Gentlemen, there seems at first something incongruous that one should be addressing the population of so influential and intelligent a county as Lancashire who is not locally connected with them, and, gentlemen, I will frankly admit that this circumstance did for a long time make me hesitate in accepting your cordial and generous invitation.  But, gentlemen, after what occurred yesterday, after receiving more than two hundred addresses from every part of this great county, after the welcome which then greeted me, I feel that I should not be doing justice to your feelings, I should not do my duty to myself, if I any longer consider my presence here to-night to be an act of presumption.  Gentlemen, though it may not be an act of presumption, it still is, I am told, an act of great difficulty.  Our opponents assure us that the Conservative party has no political program; and, therefore, they must look with much satisfaction to one whom you honor to-night by considering him the leader and representative of your opinions when he comes forward, at your invitation, to express to you what that program is.  The Conservative party are accused of having no program of policy.  If by a program is meant a plan to despoil churches and plunder landlords, I admit we have no program.  If by a program is meant a policy which assails or menaces every institution and every interest, every class and every calling in the country, I admit we have no program.  But if to have a policy with distinct ends, and these such as most deeply interest the great body of the nation, be a becoming program for a political party, then I contend we have an adequate program, and one which, here or elsewhere, I shall always be prepared to assert and to vindicate.

Gentlemen, the program of the Conservative party is to maintain the constitution of the country.  I have not come down to Manchester to deliver an essay on the English constitution; but when the banner of Republicanism is unfurled—­when the fundamental principles of our institutions are controverted—­I think, perhaps, it may not be inconvenient that I should make some few practical remarks upon the character of our constitution upon that monarchy limited by the co-ordinate authority of the estates of the realm, which, under the title of Queen, Lords, and Commons, has contributed so greatly to the prosperity of this country, and with the maintenance of which I believe that prosperity is bound up.

Gentlemen, since the settlement of that constitution, now nearly two centuries ago, England has never experienced a revolution, though there is no country in which there has been so continuous and such considerable change.  How is this?  Because the wisdom of your forefathers placed the prize of supreme power without the sphere of human passions.  Whatever the struggle of parties, whatever the strife of factions, whatever the excitement and exaltation of the public mind, there has always been something in this country