The debate which followed Lord John Russell's motion for leave to bring in the Bill contained, as well might be expected, some very remarkable speeches. Three of these deserve the special attention of the student of history. The first illustrated the views of the extreme Tory of that day, and is indeed a political curiosity which ought never to be consigned to utter oblivion. This speech was made by Sir Robert Harry Inglis, who represented the University of Oxford. Sir Robert Inglis was a living embodiment of the spirit of old-world Toryism as it had come down to his day, Toryism which had in it little or nothing of the picturesque, half poetic sentiment belonging to the earlier wearers of the rebel rose, the flower symbolic of the Stuart dynasty. Sir Robert Inglis was a man of education, of intelligence, and of high principle. His sincerity was unquestioned, and his opinion would probably be well worth having on any question which was not concerned with the antagonism between Whig and Tory. Sir Robert argued boldly in his speech that the principle of representation had never been recognized by the Constitution as the Parliamentary system of England. He insisted that the sovereign had a perfect right to choose any representative he pleased from any constituency which it suited him to create. The King could delegate to any nobleman or gentleman his right of nominating a representative. Sir Robert scouted the idea that a large, prosperous, and populous town had any better claim to be represented in the House of Commons than the smallest village in the country. It was all a matter for the sovereign, and if the sovereign thought fit he had as good a right to invite any one he {145} pleased to represent an unpeopled plain as to represent Manchester, Leeds, or Sheffield. He denounced Russell's proposal to disfranchise the small nomination boroughs, and he used an argument which was employed in the same debate and by much wiser men than he in defence of the pocket boroughs and the whole system of nomination. Some of the most brilliant, gifted members of the House of Commons, he contended, had been sent into that House by the patrons and owners of such boroughs, and otherwise never could have got into Parliament at all, for they could not have borne the enormous expense of a county contest.