope." Burdett's Committal to the Tower.-J. Gale Jones, the president of a debating club, published some resolutions of his society on a debate which arose in 1810 relative to the expedition to the Scheldt. For this he was summoned to the bar of the House, and committed to Newgate. Sir Francis Burdett took up his cause, and denied the power of the Commons to commit to prison any but their own members, and repeated his arguments in a letter published in Cobbett's Weekly Register. This being brought before the House, he was committed to the Tower. Cooke, in his "History of Party," thus describes the circumstances attending the execution of the order :-" Crowds surrounded the house of Sir Francis, who affected to resist the warrant by force, and barricaded his doors. Twenty police officers, assisted by detachments of cavalry and infantry, were necessary to execute the warrant. Burdett still resisted; and, lest the theatrical display should be incomplete, the constables, when they broke into the house, found him teaching his infant son to read and translate Magna Charta. As he was borne along to the Tower, the crowds assembled attacked the soldiery; pistol-shots were fired on each side, and the troops did not return from their ungrateful duty without a sanguinary conflict, in which several people were slain. A more useless or unnecessary provocation of a scene of carnage does not occur in our history. Sir Francis brought an action against the Speaker, and, being defeated, thus had the merit of formally establishing the important principle of the Constitution which he had attacked." Hoisting Canning with his own Petard.-In one of the debates of the pre-Reform period, Canning, in the course of an elaborate defence of the borough system, urged that it formed an essential element of the British Constitution, since it had "Grown with our growth, and strengthened with our strength." Sir Francis Burdett took up the quotation in reply, and said, "The right honourable gentleman doubtless remembers the first line of the distich he has cited, and that it is 'The young disease, which must subdue at length, Grows with our growth, and strengthens with our strength.'" Canning acknowledged that the retort was a happy and a just one. 66 An Extraordinary Debate.-Sir T. F. Buxton, writing to his brother-in-law, Mr. Gurney, in November, 1819, thus refers to a debate on the Manchester Riots, and Burdett's speech in it: We have had a wonderful debate; really it has raised my idea of the capacity and ingenuity of the human mind. All the leaders spoke, and almost all outdid themselves. But Burdett stands first; his speech was absolutely the finest, and the clearest and the fairest display of masterly understanding, that ever I heard; and, with shame I ought to confess it, he did not utter a sentence to which I could not agree. Canning was second; if there be any difference between eloquence and sense, this was the difference between him and Burdett. He was exquisitely elegant, and kept the tide of reason and argument, irony, joke, invective, and declamation, flowing for nearly three hours. Plunket was third; he took hold of poor Mackintosh's argument, and griped it to death; ingenious, subtle, yet clear and bold, and putting with the most logical distinctness to the House the errors of his antagonist. Next came Brougham-and what do you think of a debate in which the fourth man could keep alive the attention of the House from three to five in the morning, after a twelve hours' debate?" Burdett a High Tory.-Sir Francis Burdett, reverting to the notion that the prerogative of the Crown in choosing its servants ought to be unfettered and uncontrolled, said, in bringing forward a motion for reform of Parliament, "If a country gentleman were to offer to a servant out of place to make him his butler, and the man were to answer, 'I will not be your butler unless you will take Harry for your coachman, and Thomas for your groom, and Dick for your footman,' the gentleman would be greatly astonished." This remark (says Earl Russell) proves that Sir Francis Burdett was, as he sometimes avowed himself to be, a high prerogative Tory of the days of Queen Anne. His Duel with Mr. Paull.-The following particulars of the duel which took place between Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. Paull are taken from the Annual Register. "Mr. Paull, who was a candidate for the representation of Westminster in 1807, had advertised a meeting of his friends to dine at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand, the chair to be occupied by Sir Francis Burdett. A correspondence ensued upon this announcement, opening with a communication from Sir Francis, in which he disavowed any knowledge of the proposed gathering, and asserted that he had not sanctioned the use of his name in connection with it. The dispute between the two gentlemen, increasing in acrimony, finally culminated in a challenge being forwarded by Mr. Paull to Sir Francis Burdett. The parties met, attended by their seconds, at Combe Wood, near Wimbledon Common, on the 5th of May. They discharged two pistols each; the second shot fired by Mr. Paull wounded Sir Francis in the thigh; the second pistol fired by Sir Francis wounded Mr. Paull in the leg. This terminating the business, they both returned from Wimbledon in Mr. Paull's carriage." WILLIAM COBBETT. (1762-1835.) His First Appearance.