The peculiarities of Macaulay’s oratory were strikingly similar to those of his writings. With the exception, however, of his speech on the government of India, no one of his orations has the elaborateness so characteristic of his essays. Perhaps the most vivid notion of the methods and qualities of his address is conveyed by the description that appeared in the “Noctes Ambrosianæ” immediately after the delivery of the speech selected for this volume. It is the description of a most ardent political enemy and a most energetic hater of all Whigs. After saying that Macaulay is “the cleverest declaimer on the Whig side of the House,” Wilson goes on to say: “He is an ugly, cross-made, splay-footed, shapeless little dumpling of a fellow, with a featureless face too—except, indeed, a good expansive forehead,—sleek, puritanical, sandy hair, large glimmering eyes, and a mouth from ear to ear. He has a lisp and burr, moreover, and speaks thickly and huskily for several minutes before he gets into the swing of his discourse; but after that nothing can be more dazzling than his whole execution. What he says is substantially, of course, stuff and nonsense; but it is so well worded, and so volubly and forcibly delivered—there is such an endless string of epigram and antithesis—such a flashing of epithets, such an accumulation of images, and the voice is so trumpet-like, and the action so grotesquely emphatic, that you might hear a pin drop in the House. Even Manners Sutton himself listens.” LORD MACAULAY. ON THE REFORM BILL OF 1832; HOUSE OF COMMONS, MARCH 2, 1831. The privilege of representation in the House of Commons was early conferred on different localities for a variety of reasons. Before the end of the seventeenth century the constituency of the House had come to be fixed. Seats were held by representatives of counties and of such cities and boroughs as for one reason or another had been admitted as a mark of royal favor. In the course of the eighteenth century it came to be plainly seen that the development of the country was constantly increasing the anomalies and inequalities of representation. Boroughs which in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had received the right of representation continued to send one or two members, even though as in some localities the population had entirely dwindled away; and large cities like Liverpool, Manchester, and Leeds had grown up to a population of hundreds of thousands without any representation whatever.