wisdom and virtue of the Whigs, and to sneer at his new
coadjutors. Indeed, I am not sure that the members of the late
Opposition did not carry their indulgence too far; that they did
not too easily suffer the fame of Grattan and Romilly to be
transferred to less deserving claimants; that they were not too
ready, in the joy with which they welcomed the tardy and
convenient repentance of their converts, to grant a general
amnesty for the errors of the insincerity of years. If it were
true that we had recanted, this ought not to be made matter of
charge against us by men whom posterity will remember by nothing
but recantations. But, in truth, we recant nothing. We have
nothing to recant. We support this bill. We may possibly think
it a better bill than that which preceded it. But are we
therefore bound to admit that we were in the wrong, that the
Opposition was in the right, that the House of Lords has
conferred a great benefit on the nation? We saw--who did not
see?--great defects in the first bill. But did we see nothing
else? Is delay no evil? Is prolonged excitement no evil? Is it
no evil that the heart of a great people should be made sick by
deferred hope? We allow that many of the changes which have been
made are improvements. But we think that it would have been far
better for the country to have had the last bill, with all its
defects, than the present bill, with all its improvements.
Second thoughts are proverbially the best, but there are
emergencies which do not admit of second thoughts. There
probably never was a law which might not have been amended by
delay. But there have been many cases in which there would have
been more mischief in the delay than benefit in the amendments.
The first bill, however inferior it may have been in its details
to the present bill, was yet herein far superior to the present