Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth CenturyJoy, James Richard
History
Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century
Joy, James Richard
England -- Biography
I should turn and rend the cere-clothes round me,
Giant sinews I should borrow,
Crying, "Oh, my brothers, I have also loved her,
In her loneliness and sorrow.
"Let me join with you the jubilant procession,
Let me chant with you her story;
Then contented I shall go back to the shamrocks
Now mine eyes have seen her glory."
X
LORD BEACONSFIELD
[The speech which most endeared Disraeli to the Tories was
delivered in the House of Commons January 22,1846. Peel had just
declared his conversion to free trade and his intention to repeal
the Corn Law duties, when Disraeli rose and in behalf of the
unconverted Tory protectionists poured his fire into the face of
the Prime Minister.]
Sir, I rise with some feeling of embarrassment to address the
House at this stage of the debate, as it is only since I have
entered the House that I have had the advantage of reading her
Majesty's speech; and I had understood that the great question
which now agitates the country was not to be discussed on the
present occasion.....I should have abstained from intruding
myself on the House at the present moment, had it not been for
the peculiar tone of the right honorable gentleman (Sir Robert
Peel). I think that tone ought not to pass unnoticed. At the same
time I do not wish to conceal my opinions on the general subject.
I am not one of the converts. I am, perhaps, a member of a fallen
party. To the opinions which I have expressed in this House in
favor of protection I adhere. They sent me to this House, and if
I had relinquished them, I should have relinquished my seat also.
I must say that the tone of the right honorable gentleman is
hardly fair towards the House, while he stops discussion upon a
subject on which he himself has entered and given vent to his
feelings with a fervency unusual to him. Sir, I admire a minister
who says he holds power to give effect to his own convictions.
These are sentiments that we must all applaud. Unfortunate will
be the position of this country when a minister pursues a line of
policy adverse to the convictions which he himself entertains.
But when we come to a question of such high delicacy as the
present, we may be permitted to ask ourselves what are the
circumstances which require one so able, and one so eminent, to
enter upon the vindication of himself, and to rise in this House,
amid the cheers of his former opponents, to place himself in a
position of an apologetical character to those who were once of
his own party? I have no doubt that the right honorable gentleman
has arrived at a conscientious conclusion on this great subject.
The right honorable gentleman says that it is not so much by
force of argument as by the cogency of observation that he has
arrived at this conclusion. But, sir, surely the observation
which the right honorable gentleman has made might have been made
when he filled a post scarcely less considerable than that which
he now occupies, and enjoyed power scarcely less ample than that
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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