Any other
government must be both revolutionary and tyrannical. Any other
government was a usurpation; and he would make bold to tell the right
honourable gentleman that a Minister in this country who should
recommend Her Majesty to trust herself to advisers not supported by a
majority of the House of Commons, would plainly be guilty of usurping
the powers of the State. He threw from him with disdain the charge
which had been brought against himself of hankering after the sweets
of office. He indulged and gloried in indulging the highest ambition
of an English subject. But he gloried much more in the privileges and
power of that House, within the walls of which was centred all that
was salutary, all that was efficacious, all that was stable in the
political constitution of his country. It had been his pride to have
acted during nearly all his political life with that party which had
commanded a majority, but he would defy his most bitter adversary, he
would defy the right honourable gentleman himself, to point to any
period of his career in which he had been unwilling to succumb to a
majority when he himself had belonged to the minority.
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