I have before alluded to the two great struggles in the history of this country, which, occasioned by the arbitrary encroachments of those in power, led to the more sure establishment of our constitutional privileges. These revolutions and their results, which have been the wonder and admiration of all foreign writers, owing to their success, and the sober and resolute method in which they were conducted, were chiefly brought about through the union of all classes in opposition to these encroachments,—a union not marred by selfish and party interests. These great struggles are worthy of the deep and earnest contemplation of every English man and woman who cares for the welfare of our country, and who, conscious of the ever-recurring tendency in human nature to spoliation and aggression, is sternly jealous of the rights and blessings purchased by the efforts and by the blood of our forefathers. Alarmed again in our own day by the insidious advances of despotic power in the midst of us, and convinced that what is morally wrong can never be politically right, they will turn an earnest and searching gaze upon these records of the past, and in doing so cannot fail to be stimulated to hold fast and contend for, even to death if need be, those blessings which were so hardly and so nobly won. The battle which we have now to fight is in its essential character the same as those which resulted formerly in confirmations of our liberties, and in a firmer establishment of a just and virtuous state. The principles arrayed on either side in this conflict are essentially the same as those which inspired the combatants of the past. Great constitutional rights have ever been vindicated by those out of power against the encroachments of those in power; but the scene of the battle is changed. It is not now the Barons arrayed against the King, nor the insulted Commons against the Court party, and the aggressions of favourites in power. The tyranny which we are now opposing has sprung up in a quarter which in the era of the English Revolution could scarcely have been suspected as likely ever to become dangerous. Our present peril arises from the arbitrary disposition of permanent officers of the Government, aided by the blindness of Her Majesty’s ministers, and the contempt for, or ignorance of, our ancient constitutional rights which prevails among a proportion of the members of both of our Houses of Parliament. The power of the Crown, almost dead and rotten as prerogative, has grown up anew with far more strength in a new quarter, which, still possessing the confidence of the people, makes the exercise of that arbitrary power doubly dangerous. The painful discovery has been made that the forms of a free government and the ends of an arbitrary government are not incompatible. The evil principles at work in this piece of legislation to which we are opposed, went craftily, and too successfully, to work, and the conduct