some thousands of persons put to death publicly for offences which are not now punishable with death.  Now, every man and woman in the kingdom would feel a thrill of horror if told that a fellow creature was to be put to death for such a cause.  These are revolutions in opinion, and let me tell you that when you accomplish, a revolution in opinion upon a great question, when you alter it from bad to good, it is not like charitably giving a beggar 6_d_., and seeing him no more, but it is a great beneficent act, which affects not merely the rich and the powerful, but penetrates every lane, every cottage in the land, and wherever it goes brings blessings and happiness.  It is not from statesmen that these things come.  It is not from them that have proceeded these great revolutions of opinion on the questions of Reform, Protection, Colonial Government, and Criminal Law, it was from public meetings such as this, from the intelligence and conscience of the great body of the people who have no interest in wrong, and who never go from the right but by temporary error and under momentary passion.

It is for you to decide whether our greatness shall be only temporary or whether it shall be enduring.  When I am told that the greatness of our country is shown by the L100,000,000 of revenue produced, may I not also ask how it is that we have 1,100,000 paupers in this kingdom, and why it is that L7,000,000 should be taken from the industry, chiefly of the labouring classes, to support a small nation, as it were, of paupers?  Since your legislation upon the Corn Laws, you have not only had nearly L20,000,000 of food brought into the country annually, but such an extraordinary increase of trade that your exports are about doubled, and yet I understand that in the year 1856, for I have no later return, there were no less than 1,100,000 paupers in the United Kingdom, and the sum raised in poor-rates was not less than L7,200,000.  And that cost of pauperism is not the full amount, for there is a vast amount of temporary, casual, and vagrant pauperism that does not come in to swell that sum.

Then do not you well know—­I know it, because I live among the population of Lancashire, and I doubt not the same may be said of the population of this city and county—­that just above the level of the 1,100,000 there is at least an equal number who are ever oscillating between independence and pauperism, who, with a heroism which is not the less heroic because it is secret and unrecorded, are doing their very utmost to maintain an honourable and independent position before their fellow men?  While Irish labour, notwithstanding the improvement which has taken place in Ireland, is only paid at the rate of about 1_s_. a day, while in the straths and glens of Scotland there are hundreds of shepherd families whose whole food almost consists of oatmeal porridge from day to day, and from week to week; while these things continue, I say that we have no reason to be self-satisfied and contented with our position; but that we who are in Parliament and are more directly responsible for affairs, and you who are also responsible though in a lower degree, are bound by the sacred duty which we owe our country to examine why it is that with all this trade, all this industry, and all this personal freedom, there is still so much that is unsound at the base of our social fabric?