Brougham's versatility is further shown in the great variety of subjects on which he spoke. In one session of Parliament alone he made two hundred and thirty speeches. He surpassed his contemporaries not in profoundness of learning or force of logic, but in general knowledge, in fluency, in readiness of attack and retort, and in his gift of wit and ridicule. It is the test of a great mind to be able to make vigorous replies to powerful attacks. Such assaults stimulated him to his best work. He was the greatest political reformer of the day and proved to be in the right, for most of his reforms were finally adopted by the British people. He has been sneered at as a lawyer, but hardly a decision of his in chancery was ever reversed. This is evidence that his place as a leading member of the "most zealous and exacting of professions was fairly won." And his prolific work as an author, especially his critical and discriminative treatment of the "Statesmen of the time of George IV," gives him a well-deserved place among men of letters.

Perhaps the most masterly of Brougham's speeches was his defense of Queen Caroline, in the House of Lords. Mathews, in his "Oratory and Orators," speaks of this as "a masterpiece of dialectical and rhetorical skill. The rank and sex of his client, the malignant and brutal tyranny of her husband, George IV, the intense interest felt by the nation. in the result, the exalted character of the tribunal, the great array of hostile talent, learning, and eloquence—all conspired to call forth all the advocate's powers."

PARLIAMENTARY REFORM

This speech was delivered in the House of Lords, October 7, 1831. The bill up for discussion proposed a reapportionment of members for the House of Commons. The population of England had greatly increased. Many large cities, like Liverpool and Manchester, were without representatives, and some places which had one or two representatives had sunk into insignificance as far as population was concerned. These places came into the hands of the nobility of wealth, and seats were bought and sold openly. Brougham spoke for three hours on the bill "with a keenness of rebuke, a force of argument, and a boldness of declamation which secured him a respectful hearing, and extorted the confession from his adversary, Lord Lyndhurst, that a more powerful speech of the kind had never been delivered in the House of Lords."

I. PROPERTY QUALIFICATION

I have listened, my lords, with most profound attention, to the debate on this question, which has lasted during the past five days. My noble friend proceeded altogether on a false assumption; it was on a fiction of his own brain, on a device of his own imagination, that he spoke throughout. He first assumed that the bill meant change and revolution, and on change and revolution he predicted voluminously and successfully. Practically viewed, regarded as an argument on the question before us, it is to be wholly left out of view; it was quite beside the matter. If this bill be change and be revolution, there is no resisting the conclusions of my noble friend. But on that point I am at issue with him; and he begins by taking the thing in dispute for granted. I deny that this bill is change, in the bad sense of the word; nor does it lead to, nor has it any connection with, revolution except so far as it has a direct tendency to prevent revolution.

The noble earl complained that the Reform Bill shut the doors of Parliament against the eldest sons of peers, and thus deprived our successors of the best kind of political education. My lords, I freely admit the justice of his panegyric upon this constitutional training, by far the most useful which a statesman can receive; but I deny that the measure proposed will affect it, will obstruct

the passage to the House of Commons; it will rather clear and widen it to all who, like your Lordships' sons, ought to come. My noble friend who so admirably answered the noble earl in a speech distinguished by the most attractive eloquence, which went home to every heart, has already destroyed this topic by referring to the most notorious facts, by simply enumerating the open counties represented by peers' eldest sons. I have the happiness of knowing a young nobleman, whom to know is highly to esteem. He sat for a nomination borough; formed his own opinion; decided for the bill; differed with his family; they excluded him from Parliament, closing against him at least that avenue to a statesman's best education, and an heir apparent's most valued preparation for discharging the duties of the peerage. How did this worthy noble seek to reopen the door thus closed, and resume his political schooling? He threw himself upon a large community, canvassed a populous city, and started as a candidate for the suffrages of thousands, on the only ground which was open to such solicitation

he avowed himself a friend of the bill. The borough that rejected him was Tiverton, and the place to which the ejected member resorted for the means of completing his political education in one house, that he might one day be the ornament of the other, was the great town of Liverpool.

But the next argument of the noble earl brings me at once to a direct issue with him upon the great principle of the measure. The grand charge iterated by him, and reëchoed by his friends, is that population, not property, is assumed by the bill as the basis of representation. Now this is a mere fallacy, and a gross fallacy. I will not call it a willful misstatement; but I will demonstrate that two perfectly different things are, in different parts of this short proposition, carefully confounded, and described under the same equivocal name. If by basis of representation is meant the ground upon which it was deemed right, by the framers of the bill, that some places should send members to Parliament and others not, then I admit that there is some foundation for the assertions; but then it only applies to the new towns, and also it has no bearing

whatever upon the question. For the objection to taking mere population as a criterion in giving the elective franchise is, that such a criterion gives you electors without a qualification, and is, in fact, universal suffrage. And herein, my lords, consists the grievous unfairness of the statement I am sifting; it purposely mixes together different matters, and clothes them with an ambiguous covering, in order, by means of the confusion and the disguise, to insinuate that universal suffrage is at the root of the bill. Let us strip off this false garb. Is there in the bill anything resembling universal suffrage? Is it not framed upon the very opposite principles ?

I utterly deny that population is the test, and property disregarded, in arranging the borough representation. The franchise is conferred upon householders only. Is not this a restriction? Even if the right of voting has been given to all householders, still the suffrage would not have been universal; it would have depended on property, not on members; and it would have been a gross misrepresentation to call population the basis of the bill.

My lords, I have admitted that there is some truth in the assertion of population being made the criterion of title in towns to send representatives, though it has no application to the present controversy. Some criterion we were forced to take; for nobody holds that each place should choose members severally. A line must be drawn somewhere, and how could we find a better guide than population? That is the general test of wealth, extent, importance ; and therefore substantially, though not in name, it is really the test of property. The whole foundation of the measure, therefore, and on which all its parts rest, is property alone and not at all population.

My lords, I have been speaking of the manner in which owners of boroughs traffic, and exercise the right of sending members to Parliament. I have dwelt on no extreme cases; I have adverted to what passes every day before my eyes. See now the fruits of the system, also, by every day's experience. The Crown is stripped of its just weight in the government of the country by the masters of

rotten boroughs; they may combine; they do combine, and their union enables them to dictate their own terms. The people are stripped of their most precious rights by the masters of rotten boroughs, for they have usurped the elective franchise, and thus gained an influence in Parliament which enables them to prevent its restoration. Their nominees must vote according to the interest not of the nation at large, whom they affect to represent, but of a few individuals, whom alone they represent in reality. But so perverted have men's minds become, by the gross abuse to which they have been long habituated, that the grand topic has been that our reform will open the right of voting to vast numbers and interfere with the monopoly of the few; while we evade, as it is pleasantly called, the property of the peers and other borough holders. Why, say they, it absolutely amounts to representation! And wherefore should it not, I say? and what else ought it to be? Are we not upon the question of representation, and none other? Are we not dealing. with the subject of a representative body for the people? The question is how we may best make the people's House of Parliament represent the people; and in answer to the plan proposed, we hear nothing but the exclamations, "Why, this scheme of yours is a rank representation! It is downright election! It is nothing more or less than giving the people a voice in the choice of their own representatives! It is absolutely the most strange, unheard of, unimagined, and most abominable, intolerable, incredibly inconsistent and utterly pernicious novelty, that the members chosen should have electors, and that the constituents should have something to do with returning the members!"