Bill with equal steadiness and equal zeal. That party is the
middle class of England, with the flower of the aristocracy at
its head, and the flower of the working classes bringing up its
rear. That great party has taken its immovable stand between the
enemies of all order and the enemies of all liberty. It will
have Reform: it will not have revolution: it will destroy
political abuses: it will not suffer the rights of property to
be assailed: it will preserve, in spite of themselves, those who
are assailing it, from the right and from the left, with
contradictory accusations: it will be a daysman between them:
it will lay its hand upon them both: it will not suffer them to
tear each other in pieces. While that great party continues
unbroken, as it now is unbroken, I shall not relinquish the hope
that this great contest may be conducted, by lawful means, to a
happy termination. But, of this I am assured, that by means,
lawful or unlawful, to a termination, happy or unhappy, this
contest must speedily come. All that I know of the history of
past times, all the observations that I have been able to make on
the present state of the country, have convinced me that the time
has arrived when a great concession must be made to the democracy
of England; that the question, whether the change be in itself
good or bad, has become a question of secondary importance; that,
good or bad, the thing must be done; that a law as strong as the
laws of attraction and motion has decreed it.

I well know that history, when we look at it in small portions,
may be so construed as to mean anything, that it may be
interpreted in as many ways as a Delphic oracle. "The French
Revolution," says one expositor, "was the effect of concession."
"Not so," cries another: "The French Revolution was produced by