own country, all the history of other countries, furnishes nothing parallel to it.  Look at the great events in our own former history, and in every one of them, which, for importance, we can venture to compare with the Reform Bill, we shall find something to disgrace and tarnish the achievement.  It was by the assistance of French arms and of Roman bulls that King John was harassed into giving the Great Charter.  In the times of Charles I., how much injustice, how much crime, how much bloodshed and misery, did it cost to assert the liberties of England!  But in this event, great and important as it is in substance, I confess I think it still more important from the manner in which it has been achieved.  Other countries have obtained deliverances equally signal and complete, but in no country has that deliverance been obtained with such perfect peace; so entirely within the bounds of the Constitution; with all the forms of law observed; the government of the country proceeding in its regular course; every man going forth unto his labour until the evening.  France boasts of her three days of July, when her people rose, when barricades fenced the streets, and the entire population of the capital in grins successfully vindicated their liberties.  They boast, and justly, of those three days of July; but I will boast of our ten days of May.  We, too, fought a battle, but it was with moral arms.  We, too, placed an impassable barrier between ourselves and military tyranny; but we fenced ourselves only with moral barricades.  Not one crime committed, not one acre confiscated, not one life lost, not one instance of outrage or attack on the authorities or the laws.  Our victory has not left a single family in mourning.  Not a tear, not a drop of blood, has sullied the pacific and blameless triumph of a great people.”

The Tories of Leeds, as a last resource, fell to denouncing Macaulay as a placeman; a stroke of superlative audacity in a party which, during eight-and-forty years, had been out of office for only fourteen months.  It may well be imagined that he found plenty to say in his own defence.  “The only charge which malice can prefer against me is that I am a placeman.  Gentlemen, is it your wish that those persons who are thought worthy of the public confidence should never possess the confidence of the King?  Is it your wish that no men should be Ministers but those whom no populous places will take as their representatives?  By whom, I ask, has the Reform Bill been carried?  By Ministers.  Who have raised Leeds into the situation to return members to Parliament?  It is by the strenuous efforts of a patriotic Ministry that that great result has been produced.  I should think that the Reform Bill had done little for the people, if under it the service of the people was not consistent with the service of the Crown.”