'I am aware,' he said, 'that it is a doctrine frequently urged, and I perceive dwelt upon in this petition, that every male of a certain age has a right, absolute and inalienable, to elect a representative to take his place among the members in the Commons' House of Parliament. Now, sir, I never could understand that indefeasible right. It appears to me that that question, like every other in the practical application of politics, is to be settled by the institutions and the laws of the country of which the person is a native. I see no more right that a person twenty-one years of age has to elect a member of parliament than he has to be a juryman. I conceive that you may just as well say that every adult male has a right to sit upon a jury to decide the most complicated and difficult questions of property, or that every man has a right to exercise the judicial functions, as the people did in some of the republics of antiquity. These things, as it appears to me, are not matters of right; but if it be for the good of the people at large, if it be conducive to the right government of the state, if it tend to the maintenance of the freedom and welfare of the people, that a certain number, defined and limited by a reference to a fixed standard of property, should have the right of electing members of parliament, and if it be disadvantageous to the community at large that the right of suffrage should be universal, then I say that on such a subject the consideration of the public good should prevail, that legislation must act upon it as on every other, and that no inalienable right can be quoted against that which the good of the whole demands.' If Lord Russell did not, I do see a difference between the claim of an elector and the right of a juryman. The elector is chiefly concerned with his own interests, the juryman with other people's--one is simple, the other complex. But with the measure of right laid down by his lordship in the sentiments I have quoted, I perfectly accord, and if it could be shown that freedom of expression produced public harm, then I would give it up. But I believe such a right would produce good, and therefore I claim it at your hands upon the ground of public good.