opinion, they are a mere dead letter. The noble Lord has said
exactly the same thing to-night. "Keep your old Constitution,"
he exclaims; "for, whatever may be its defects in theory, it has
more of the public veneration than your new Constitution will
have; and no laws can be efficient, unless they have the public
veneration." I said, that statutes are in themselves only wax
and parchment; and I was called an incendiary by the opposition.
The noble Lord has said to-night that statutes in themselves are
only ink and parchment; and those very persons who reviled me
have enthusiastically cheered him. I am quite at a loss to
understand how doctrines which are, in his mouth, true and
constitutional, can, in mine, be false and revolutionary.

But, Sir, it is time that I should address myself to the
momentous question before us. I shall certainly give my best
support to this bill, through all its stages; and, in so doing, I
conceive that I shall act in strict conformity with the
resolution by which this House, towards the close of the late
Session, declared its unabated attachment to the principles and
to the leading provisions of the First Reform Bill. All those
principles, all those leading provisions, I find in the present
measure. In the details there are, undoubtedly, considerable
alterations. Most of the alterations appear to me to be
improvements; and even those alterations which I cannot consider
as in themselves improvements will yet be most useful, if their
effect shall be to conciliate opponents, and to facilitate the
adjustment of a question which, for the sake of order, for the
sake of peace, for the sake of trade, ought to be, not only
satisfactorily, but speedily settled. We have been told, Sir,
that, if we pronounce this bill to be a better bill than the