Gentlemen, I have now endeavored to express to you my general views upon the most important subjects that can interest Englishmen.  They are subjects upon which, in my mind, a man should speak with frankness and clearness to his countrymen, and although I do not come down here to make a party speech, I am bound to say that the manner in which those subjects are treated by the leading subject of this realm is to me most unsatisfactory.  Although the prime minister of England is always writing letters and making speeches, and particularly on these topics, he seems to me ever to send forth an “uncertain sound.”  If a member of Parliament announces himself a Republican, Mr. Gladstone takes the earliest opportunity of describing him as a “fellow-worker” in public life.  If an inconsiderate multitude calls for the abolition or reform of the House of Lords, Mr. Gladstone says that it is no easy task, and that he must think once or twice, or perhaps even thrice, before he can undertake it.  If your neighbor, the member for Bradford, Mr. Miall, brings forward a motion in the House of Commons for the severance of Church and State, Mr. Gladstone assures Mr. Miall with the utmost courtesy that he believes the opinion of the House of Commons is against him, but that if Mr. Miall wishes to influence the House of Commons he must address the people out of doors; whereupon Mr. Miall immediately calls a public meeting, and alleges as its cause the advice he has just received from the prime minister.

But, gentlemen, after all, the test of political institutions is the condition of the country whose fortunes they regulate; and I do not mean to evade that test.  You are the inhabitants of an island of no colossal size; which, geographically speaking, was intended by nature as the appendage of some continental empire—­either of Gauls and Franks on the other side of the Channel or of Teutons and Scandinavians beyond the German Sea.  Such indeed, and for a long period, was your early history.  You were invaded; you were pillaged and you were conquered; yet amid all these disgraces and vicissitudes there was gradually formed that English race which has brought about a very different state of affairs.  Instead of being invaded, your land is proverbially the only “inviolate land”—­“the inviolate land of the sage and free.”  Instead of being plundered, you have attracted to your shores all the capital of the world.  Instead of being conquered, your flag floats on many waters, and your standard waves in either zone.  It may be said that these achievements are due to the race that inhabited the land, and not to its institutions.  Gentlemen, in political institutions are the embodied experiences of a race.  You have established a society of classes which give vigor and variety to life.  But no class possesses a single exclusive privilege, and all are equal before the law.  You possess a real aristocracy, open to all who desire to enter it.  You have not merely a middle class, but a hierarchy of middle classes, in which every degree of wealth, refinement, industry, energy, and enterprise is duly represented.