from the Chair.  “The noble Lord had but a few days for deliberation, and that at a time when great agitation prevailed, and when the country required a strong and efficient Ministry to conduct the government of the State.  At such a period a few days are as momentous as months would be at another period.  It is not by the clock that we should measure the importance of the changes that might take place during such an interval.  I owe no allegiance to the noble Lord who has been transferred to another place; but as a member of this House I cannot banish from my memory the extraordinary eloquence of that noble person within these walls,—­an eloquence which has left nothing equal to it behind; and when I behold the departure of the great man from amongst us, and when I see the place in which he sat, and from which he has so often astonished us by the mighty powers of his mind, occupied this evening by the honourable member who has commenced this debate, I cannot express the feelings and emotions to which such circumstances give rise.”

Parliament adjourned over Christmas; and on the 1st of March 1831 Lord John Russell introduced the Reform Bill amidst breathless silence, which was at length broken by peals of contemptuous laughter from the Opposition benches, as he read the list of the hundred and ten boroughs which were condemned to partial or entire disfranchisement.  Sir Robert Inglis led the attack upon a measure that he characterised as Revolution in the guise of a statute.  Next morning as Sir Robert was walking into town over Westminster Bridge, he told his companion that up to the previous night he had been very anxious, but that his fears were now at an end, inasmuch as the shock caused by the extravagance of the ministerial proposals would infallibly bring the country to its senses.  On the evening of that day Macaulay made the first of his Reform speeches.  When he sat down the Speaker sent for him, and told him that in all his prolonged experience he had never seen the House in such a state of excitement.  Even at this distance of time it is impossible to read aloud the last thirty sentences without an emotion which suggests to the mind what must have been their effect when declaimed by one who felt every word that he spoke, in the midst of an assembly agitated by hopes and apprehensions such as living men have never known, or have long forgotten. ["The question of Parliamentary Reform is still behind.  But signs, of which it is impossible to misconceive the import, do most clearly indicate that, unless that question also be speedily settled, property, and order, and all the institutions of this great monarchy, will he exposed to fearful peril.  Is it possible that gentlemen long versed in high political affairs cannot read these signs?  Is it possible that they can really believe that the Representative system of England, such as it now is, will last to the year 1860?  If not, for what would they have us wait?  Would they have us wait, merely that