"These riots, this breaking of machinery, this tumult in many parts of the kingdom, to what is it due? To the spirit of reform? No. Rather is it due to the desire of the people for better conditions. The time has come when the voice of the people shall be heard, and that voice speaks in no uncertain accents. Too long has the government been in the hands of demagogues who have little to recommend them for election but corruption; and now all over this fair land of ours the people have arisen in their might, and demanded an extended suffrage. It is true, as Sir James has said, that great and good men have been returned from these pocket boroughs, but that single advantage can be offset by innumerable and inevitable disadvantages. These pocket boroughs are generally nests of corruption, held and dominated by some lord or landholder. The half a dozen or so good men that were placed in position by them can be offset by the hundreds of members that are fitter for Newgate than for the parliamentarian halls." "Men like James Lanyan," shouted some one in the crowd. An angry hue was on Sir James' countenance for a moment, but neither he nor Ande noticed the interruption. "What right has a green mound in a grassy field or a hayrick to send a representative, while great and flourishing towns like Manchester and Sheffield have none?" "Hear! Hear! Hear!" shouted many in the crowd. Continuing, Ande took up, one by one, the arguments of the opposition, and tore them shred by shred, until not a vestige remained. Then he triumphantly drew from his pocket a perfect arsenal of facts, culled from Sir James' speech of years ago, when, turned down for a time by his own party, he sought refuge in the ideas of reform. The very facts used in his conversation with Squire Vivian, Captain Tom Lanyan and the others, when around the tea table in Lanyan Hall so many years ago, and which facts he used in a speech on the hustings at that time, were quoted now, and they were like arrows piercing his very soul. The Conservative wing were silent with consternation, and Sir James looked down, uneasily. Then turning to the record of Sir James in the Commons, he quoted how he had again and again voted against the will of his constituents. Then after a few, withering flights of oratory, which sent the Radicals wild with delight and chilled the Conservatives into icy stillness, he said: