be taken away? I think neither of you could: I think that if every word had brought a new blister upon your tongue, you would have cried out against the outrageous injustice of depriving the people of their liberties, until, at any rate, the evidence tendered by the petitioner had been heard at the Bar. What! shall we be told of any personal dislikes that Sir FRANCIS BURDETT had to Mr. HUNT? If he had any such and had good reasons for them, it is rational to expect that they would have been stated. But, at any rate, there was Mr. HUNT a petitioner; he was the person who had taken the active part at the Spa-fields Meetings; he came forward with an explicit declaration, that, if permitted to do it, he would bring evidence to the Bar to prove many most interesting and most important facts, and to negative, completely, one of the great assertions of the Committee. Was it the duty of the House to hear him, or was it not? If it was; if that be your opinion, my friends, can you find out a justification for Sir FRANCIS BURDETT in sitting still as a mouse, in not making one single effort to cause this evidence to be called to the Bar, and not one single effort to expose the conduct of those who refused to hear this evidence? It is no apology to say, that Sir FRANCIS BURDETT disliked the petitioner, especially if that dislike was of very recent origin, and could not be very easily accounted for, and that, too, upon grounds fair and just. But in no case could that dislike be an apology for such conduct. There lay the petition, its allegations were most important to the cause of the people; and, not to use his utmost efforts to give effect to that petition, was to act the part of a lawyer who should suffer his client's cause to go to ruin merely for fear of its success doing credit to a person whom he himself disliked.

But, this was not the first instance in which Sir FRANCIS BURDETT had thrown a damp upon the right of petition. I do not mean upon the theory of that right; upon the general doctrine of that right; but upon the real, practical utility of it. All the nation remembers the petition of the boy DUGOOD, which was presented to the House of Commons by my Lord FOLKESTONE, and to the House of Lords by my Lord THANET, which latter presented a petition upon the same subject to the House of Lords from Mr. HUNT. Both these petitions Sir FRANCIS BURDETT declared to be such as the Houses could not receive; though my Lord FOLKESTONE hesitated not one single moment, nor did my Lord THANET; and though both Houses received the petitions without one single word of objection from any quarter. Nay, the petition of Mr. CLEARY was, I heard it publicly declared, presented against the judgment of Sir FRANCIS BURDETT; though, to this hour, that petition remains to be cited by every body as a most triumphant answer to the Report of the House of Lords. What sort of conduct was this, then? Let us not flinch from stating these truths due to the injured nation. We had, as we thought, and as we boasted, one man, at least, in Parliament, who would dare to defend our cause. He having abandoned that cause, it is absolutely necessary for us, in justification of ourselves, to accuse him of that abandonment. If we neglect to do this, we tacitly acknowledge that we were unworthy of being defended, which would be most basely as well as most senselessly to offer ourselves up as a sacrifice to him who has abandoned us.

You will please to bear in mind, that it was not a favour that we were here asking of Sir FRANCIS BURDETT. It was a duty that we expected him to perform. Not a duty towards any particular individuals;

but a duty towards the whole of the Reformers; for, if he will have it that he has been forced to be a Member of Parliament, as some gentlemen are forced to be Bishops; still, it was clearly understood on both sides, that he was to be the unshaken supporter of Parliamentary Reform. This was the very ground upon which he was so forced, if force it must be called; and, therefore, not to give us his support was to betray his trust, especially after he had signed a paper inviting Parliamentary Deputies to assemble in London, and after he had signed another paper commissioning that same Mr. CLEARY that I have above-mentioned, to distribute papers, and, generally, to do every thing that he could do, calculated to rouse the people to active exertions in the cause of Parliamentary Reform.

But, I am aware that it will be said that with Sir FRANCIS BUrdett, as well as with LORD GREY and LORD ERSKINE, a more mature age might have produced a change of opinion. It is very true that Sir FRANCIS BURDETT has made very great sacrifices to his principles, which age may have changed without any fault in him. But, then, it was his duty to tell us so, and not to lead hundreds of thousands of people on to the very eve of the Meeting of Parliament; nay, until the very hour of the Parliament's opening, and then to abandon them all to the mercy of their inveterate foes; and still to retain possession of that battery, whence another man with half his abilities might have blown all those foes to atoms.

