"When we are told that these men are leagued together, not only for the
destruction of their own comfort, but of their very means of
subsistence, can we forget that it is the bitter policy, the destructive
warfare, of the last eighteen years which has destroyed their comfort,
your comfort, all men's comfort;--that policy which, originating with
'great statesmen now no more,' has survived the dead to become a curse
on the living, unto the third and fourth generation! These men never
destroyed their looms till they were become useless,--worse than
useless; till they were become actual impediments to their exertions in
obtaining their daily bread. Can you then wonder that, in times like
these, when bankruptcy, convicted fraud, and imputed felony, are found
in a station not far beneath that of your Lordships, the lowest, though
once most useful, portion of the people should forget their duty in
their distresses, and become only less guilty than one of their
representatives? But while the exalted offender can find means to baffle
the law, new capital punishments must be devised, new snares of death
must be spread for the wretched mechanic who is famished into guilt.
These men were willing to dig, but the spade was in other hands: they
were not ashamed to beg, but there was none to relieve them. Their own
means of subsistence were cut off; all other employments pre-occupied;
and their excesses, however to be deplored or condemned, can hardly be
the subject of surprise.
"I have traversed the seat of war in the Peninsula I have been in some
of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey; but never, under the most
despotic of infidel governments, did I behold such squalid wretchedness
as I have seen since my return, in the very heart of a Christian
country. And what are your remedies? After months of inaction, and
months of action worse than inactivity, at length comes forth the grand
specific, the never-failing nostrum of all state physicians from the
days of Draco to the present time. After feeling the pulse, and shaking
the head over the patient, prescribing the usual course of warm water
and bleeding--the warm water of your mawkish police, and the lancets of
your military--these convulsions must terminate in death, the sure
consummation of the prescriptions of all political Sangrados. Setting
aside the palpable injustice and the certain inefficiency of the bill,
are there not capital punishments sufficient on your statutes? Is there
not blood enough upon your penal code, that more must be poured forth to
ascend to heaven and testify against you? How will you carry this bill
into effect? Can you commit a whole county to their own prisons? Will
you erect a gibbet in every field, and hang up men like scare-crows? or
will you proceed (as you must, to bring this measure into effect,) by
decimation; place the country under martial law; depopulate and lay
waste all around you, and restore Sherwood Forest as an acceptable gift
to the crown in its former condition of a royal chase, and an asylum for
outlaws? Are these the remedies for a starving and desperate populace?
Will the famished wretch who has braved your bayonets be appalled by
your gibbets? When death is a relief, and the only relief it appears
that you will afford him, will he be dragooned into tranquillity? Will
that which could not be effected by your grenadiers, be accomplished by
your executioners? If you proceed by the forms of law, where is your
evidence? Those who refused to impeach their accomplices, when
transportation only was the punishment, will hardly be tempted to
witness against them when death is the penalty. With all due deference
to the noble lords opposite, I think a little investigation, some
previous enquiry, would induce even them to change their purpose. That
most favourite state measure, so marvellously efficacious in many and
recent instances, _temporising_, would not be without its advantage in
this. When a proposal is made to emancipate or relieve, you hesitate,
you deliberate for years, you temporise and tamper with the minds of
men; but a death-bill must be passed off hand, without a thought of the
consequences."
In reference to his own parliamentary displays, and to this maiden
speech in particular, I find the following remarks in one of his
Journals:--
"Sheridan's liking for me (whether he was not mystifying me, I do not
know, but Lady Caroline Lamb and others told me that he said the same
both before and after he knew me,) was founded upon 'English Bards and
Scotch Reviewers.' He told me that he did not care about poetry, (or
about mine--at least, any but that poem of mine,) but he was sure, from
that and other symptoms, I should make an orator, if I would but take to
speaking, and grow a parliament man. He never ceased harping upon this
to me to the last; and I remember my old tutor, Dr. Drury, had the same
notion when I was a _boy_; but it never was my turn of inclination to
try. I spoke once or twice, as all young peers do, as a kind of
introduction into public life; but dissipation, shyness, haughty and
reserved opinions, together with the short time I lived in England
after my majority (only about five years in all), prevented me from
resuming the experiment. As far as it went, it was not discouraging,
particularly my _first_ speech (I spoke three or four times in all); but
just after it, my poem of Childe Harold was published, and nobody ever
thought about my _prose_ afterwards, nor indeed did I; it became to me a
secondary and neglected object, though I sometimes wonder to myself if I
should have succeeded."
* * * * *
His immediate impressions with respect to the success of his first
speech may be collected from a letter addressed soon after to Mr.
Hodgson.