-At the first general election after the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832, Cobbett was returned for Oldham, and delivered his maiden speech January 29th, 1833, on the choice of a Speaker. The opening sentence with which he addressed the House was not of a very complimentary character: "It appears to me that since I have been sitting here, I have heard a great deal of vain and unprofitable conversation." On the 11th of February he rose to move an amendment to the report of the Address in answer to the King's speech. Other honourable members," he said, "may intercept the reading of the report where they please, and move that such or such parts be omitted; for my own part, I object to every tittle of the report after the words 'Most Gracious Majesty."" Meeting with several interruptions by calls. of " Question" and "Order," he said, "I have a very sacred duty to perform, and if the House be determined not to hear me to-night, I will certainly bring it forward to-morrow, and if the House will not hear me to-morrow, I will then bring it forward the day after. The statement I have to make I am determined to make, and that without any considerable interruption." His Demeanour in the House.-I know no other instance (writes Lord Dalling) of a man entering the House of Commons at Cobbett's age (between sixty and seventy) and becoming at once an effective debater in it. Looking carelessly round the assembly so new to him, with his usual self-confidence he spoke on the first occasion that presented itself, proposing an amendment to the Address; but this was not his happiest effort, and consequently created disappointment. He soon, however, obliterated the failure, and became rather a favourite with an audience which is only unforgiving when bored. It was still seen, moreover, that nothing daunted him; the murmurs, the "Oh!" or more serious reprehension and censure, found him shaking his head with his hands in his pockets, as cool and defiant as when he first stuck up the picture of King George in his shop window at Philadelphia. He exhibited in Parliament, too, the same want of tact, prudence, and truth; the same egotism, the same combativeness, and the same reckless desire to struggle with received opinions, that had marked him previously through life, and shattered his career into glittering fragments, from which the world could never collect the image nor the practical utility of a whole. The Black Hole of St. Stephen's.-Complaining of the deficient accommodation for members in the House, Cobbett thus gave utterance to his discontent in the columns of the Weekly Register: "Why are we squeezed into so small a space that it is absolutely impossible that there should be calm and regular discussion, even from that circumstance alone? Why do we live in this hubbub? Why are we exposed to all these inconveniences? Why are 658 of us crammed into a space that allows to each of us no more than a foot and a half square, while, at the same time, each of the servants of the King, whom we pay, has a palace to live in, and more unoccupied space in that palace than the little hole into which we are all crammed to make the laws by which this great kingdom is governed." The fire of 1834, however, burned down the "little hole" so contemptuously spoken of by the member for Oldham, and thus made way for a more commodious although still inadequate structure. His Influence.-People (said Hazlitt) have about as substantial an idea of Cobbett as they have of Cribb. His blows are as hard, and he himself is as impenetrable. One has no notion of him as making use of a fine pen, but a great mutton-fist; his style stuns his readers, and he fillips the ear of the public with a three-man-beetle." He is too much for any single newspaper antagonist; "lays waste" a City orator or member of Parliament, and bears hard upon the Government itself. He is a kind of fourth estate in the politics of the country. 66 Taking out the Sting.-Cobbett looked (remarks Professor Pryme) like a better sort of farmer. He was a very able man, but his career in the House was a complete failure. Though bold in public assemblies, he was timid and overawed in Parliament, and was never able to say more than a few sentences. . . Cobbett was said to have "a good face for a grievance." I remember one ait which shows it. He moved to bring in a bill to modify the Stamp Act, more especially that part of it which obliged every one to give a twopenny stamp on payment of any sum between 21. and 51. Lord Althorp said that it would require great time for modification, and that it should be taken into consideration, but that meantime the member for Oldham might, if he liked, have that particular grievance of the twopenny stamp redressed at once. We all who were opposite to him were amused to observe that Cobbett looked quite disappointed, as if feeling that the sting was taken out of his complaints. Political Nicknames.-Cobbett's talent (says Lord Dalling) for fastening his claws into anything or anyone by a word or an expression, and holding them down for scorn or up to horror, was unrivalled. "Prosperity Robinson," "Eolus Canning," the "bloody Times," the "pink-nosed Liverpool," the "unbaptised, buttonless blackguards" (in which way he |