There is sound wisdom in this, and it should be kept well in mind; but it seems to have been by no means considered by the framers of the crude measure before us. “But our new Jehu spurs the hot-mouthed horse, Instructs him well to know his native force, To take the bit between his teeth and fly, To the next headlong steep of anarchy.”[27] Passing to another point, I have to remind you that the Chancellor of the Exchequer frightened us the other day by giving us a prose version of Byron’s poem on “Darkness,” when we were told that our coal was all going to be consumed, and that we were to die like the last man and woman of our mutual hideousness. Upon that the Right Honorable Gentleman founded a proposition; and never was so practical a proposition worked out upon so speculative a basis. “You will have no coal in one hundred years,” he says, “and, therefore, pay your debts”; and, addressing the honorable gentlemen opposite, he says, “Commerce may die, navigation may die, and manufactures may die,--and die they will,--but land will remain, and you will be saddled with the debt.” That was the language of the Right Honorable Gentleman. Now, if we are to pay terminable annuities on the strength of the loss of our coal, do not you think we may apply the same dogma to this proposed reform of our Constitution? What is the Right Honorable Gentleman seeking to do by this Bill? He is seeking to take away power of control from the land--from that which is to remain when all those fine things I have mentioned have passed away in the future--from that which will be eventually saddled with the whole burden of the debt, and to place it in these fugitive and transitory elements which, according to the account he gave us, a breath has made and a breath can unmake. I ask, is that, upon the Right Honorable Gentleman’s own showing, sound prospective wisdom? I do not deal myself with such remote contingencies; I offer this simply as an _argumentum ad hominem_. I should like to hear the answer. I have a word to say with regard to the franchise. We have had a little light let in upon this subject. We are offered, as you all know, a £7 franchise. It is defended by the Chancellor of the Exchequer upon two grounds--flesh and blood, and fathers of families. The £7 franchise is defended by the honorable Member for Birmingham upon another ground; he takes his stand on the ancient lines of the British Constitution. I will suggest to him one line of the British Constitution, and I should like to know whether he means to stand by it. In his campaign of 1858, in which he had taken some liberties with the Crown and spoke with some disrespect of the Temporal Peers, he came to the Spiritual Peers, and this was the language he employed. He said, “That creature of monstrous--nay, of adulterous birth.” I suppose there is no part of the British Constitution much more ancient than the Spiritual Peers. Is that one