If I return thus frequently to the abandonment of the cause by Sir Francis Burdett, it is only on account of its necessity to our own justification. I am quite convinced, indeed, that, if he had done his duty; if he had met the Ministers boldly upon the concluding part of the Prince Regent's Speech; if he had brought forward an amendment such as that which was proposed by my Lord COCHRANE, and which, when moved, he was not present to second; if he had moved an adjournment of the debate, which he had it in his absolute power to carry; if he had amply discussed here, at the threshold, the question of the conduct of the Reformers, which he knew to be perfectly good; if he had here dared the Ministers to the proof of their allegations; if he had here repelled all the falsehoods of the assertions and insinuations of our enemies; if he had exposed, in their true form and colour, the conduct of such men as Lord Milton, Mr. Wm. Elliott, and some others; if he had, at subsequent periods of the proceedings, opposed the measures with zeal and resolution, and not by now and then a speech in general terms, but by Resolutions, drawn up with clearness and strength, amplified by interesting facts, and leading the mind on to practical conclusions; if he had done these things, which form only a small part of what an able, industrious and zealous man would have done, in such a crisis; I do not say, that he would have prevented any of the measures from being adopted, though I do not know that he might not have succeeded even so far; but, I am quite sure, that, if he had acted thus, he would have stricken so much terror into the hearts of our enemies, and would have excited so much spirit in the people, that any measures that had been adopted would have fallen far short of those that were finally put in force.

If Sir Francis Burdett or any of his friends, adopting the old desponding strain, which is always the sure symptom of disinclination for exertion; if he or they should treat this idea of mine as chimerical, and should sy that it was perfectly useless to contend against the Boroughmongers

in this case; the first answer to this would be, Why do you not, then, give the thing up at once? Why do you keep talking about this question of Reform? If it be useless for you to carry on the contest in Parliament, it certainly must be useless for us to be carrying on the contest out of doors, where we neither dare write nor speak. Another answer is the good old maxim of men of pluck, namely; that men do not know what they can do till they try. Lord HOLLAND reminded the Ministers of this maxim, when they said that the libel-laws were not sufficient to keep us in check; you have not tried those laws," said Lord Holland; but the Ministers had, it seems, been men of more hope than Sir Francis Burdett, for they said, We have tried. The Law-Officers have tried, and they "find that the authors of these cheap publications are too many for them; "for which reason we demand new laws to assist us." So that it appears that they had not given the thing up as hopeless, till they had actually found themselves beaten. But, a third answer is, that I think I can show reasonable grounds for believing, that if our cause had been fought with all the arms that it naturally furnished to Sir Francis, and with all the talent which he has at command, the dreadful measures against the people never would have been adopted.

You, my friends, know very well, that at the opening of every Session of Parliament, the mover and seconder to the Address in answer to the Speech are fixed upon before-hand; that they hold consultations with the Ministers; that they are fully apprized for many days before the Session opens of all that the Speech is to contain; and that they have their lessons as completely as any servant has the terms of an errand on which he is sent. Their speeches are as much the speeches of the Minister as the King's Speech is the speech of the Minister. These facts are notorious to the whole nation. Now, then, observe, that the mover of the Address at the opening of the last Session, Lord VALLETORT (whom I never heard of before) abused the Reformers in good set terms; but, he spoke very doubtingly as to its becoming necessary to adopt any measures at all pointed against us. The Seconder, Mr. DAWSON, made use of words peculiarly worthy of attention in this case. "These Demagogues," he said, were like the fanatics of old, who went about with the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other, preaching peace and benevolence, while they meditated war and bloodshed." In which sentence, if the honourable gentleman did not justly describe us, he most aptly described our enemies; for all the Bible-Society-people were flying upon us like so many vultures; and they, it was, and not we, who had been seeking war and bloodshed abroad for so many years, and who now sought to employ the scourge of despotism at home. But; "he hoped, however, that the good sense and loyalty of the country would defeat "the projects of the demagogues, and THẮT NO STRONG MEASURES "WOULD BE REQUISITE TO PUT THEM DOWN.” Now, my friends, when you consider the capacity in which Mr. Dawson was when he uttered these words, I think it is impossible for you not to see that, up to this time, the Ministers had by no means made up their minds to propose any strong measures at all, much less such measures as they did at last propose. Indeed, if you look at their own speeches during the debate upon the Prince's Speech, you will find nothing that does not tend to confirm this opinion. There is no question but all their Green-Bagstory was ready, and that they most anxiously wished to shut up the people's mouths, stop their pens, and to have every man's person placed at

their mercy; there is no doubt that this was their wish, and I think there is as little doubt of their not daring to propose it till they had felt the pulse of those who had the power to give a check to the accomplishment of that wish. But, when they heard not one single voice in defence of the people; when they learnt, as they very speedily would, the curious history of the fox-hunting trip to Leicestershire, of the coming down to the Parliament-house door in a post-chaise from that county, while there was nobody to receive hundreds of petitions in St. James's Place, except Sir Francis's porter; when they learnt all this curious history; when they heard speaker after speaker amongst the "gentlemen opposite" falling on upon the Reformers with every species of calumny; when they saw Lawyer Brougham amongst this group of dignified revilers; when they heard not one man to open his lips in defence of the Reformers except my Lord Cochrane; and when they saw Sir Francis not present to second an amendment which contained the only thing that was said in our defence; when they learnt and when they saw all this, then they drew their lance and came on us full speed. There were no longer doubts and hesitations. They knew before of the son's being in the standing army in time of peace; they knew of all that had passed at Brighton; they saw, in short, that they had got the muzzle upon the guardian of the flock, and that they might fall on and devour it at pleasure.

