clung too long to odious exemptions and distinctions, that they
were at last unable to serve their lands, their mansions, their
heads. They would not endure Turgot: and they had to endure
Robespierre.

I am far indeed from wishing that the Members of this House
should be influenced by fear in the bad and unworthy sense of
that word. But there is an honest and honourable fear, which
well becomes those who are intrusted with the dearest interests
of a great community; and to that fear I am not ashamed to make
an earnest appeal. It is very well to talk of confronting
sedition boldly, and of enforcing the law against those who would
disturb the public peace. No doubt a tumult caused by local and
temporary irritation ought to be suppressed with promptitude and
vigour. Such disturbances, for example, as those which Lord
George Gordon raised in 1780, should be instantly put down with
the strong hand. But woe to the Government which cannot
distinguish between a nation and a mob! Woe to the Government
which thinks that a great, a steady, a long continued movement of
the public mind is to be stopped like a street riot! This error
has been twice fatal to the great House of Bourbon. God be
praised, our rulers have been wiser. The golden opportunity
which, if once suffered to escape, might never have been
retrieved, has been seized. Nothing, I firmly believe, can now
prevent the passing of this noble law, this second Bill of
Rights. ["Murmurs."] Yes, I call it, and the nation calls it,
and our posterity will long call it, this second Bill of Rights,
this Greater Charter of the Liberties of England. The year 1831
will, I trust, exhibit the first example of the manner in which
it behoves a free and enlightened people to purify their polity