as I should be inclined to treat the franchises of Old Sarum.
When you are reminded that you voted, only two years ago, for
disfranchising great numbers of freeholders in Ireland, and when
you are asked how, on the principles which you now profess, you
can justify that vote, you answer very coolly, "no doubt that was
confiscation. No doubt we took away from the peasants of Munster
and Connaught, without giving them a farthing of compensation,
that which was as much their property as their pigs or their
frieze coats. But we did it for the public good. We were
pressed by a great State necessity." Sir, if that be an answer,
we too may plead that we too have the public good in view, and
that we are pressed by a great State necessity. But I shall
resort to no such plea. It fills me with indignation and alarm
to hear grave men avow what they own to be downright robbery, and
justify that robbery on the ground of political convenience. No,
Sir, there is one way, and only one way, in which those gentlemen
who voted for the disfranchising Act of 1829 can clear their
fame. Either they have no defence, or their defence must be
this; that the elective franchise is not of the nature of
property, and that therefore disfranchisement is not spoliation.

Having disposed, as I think, of the question of right, I come to
the question of expediency. I listened, Sir, with much interest
and pleasure to a noble Lord who spoke for the first time in this
debate. (Lord Porchester.) But I must own that he did not
succeed in convincing me that there is any real ground for the
fears by which he is tormented. He gave us a history of France
since the Restoration. He told us of the violent ebbs and flows
of public feeling in that country. He told us that the
revolutionary party was fast rising to ascendency while M. De