The year 1828 is a memorable one in Mr. Brougham's parliamentary life.
Early in the session, upon the debate of the battle of Navarino, we
find him expressing his readiness to support the ministry as long as
the members who composed it showed a determination to retrench the
expenditure of the country, to improve its domestic arrangements,
and to adopt a truly British system of foreign policy. It was on this
occasion that Mr. Brougham used the expression which has since become
so familiar--"The schoolmaster is abroad." On Feb. 7, Mr. Brougham
brought forward a motion on the State of the Law, in an elaborate
speech of six hours delivery. The debate was adjourned to February 29,
when Mr. Brougham's motion, in an amended shape, was put and agreed
to, requesting the King to cause "due inquiry to be made into the
origin, progress, and termination of actions in the superior courts of
common law in this country;" and "into the state of the law regarding
the transfer of real property." Even the heads of this speech would
occupy one of our pages. A passage much quoted at the time of its
publication is a good specimen of Mr. Brougham's forcible style of
illustration: "He was guilty of no error--he was chargeable with no
exaggeration--he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once
said, that all we can see about us, King, Lords, and Commons, the
whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system and its
varied workings, end simply in bringing twelve good men into a box."
In the same month, Mr. Brougham spoke at great length in support of
Lord John Russell's motion for the repeal of the Test and Corporation
Acts. On March 6, Mr. Brougham spoke in support of Mr. Peel's motion
for Catholic Emancipation, which he described as going "the full
length that any reasonable man ever did or ever can demand; it does
equal justice to his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects; it puts
an end to all religious distinctions; it exterminates all civil
disqualifications on account of religious belief. It is simple and