My worthy friends, let us no longer be the dupes of men of ungovernable ambition, at the same time that their envies and their jealousies totally disable them from rendering any service to the country. In the history of the momentous events, concerning which I am addressing you, there is no circumstance of a tenth part of the importance as this abandonment of the people by Sir Francis Burdett. No army ever owed its ruin to the defection of a General more decidedly than we owe our temporary defeat to this abandonment. Now, indeed, at the Westminster Dinner, Sir Francis talks the matter well enough in some respects; but, when he talks of the people's resisting, he seems to have forgotten how little disposition he showed to resist, when he might, as I have shown above, have done it with so much effect and with perfect safety. He sat silent while he saw the chains forging for us; he said very little while they were putting round our hands and our feet; but now when he sees us safely manacled, now he hears our fetters rattle, and feels himself in a state of safety (mark that!) he most courageously calls upon us to imitate our forefathers, and use the right of resistance! Sir Francis, my worthy friends, was the perpetual Chairman of the famous Hampden Club,. consisting, it was said, of a hundred gentlemen, who have amongst them, landed estates amounting to three hundred thousand pounds a-year of rent. Before Sir Francis calls upon the people again to imitate their forefathers in exercising the right of resistance, let us hope that he will show us the way by imitating the conduct of Hampden; and, when he again talks of resistance before he has put in this claim to our confidence, let us ask him seriously, whether he would advise the people to oppose their naked breasts to those bayonets, which it may become the military duty of his son to order to be plunged into those breasts ?

Oh, no, my friends! This big and unmeaning talk comes too late. When Sir Francis, at the last Westminster Dinner, boasted of being surrounded by so many respectable gentlemen," as he was pleased to call them, and grounded his confidence of final success upon their support,

he did not recollect, perhaps, that there was not one single family, to which those respectable gentlemen belonged, who had not used their utmost exertions, including all manner of acts of foulness and of baseness, to prevent the Electors of Westminster from having any more real voice in choosing their Representatives than the people of Salisbury or of Winchester have. It is very well known to Sir Francis Burdett, that, until the grand stir which was made in Westminster by the gallant, though unfortunate Mr. PAUL, and myself, aided by some excellent men in the middle and lower walks of life, the people of Westminster were no more represented in Parliament than the people of Manchester now are. The great families of the two factions had come to a compromise many years before. One party put in one of the Members, and the other party put in the other. At the death of Mr. Fox the Whigs put in Lord PERCY. SHERIDAN wished to be put in, but the DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND carried too heavy mettle. He spoke in Parliament with seven mouths, and poor SHERIDAN had no mouth at all, unless some one was pleased to give him

one.

The Duke's triumph, however, was but short. The Parliament was dissolved, and, at the general election, the Whigs intended to put in SHERIDAN for their man, and the Pittites Sir SAMUEL HOOD. Mr. PAUL became a candidate on the popular ground; and though he was not returned Member for Westminster; though Sheridan and Sir Samuel Hood were returned, they went into Parliament so battered, so bruised, that, when the next general election took place, at the end of a very few months, their old sores still smarted too acutely to suffer them to venture before the people again; and the great families on both sides, dreading a repetition of the strokes which they had received across the backs of their tools, thought it prudent to keep quiet, and to leave the people to themselves. It was at this time that the fatal dispute arose between Mr. Paul and Sir Francis; and though the former was guilty of very hasty conduct, and was by no means justified in putting Sir Francis's life in peril, I have always been one of those who thought him not fairly treated. The truth is, that it was not true that Sir Francis disliked to make common cause with Mr. Paul on account of the expense. How could it be so, when he had been so unsparing of money in his Middlesex elections! Nor, could he dislike the public conduct or the principles of Mr. Paul; for not only had he always expressed his approbation of both, but, at Mr. Paul's former contest against Sheridan, Sir Francis had most generously subscribed and punctually paid, a thousand pounds towards Mr. Paul's expenses. No, but Mr. Paul was become exceedingly popular, and Sir Francis did not wish success to a rival in popularity. No matter for Mr. Paul's inferior talents; and, surely, they were as much inferior to those of Sir Francis, as those of SOUTHEY or GIFFORD are inferior to those of POPE, of whom Gifford, particularly, is the imitator, even to plundering. Mr. PAUL was nothing in point of talent, nor in point of weight of character, compared with Sir Francis Burdett; but, still, he had the outward appearance of great popularity, and it was easy to perceive, that his zeal, personal courage (of which no man that I ever saw possessed more), his industry, and his perseverance would not have suffered that popularity to diminish. This was the cause, and the only cause, in my opinion, of the breach between them. Similar, too, I am fully convinced, was the cause of the recent extraordinary conduct of Sir Francis, with regard to the Spa-fields Meetings; with regard to the amendment proposed by my Lord Cochrane; with regard to the petition of the Box DUGOOD; and finally,