=Source.=--_Lord Macaulay's Speeches_, 1854. Sir, the public feeling concerning reform is of no such recent origin, and springs from no such frivolous causes. Its first faint commencement may be traced far, very far, back in our history. During seventy years that feeling has had a great influence on the public mind. Through the first thirty years of the reign of George the Third, it was gradually increasing. The great leaders of the two parties in the state were favourable to reform. Plans of reform were supported by large and most respectable minorities in the House of Commons. The French Revolution, filling the higher and middle classes with an extreme dread of change, and the war calling away the public attention from internal to external politics, threw the question back; but the people never lost sight of it. Peace came, and they were at leisure to think of domestic improvements. Distress came, and they suspected, as was natural, that their distress was the effect of unfaithful stewardship and unskilful legislation. An opinion favourable to parliamentary reform grew up rapidly, and became strong among the middle classes. But one tie, one strong tie, still bound those classes to the Tory party. I mean the Catholic question. It is impossible to deny that, on that subject, a large proportion, a majority, I fear, of the middle class of Englishmen, conscientiously held opinions opposed to those which I have always entertained, and were disposed to sacrifice every other consideration to what they regarded as a religious duty. Thus the Catholic question hid, so to speak, the question of parliamentary reform. The feeling in favour of parliamentary reform grew, but it grew in the shade. Every man, I think, must have observed the progress of that feeling in his own social circle. But few reform meetings were held, and few petitions in favour of reform presented. At length the Catholics were emancipated; the solitary link of sympathy which attached the people to the Tories was broken; the cry of "No popery" could no longer be opposed to the cry of "Reform." That which, in the opinion of the two great parties in parliament, and of a vast portion of the community, had been the first question, suddenly disappeared; and the question of parliamentary reform took the first place. Then was put forth all the strength which had been growing in silence and obscurity. Then it appeared that reform had on its side a coalition of interests and opinions unprecedented in our history, all the liberality and intelligence which had supported the Catholic claims, and all the clamour which had opposed them. BATTLE SONG (1832). =Source.=--Ebenezer Elliott's _Poems_, 1832.