we, who have not a greater than Sebastopol at Gibraltar; we, who have not an impregnable fortress at Malta, who have not spent the fortune of a nation almost in the Ionian Islands; we, who are doing nothing at Alderney; we are to take offence at the fortifications of Cherbourg!  There are few persons who at some time or other have not been brought into contact with a poor unhappy fellow creature who has some peculiar delusion or suspicion pressing on his mind.  I recollect a friend of mine going down from Derby to Leeds in the train with a very quiet and respectable-looking gentleman sitting opposite to him.  They had both been staying at the Midland Hotel, and they began talking about it.  All at once the gentleman said, ’Did you notice anything particular about the bread at breakfast?’ ‘No,’ said my friend, ‘I did not.’  ‘Oh! but I did,’ said the poor gentleman, ’and I am convinced there was an attempt made to poison me, and it is a very curious thing that I never go to an hotel without I discover some attempt to do me mischief.’  The unfortunate man was labouring under one of the greatest calamities which can befall a human creature.

But what are we to say of a nation which lives under a perpetual delusion that it is about to be attacked, a nation which is the most combined on the face of the earth, with little less than 30,000,000 of people all united under a Government which, though we intend to reform it, we do not the less respect, and which has mechanical power and wealth to which no other country offers any parallel?  There is no causeway to Britain; the free waves of the sea flow day and night for ever round her shores, and yet there are people going about with whom this hallucination is so strong that they do not merely discover it quietly to their friends, but they write it down in double-leaded columns, in leading articles.  Nay, some of them actually get up on platforms and proclaim it to hundreds and thousands of their fellow countrymen.  I should like to ask you whether these delusions are to last for ever, whether this policy is to be the perpetual policy of England, whether these results are to go on gathering and gathering until there come, as come there must inevitably, some dreadful catastrophe on our country?

I should like to-night, if I could, to inaugurate one of the best and holiest revolutions that ever took place in this country.  We have had a dozen revolutions since some of us were children.  We have had one revolution in which you had a great share, a great revolution of opinion on the question of the suffrage.  Does it not read like madness that men, thirty years ago, were frantic at the idea of the people of Birmingham having a L10 franchise?  Does it not seem something like idiotcy to be told that a banker in Leeds, when it was proposed to transfer the seats of one rotten borough to the town of Leeds, should say (and it was repeated in the House of Commons on his authority) that if the people of Leeds had the franchise conferred upon them it would not be possible to keep the bank doors open with safety, and that he should remove his business to some quiet place out of danger from the savage race that peopled that town?  But now all confess that the people are perfectly competent to have votes, and nobody dreams of arguing that the privilege will make them less orderly.