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South Lancashire is, that we do believe in his candour, a quality entirely lacking in the Conservative leader. The Tory traditions will not permit any amity with real reform; Whig history speaks more of enfranchisement for the middle classes, than of any disposition to grant political freedom to the toiling millions. The nation are growing tired and disgusted with the part of lookers, on during parliamentary struggles between one or other great Whig family and its following, and one or other great Tory family and its adherents, struggles which are contests for office rather than endeavours for political advancement, and which end in nothing but delay. From 1790 till to-day, this reform movement has been gradually growing stronger and wiser, and it is now too strong to be pushed aside any longer, and the men who compose it are too wise to permit you to trifle with it further. At first, your parliamentary system was strong enough in its tyranny, and base enough in its cowardice, to sentence men to transportation for the honest advocacy of manhood suffrage and for denunciation of governmental corruption. But 1867 is freer than 1793, and Muir, Margarot, and Winterbottom, would have been safe to-day in their advocacy of Parliamentary Reform. Our brethren of labour, rough-handed and warm-hearted, have, despite your opposition, done something to raise themselves socially during the last half century. Bentham, Thelwall, Paine, Hunt, Cobbett, and Burdett, whom your predecessors prosecuted by way of logical refutation, have with their pens and tongues taught lessons in political science which are now bearing fruit. You can no longer fight our movement by the help of police-concocted treasons: the day is past when such wretched tools of your class governments as the infamous Edwards, or an Oliver, or a Castles, or a Popay might with lying tongue hinder our progress and murder our movement. We do not conspire to-day and plan revolt in secret for miserable spies to report to you; we debate our proposed course in public, and you may read the story in the cheap press which the poor man cheapened against your will. We gather on the green sward—we shall have to gather there as a People's Parliament, denying that you are the parliament of the nation; and we will gather there with or without your permission, for it is our right. Hyde Park or Woodhouse Moor are both good meeting
