England should be any longer governed as it was governed under
the four first princes of the House of Hanover. I say
impossible. I believe that over the great changes of the moral
world we possess as little power as over the great changes of the
physical world. We can no more prevent time from changing the
distribution of property and of intelligence, we can no more
prevent property and intelligence from aspiring to political
power, than we can change the courses of the seasons and of the
tides. In peace or in tumult, by means of old institutions,
where those institutions are flexible, over the ruins of old
institutions, where those institutions oppose an unbending
resistance, the great march of society proceeds, and must
proceed. The feeble efforts of individuals to bear back are lost
and swept away in the mighty rush with which the species goes
onward. Those who appear to lead the movement are, in fact, only
whirled along before it; those who attempt to resist it, are
beaten down and crushed beneath it.

It is because rulers do not pay sufficient attention to the
stages of this great movement, because they underrate its force,
because they are ignorant of its law, that so many violent and
fearful revolutions have changed the face of society. We have
heard it said a hundred times during these discussions, we have
heard it said repeatedly in the course of this very debate, that
the people of England are more free than ever they were, that the
Government is more democratic than ever it was; and this is urged
as an argument against Reform. I admit the fact; but I deny the
inference. It is a principle never to be forgotten, in
discussions like this, that it is not by absolute, but by
relative misgovernment that nations are roused to madness. It is