onward with the nation. Gentlemen have told us, that the most
illustrious foreigners have, in every age, spoken with admiration
of the English constitution. Comines, they say, in the fifteenth
century, extolled the English constitution as the best in the
world. Montesquieu, in the eighteenth century, extolled it as
the best in the world. And would it not be madness in us to
throw away what such men thought the most precious of all our
blessings? But was the constitution which Montesquieu praised
the same with the constitution which Comines praised? No, Sir;
if it had been so, Montesquieu never would have praised it. For
how was it possible that a polity which exactly suited the
subjects of Edward the Fourth should have exactly suited the
subjects of George the Second? The English have, it is true,
long been a great and a happy people. But they have been great
and happy because their history has been the history of a
succession of timely reforms. The Great Charter, the assembling
of the first House of Commons, the Petition of Right, the
Declaration of Right, the Bill which is now on our table, what
are they all but steps in one great progress? To every one of
those steps the same objections might have been made which we
heard to-night, "You are better off than your neighbours are.
You are better off than your fathers were. Why can you not leave
well alone?"

How copiously might a Jacobite orator have harangued on this
topic in the Convention of 1688! "Why make a change of dynasty?
Why trouble ourselves to devise new securities for our laws and
liberties? See what a nation we are. See how population and
wealth have increased since what you call the good old times of
Queen Elizabeth. You cannot deny that the country has been more