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there are some precedents for such greatness; let not 1867 be behind 1796. There were Dukes to advocate manhood suffrage then, and have we not one to-day?
To you, gentlemen of the House of Commons, I shall speak with more freedom. You ought to be the representatives of the people, and should therefore be at least sometimes accustomed to hear plain language from unpolished men. The present struggle is not between the people and the Tories, it is one against both Whig and Tory—it is between you, the Parliament, and the people; for you do not represent the nation, you have made yourselves a class against the nation. Some of you may be the nominees of dukes, earls, marquises, and barons for boroughs in which the voters are political serfs, and to such of you I declare that you are a dishonour to our country, a disgrace to our House of Commons. Why should a man shamelessly profess to represent a borough and talk in a debate of his constituents, when in his heart of hearts he well knows that he only represents a marquis or a duke, and that the inhabitants of the borough for which he nominally sits had no more voice in his selection than they had in the choice of any other portion of the following of the Most Noble the Marquis of Telle-telle? To those of you who owe your seats to your money, and who have bribed the miserable shopkeepers and beer-sellers who gave you in return your position as temporary legislators, I declare that you are worse criminals than the thieves whose offences are recorded in our ordinary calendars of crime. The educated scoundrels of rank and fashion, who corrupt and degrade the political vitality of a nation by bribing voters, ought to be subjected to the most severe and degrading punishments. You vote to continue the infamous practice of flogging in the army, and, much as I object to the use of the lash, I would vote to introduce it amongst our fashionable M.P.'s who have paid for the votes by which their return has been ensured. If there had been no other reason for the agitation for reform in the representation of the people, it would have been found in the fact that men who have been morally convicted of bribery sit on the benches of St. Stephen's, and that their honourable coadjutors greet with laughter references to their particular misdoings. In a thieves' kitchen the suspicion of the adroit practice of
