“The case that the people have is too strong to be resisted; an answer may be made to it, which will satisfy enlightened people perhaps, but none that the mass will be satisfied with.  I am doubtful whether it is not your duty and my duty to become moderate Reformers, to keep off worse.”

In 1820 he wrote:—­“I think all wise men should begin to turn their faces Reform-wards.”  In 1821 he writes about the state of parties in the House of Commons:—­

“Of all ingenious instruments of despotism, I most commend a popular assembly where the majority are paid and hired, and a few bold and able men, by their brave speeches, make the people believe they are free.”

And then again, with regard to religious liberty, what can be finer than his protest against the spirit of persecution?—­

“I admit there is a vast luxury in selecting a particular set of Christians and in worrying them as a boy worries a puppy dog; it is an amusement in which all the young English are brought up from their earliest days.  I like the idea of saying to men who use a different hassock from me, that till they change their hassock, they shall never be Colonels, Aldermen, or Parliament-men.  While I am gratifying my personal insolence respecting religious forms, I fondle myself into an idea that I am religious, and that I am doing my duty in the most exemplary (as I certainly am in the most easy) way.”

It may perhaps be dangerous to persecute the Roman Catholics of Ireland.  They are many, they are spirited—­they may turn round and hurt us.  It might be wiser to try our hands on some small body like the Evangelicals of Clapham or the followers of William Wilberforce (at whom in passing he aims a Shandeau sneer).—­

“We will gratify the love of insolence and power; we will enjoy the old orthodox sport of witnessing the impotent anger of men compelled to submit to civil degradation, or to sacrifice their notions of truth to ours.  And all this we may do without the slightest risk, because their numbers are (as yet) not very considerable.  Cruelty and injustice must, of course, exist:  but why connect them with danger?  Why torture a bull-dog, when you can get a frog or a rabbit?  I am sure my proposal will meet with the most universal approbation.  Do not be apprehensive of any opposition from Ministers.  If it is a case of hatred, we are sure that one man[155] will defend it by the Gospel:  if it abridges human freedom, we know that another[156] will find precedents for it in the Revolution.”

As years went on, he was sometimes displeased by the doings of his Liberal friends, but he was never “stricken by the palsy of candour”; he never forsook the good cause for which he had fought so steadily, never made terms with political deserters.  After the Conservative triumph of 1841 he wrote:—­“The country is in a state of political transition, and the shabby are preparing their consciences and opinions for a tack.”