We are more easily consoled for the loss of the eloquence which then flowed so full and free in the debates of the Cambridge Union.  In 1820 that Society was emerging from a period of tribulation and repression.  The authorities of the university, who, as old constituents of Mr. Pitt and warm supporters of Lord Liverpool, had never been very much inclined to countenance the practice of political discussion among the undergraduates, set their faces against it more than ever at an epoch when the temper of the time increased the tendency of young men to run into extremes of partisanship.  At length a compromise was extorted from the reluctant hands of the Vice-Chancellor, and the Club was allowed to take into consideration public affairs of a date anterior to the century.  It required less ingenuity than the leaders of the Union had at their command to hit upon a method of dealing with the present under the guise of the past.  Motions were framed that reflected upon the existing Government under cover of a censure on the Cabinets of the previous generation.  Resolutions which called upon the meeting to declare that the boon of Catholic Emancipation should have been granted in the year 1795, or that our Commercial Policy previous to 1800 should have been founded on the basis of Free Trade, were clearly susceptible of great latitude of treatment.  And, again, in its character of a reading club, the Society, when assembled for the conduct of private business, was at liberty to review the political creed of the journals of the day in order to decide which of them it should take in, and which it should discontinue.  The Examiner newspaper was the flag of many a hard-fought battle; the Morning Chronicle was voted in and out of the rooms half-a-dozen times within a single twelvemonth; while a series of impassioned speeches on the burning question of interference in behalf of Greek Independence were occasioned by a proposition of Malden’s “that ‘e Ellenike salpigks’ do lie upon the table.”

At the close of the debates, which were held in a large room at the back of the Red Lion in Petty Cury, the most prominent members met for supper in the Hotel, or at Moultrie’s lodgings, which were situated close at hand.  They acted as a self-appointed Standing Committee, which watched over the general interests of the Union, and selected candidates whom they put in nomination for its offices.  The Society did not boast a Hansard;—­an omission which, as time went on, some among its orators had no reason to regret.  Faint recollections still survive of a discussion upon the august topic of the character of George the Third.  “To whom do we owe it,” asked Macaulay, “that while Europe was convulsed with anarchy and desolated with war, England alone remained tranquil, prosperous, and secure?  To whom but the Good Old King?  Why was it that, when neighbouring capitals were perishing in the flames, our own was illuminated only for triumphs? [This debate evidently made some noise in the university world.