rule of a prince whose title is unquestioned, whose office is
reverenced, and whose person is beloved. It is easy to conceive
with what scorn and astonishment Clarendon would have heard it
said that the reform which seemed to him so obviously just and
reasonable that he praised it, even when made by a regicide,
could not, without the grossest iniquity, be made even by a
lawful King and a lawful Parliament.

Sir, in the name of the institution of property, of that great
institution, for the sake of which, chiefly, all other
institutions exist, of that great institution to which we owe all
knowledge, all commerce, all industry, all civilisation, all that
makes us to differ from the tattooed savages of the Pacific
Ocean, I protest against the pernicious practice of ascribing to
that which is not property the sanctity which belongs to property
alone. If, in order to save political abuses from that fate with
which they are threatened by the public hatred, you claim for
them the immunities of property, you must expect that property
will be regarded with some portion of the hatred which is excited
by political abuses. You bind up two very different things, in
the hope that they may stand together. Take heed that they do
not fall together. You tell the people that it is as unjust to
disfranchise a great lord's nomination borough as to confiscate
his estate. Take heed that you do not succeed in convincing weak
and ignorant minds that there is no more injustice in
confiscating his estate than in disfranchising his borough. That
this is no imaginary danger, your own speeches in this debate
abundantly prove. You begin by ascribing to the franchises of
Old Sarum the sacredness of property; and you end, naturally
enough, I must own, by treating the rights of property as lightly