The happiest portions of his speeches were those in which he endeavoured, by artful appeals to the good sense and patriotism of his hearers, to win them over to his views; and the frequent success that attended such efforts is their highest praise.  He seldom attempted an ambitious flight, and when he did his best friends felt it was not his true line.  He dealt but little in figurative language, except when argument failed him; still he has left some specimens of much beauty in this style.  In his great speech introducing Catholic Emancipation in 1829, he told Parliament it had but two courses to follow—­to advance or to recede; to advance by conceding the Catholic claims, or to recede by reimposing those portions of the penal laws already repealed.  Dwelling on the impossibility and insanity of the latter course, he said:  “We cannot replace the Roman Catholics in the position in which we found them, when the system of relaxation and indulgence began.  We have given them the opportunity of acquiring education, wealth, and power.  We have removed with our own hands the seal from the vessel in which a mighty spirit was enclosed; but it will not, like the genius in the fable, return within its narrow confines to gratify our curiosity, and to enable us to cast it back into the obscurity from which we evoked it.”  Here is another specimen from his speech on the Reform Bill of 1832.  He opposed that Bill with all his energy, as is well known.  Lord Durham, a very advanced reformer for his time, and son-in-law to Earl Grey, the Prime Minister, was known to have influenced that nobleman in retaining the most liberal clauses of the bill.  For his years he was a very juvenile looking man, which gave point to Sir Robert Peel’s words when he said so happily:  “It would appear as if the reins of the State had been confided to some youthful and inexperienced hands; and who, left without any guiding principle, or any controlling sense of duty, were rushing on with headlong violence which wiser men could neither moderate nor restrain....  They should have said to any one of these persons, whose ambition made him press for an employment so fraught with danger to himself and injury to others,

     ’ ——­ non est tua tuta voluntas. 
     Magna petis, Phaeton, et quae nec viribus istis
     Munera conveniant, nec tam puerilibus annis!’

They should have given him the salutary caution that the fiery steeds which he aspired to guide required the hand of restraint and not the voice of incitement—­

     ’Sponte sua properant; labor est inhibere voluntas;
     Parce, puer, stimulis, ac fortius uteri loris.’

If the caution had not been given, or if it had been disregarded, let them hope, at least, that the example of their suffering might be a warning to others, and that another lesson to the folly and rashness of mankind might be read by the light of their conflagration.”