The action taken has generally been considered as establishing an important constitutional precedent. The significance of the method resorted to has been well indicated by Bagehot in his brilliant work on the English constitution. He says of the Lords: “Their veto is a sort of hypothetical veto. They say: We reject your bill this once, or these twice, or even these thrice; but if you keep sending it up, at the last we won’t reject it. The House has ceased to be one of latent directors, and has become one of temporary rejectors and palpable alterers.” The following speech of Macaulay was one of the first of those delivered on the bill in the House of Commons. No other speech in the whole course of the discussion gave a more comprehensive view of the vast interests involved in the great measure. The day after the delivery of the speech his sister wrote: “His voice from cold and over-excitement got quite into a scream towards the last part. A person told him that he had not heard such speaking since Fox. ‘You have not heard such screaming since Fox,’ he replied.” It is a circumstance, sir, of happy augury for the motion before the House, that almost all those who have opposed it have declared themselves hostile on principle to parliamentary reform. Two members, I think, have confessed that, though they disapprove of the plan now submitted to us, they are forced to admit the necessity of a change in the representative system. Yet even those gentlemen have used, as far as I have observed, no arguments which would not apply as strongly to the most moderate change as to that which has been proposed by his Majesty’s Government. I say, sir, that I consider this as a circumstance of happy augury. For what I feared was, not the opposition of those who are averse to all reform, but the disunion of reformers. I knew that during three months every reformer had been employed in conjecturing what the plan of the government would be. I knew that every reformer had imagined in his own mind a scheme differing doubtless in some points from that which my noble friend, the Paymaster of the Forces (Lord John Russell), has developed. I felt, therefore, great apprehension that one person would be dissatisfied with one part of the bill, that another person would be dissatisfied with another part, and that thus our whole strength would be wasted in internal dissensions. That apprehension is now at an end. I have seen with delight the perfect concord which prevails among all who deserve the name of reformers in this House; and I trust that I may consider it as an omen of the concord which will prevail among reformers throughout the country. I will not, sir, at present express any opinion as to the details of the bill; but having during the last twenty-four hours given the most diligent consideration to its general principles, I have no hesitation in pronouncing it a wise, noble, and comprehensive measure,