Could you see and hear what I have seen and heard during this Rural Ride, you would no longer say, that the House "works well." Mrs. Canning and your children are dear to you; but, Sir, not more dear than are to them the wives and children of, perhaps, two hundred thousand men, who, by the Acts of this same House, see those wives and children doomed to beggary, and to beggary, too, never thought of, never regarded as more likely than a blowing up of the earth or a falling of the sun. It was reserved for this "working well" House to make the fire-sides of farmers scenes of gloom. These fire-sides, in which I have always so delighted, I now approach with pain. I was, not long ago, sitting round the fire with as worthy and as industrious a man as all England contains. There was his son, about 19 years of age; two daughters from 15 to 18; and a little boy sitting on the father's knee. I knew, but not from him, that there was _a mortgage_ on his farm. I was anxious to induce him _to sell without delay_. With this view I, in an hypothetical and round-about way, approached _his case_, and at last I came to final consequences. The deep and deeper gloom on a countenance, once so cheerful, told me what was passing in his breast, when turning away my looks in order to seem not to perceive the effect of my words, I saw the eyes of his wife full of tears. She had made the application; and there were her children before her! And am I to be _banished for life_ if I express what I felt upon this occasion! And does this House, then, "work well?" How many men, of the most industrious, the most upright, the most exemplary, upon the face of the earth, have been, by this one Act of this House, driven to despair, ending in madness or self-murder, or both! Nay, how many scores! And, yet, are we to be banished for life, if we endeavour to show, that this House does not "work well?"--However, banish or banish not, these facts are notorious: _the House_ made all the _Loans_ which constitute the debt: _the House_ contracted for the Dead Weight: _the House_ put a stop to gold-payments in 1797: _the House_ unanimously passed Peel's Bill. Here are _all_ the causes of the ruin, the misery, the anguish, the despair, and the madness and self-murders. Here they are _all_. They have all been Acts of this House; and yet, we are to be banished if we say, in words suitable to the subject, that this House does not "_work well_!"