Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 4Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 4
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English essays
fathers were. We are no more like the men of the American war, or the
men of the gagging bills, than the men who cried "privilege" round the
coach of Charles the First were like the men who changed their religion
once a year at the bidding of Henry the Eighth. That there is such a
change, I can no more doubt than I can doubt that we have more power
looms, more steam engines, more gas lights, than our ancestors. That
there is such a change, the Minister will surely find who shall attempt
to fit the yoke of Mr Pitt to the necks of the Englishmen of the
nineteenth century. What then can you do to bring back those times
when the constitution of this House was an object of veneration to the
people? Even as much as Strafford and Laud could do to bring back the
days of the Tudors; as much as Bonner and Gardiner could do to bring
back the days of Hildebrand; as much as Villele and Polignac could do
to bring back the days of Louis the Fourteenth. You may make the change
tedious; you may make it violent; you may--God in his mercy forbid!--you
may make it bloody; but avert it you cannot. Agitations of the public
mind, so deep and so long continued as those which we have witnessed, do
not end in nothing. In peace or in convulsion, by the law, or in spite
of the law, through the Parliament, or over the Parliament, Reform must
be carried. Therefore be content to guide that movement which you cannot
stop. Fling wide the gates to that force which else will enter through
the breach. Then will it still be, as it has hitherto been, the peculiar
glory of our Constitution that, though not exempt from the decay which
is wrought by the vicissitudes of fortune, and the lapse of time, in all
the proudest works of human power and wisdom, it yet contains within
it the means of self-reparation. Then will England add to her manifold
titles of glory this, the noblest and the purest of all; that every
blessing which other nations have been forced to seek, and have too
often sought in vain, by means of violent and bloody revolutions, she
will have attained by a peaceful and a lawful Reform.
*****
ANATOMY BILL. (FEBRUARY 27, 1832) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF
COMMONS ON THE 27TH OF FEBRUARY, 1832.
On Monday, the twenty-seventh of February, 1832, the House took into
consideration the report of the Committee on Mr Warburton's Anatomy
Bill. Mr Henry Hunt attacked that bill with great asperity. In reply to
him the following Speech was made.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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