SPEECH AT TAUNTON.

(From the "Taunton Courier" of October 12th, 1831.)

THE REVEREND SYDNEY SMITH rose and said: - Mr. Bailiff, I have spoken so often on this subject, that I am sure both you and the gentlemen here present will be obliged to me for saying but little, and that favour I am as willing to confer, as you can be to receive it. I feel most deeply the event which has taken place, because, by putting the two Houses of Parliament in collision with each other, it will impede the public business, and diminish the public prosperity. I feel it as a churchman, because I cannot but blush to see so many dignitaries of the church arrayed against the wishes and happiness of the people. I feel it more than all, because I believe it will sow the seeds of deadly hatred between the aristocracy and the great mass of the people. The loss of the bill I do not feel, and for the best of all possible reasons- because I have not the slightest idea that it is lost. I have no more doubt, before the expiration of the winter, that this bill will pass, than I have that the annual tax bills will pass, and greater certainty than this no man can have, for Franklin tells us, there are but two things certain in this world death and taxes. death and taxes. As for the possibility of the House of Lords preventing ere long a reform of Parliament, I hold it to be the most absurd notion that ever entered into human imagination. I do not mean to be disrespectful, but the attempt of the Lords to stop the progress of reform, reminds me very forcibly of the great storm of Sidmouth, and of the conduct of the excellent Mrs. Partington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824, there set in a great flood upon that town— the tide rose to an incredible height-the waves rushed in upon the houses, and every thing was threatened with

destruction. In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit was up; but I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop, or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest. Gentlemen, be at your ease -be quiet and steady. You will beat Mrs. Partington.

They tell you, gentlemen, in the debates by which we have been lately occupied, that the bill is not justified by experience. I do not think this true; but if it were true, nations are sometimes compelled to act without experience for their guide, and to trust to their own sagacity for the anticipation of consequences. The instances where this country has been compelled thus to act have been so eminently successful, that I see no cause for fear, even if we were acting in the manner imputed to us by our enemies. What precedents and what experience were there at the Reformation, when the country with one unanimous effort, pushed out the Pope, and his grasping and ambitious clergy? What experience, when at the Revolution we drove away our ancient race of kings, and chose another family, more congenial to our free principles ? And yet to those two events, contrary to experience, and unguided by precedents, we owe all our domestic happiness, and civil and religious freedom and having got rid of corrupt priests and despotic kings, by our sense and our courage, are we now to be intimidated by the awful danger of extinguishing Boroughmongers, and shaking from our necks the ignominious yoke which their baseness has imposed upon it? Go on, they say, as you have done for these hundred years last past. I answer, it is impossible: five hundred people now write and read, where one hundred wrote and read fifty years ago. The iniquities and enormities of the borough system are now known to the meanest of the people. You

you must

have a different sort of men to deal with change because the beings whom you govern are changed. After all, and to be short, I must say that it has always appeared to me to be the most absolute nonsense that we cannot be a great, or a rich and happy nation, without suffering ourselves to be bought and sold every five years like a pack of negro slaves. I hope I am not a very rash man, but I would launch boldly into this experiment without any fear of consequences, and I believe there is not a man here present who would not cheerfully embark with me. As to the enemies of the bill, who pretend to be reformers, I know them, I believe, better than you do, and I earnestly caution you against them. You will have no more of reform than they are compelled to grant - you will have no reform at all, if they can avoid it - you will be hurried into a war to turn your attention from reform. They do not understand you—they will not believe in the improvement you have made they think the English of the present day are as the English of the times of Queen Anne or George the First. They know no more of the present state of their own country, than_of the state of the Esquimaux Indians. Gentlemen, I view the ignorance of the present state of the country with the most serious concern, and I believe they will one day or another waken into conviction with horror and dismay. I will omit no means of rousing them to a sense of their danger; -for this object, I cheerfully sign the petition proposed by Dr. Kinglake, which I consider to be the wisest and most moderate of the two.

SPEECH BY THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH.

STICK to the Bill-it is your Magna Charta, and your Runnymede. King John made a present to the Barons. King William has made a similar present to you. Never mind, common qualities good in common times. If a man does not vote for the Bill, he is unclean — the plague-spot is upon him- push him into the lazaretto of the last century, with Wetherell and Sadler - purify the air before you approach himn-bathe your hands in Chloride of Lime, if you have been contaminated by his touch.

So far from its being a merely theoretical improvement, I put it to any man, who is himself embarked in a profession, or has sons in the same situation, if the unfair influence of Boroughmongers has not perpetually thwarted him in his lawful career of ambition and professional emolument? "I have been in three general engagements at sea," said an old sailor-"have been twice wounded; - I commanded the boats when the French frigate, the ASTROLABE, was cut out so gallantly." "Then you are made a Post Captain?" "No. I was very near it; but Lieutenant Thomson cut me out, as I cut out the French frigate; his father is Town Clerk of the Borough for which Lord F is Member, and there my chance was finished." In the same manner, all over England, you will find great scholars rotting on curacies-brave captains starving in garrets

- profound lawyers decayed and mouldering in the Inns of Court, because the parsons, warriors, and advocates of Boroughmongers must be crammed to saturation, before there is a morsel of bread for the man who does not sell his votes, and put his country up to auction; and though this is of every-day occurrence, the Borough system, we are told, is no practical evil.

Who can bear to walk through a slaughter-house?

blood, garbage, stomachs, entrails, legs, tails, kidneys, horrors I often walk a mile about to avoid it. What a scene of disgust and horror is an election - the base and infamous traffic of principles - a candidate of high character reduced to such means the perjury and evasion of agents the detestable rapacity of voters the ten days' dominion of mammon, and Belial. The Bill lessens it begins the destruction of such practices - affords some chance, and some means of turning public opinion against bribery, and of rendering it infamous.

But the thing I cannot, and will not bear, is this ;what right has this Lord, or that Marquis, to buy ten seats in Parliament, in the shape of Boroughs, and then to make laws to govern me? And how are these masses of power re-distributed? The eldest son of my Lord is just come from Eton - he knows a good deal about Eneas, and Dido, Apollo, and Daphne-and that is all; and to this boy his father gives a six-hundredth part of the power of making laws, as he would give him a horse, or a double-barrelled gun. Then Vellum, the steward, is put in—an admirable man ;-he has raised the estates -watched the progress of the family Road, and Canal Bills-and Vellum shall help to rule over the people of Israel. A neighbouring country gentleman, Mr. Plumpkin, hunts with my Lord-opens him a gate or two, while the hounds are running-dines with my Lordagrees with my Lord-wishes he could rival the South Down sheep of my Lord and upon Plumpkin is conferred a portion of the government. Then there is a distant relation of the same name, in the County Militia, with white teeth, who calls up the carriage at the Opera, and is always wishing O'Connell was hanged, drawn, and quartered-then a barrister, who has written an article in the Quarterly, and is very likely to speak, and refute M'Culloch; and these five people, in whose nomination I have no more agency than I have in the nomination of the toll-keepers of the Bosphorus, are to make laws for me and my family—to put their hands in my purse, and to sway the future destinies of this country;