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Updated: April 30, 2025
The legal profession was in the closest relations to the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the whole privileged and wealthy class. They were welded into a solid 'ring. The king, and his ministers who distributed places and pensions; the borough-mongers who sold votes for power; the clergy who looked for bishoprics; the monied men who aspired to rank and power, were all parts of a league.
It was the crowning merit of the reform act, from a whig point of view, that it stayed the rising tide of democracy, and raised a barrier against household suffrage and the ballot which was not broken down for a generation more. It put an end to an oligarchy of borough-owners and borough-mongers; it was a charter of political rights for the manufacturing interest and the great middle class.
His gratitude to Leonard became so lively that Dick offered to bring his nephew in for Lansmere instead of himself; and when Leonard declined the offer, exclaimed, "Well, then, any friend of yours; I'm all for reform against those high and mighty right honourable borough-mongers; and what with loans and mortgages on the small householders, and a long course of 'Free and Easies' with the independent freemen, I carry one seat certain, perhaps both seats of the town of Lansmere, in my breeches pocket."
Work, indeed! who, with the spirit of a man, would work for a country where there is neither liberty of speech, nor of action? a land full of beggarly aristocracy, hungry borough-mongers, insolent parsons, and "their wives and daughters," as William Cobbett says, in his Register." "Ah, the Church of England has been a source of incalculable mischief to these realms," said another.
Grattan's prophecy of retribution for the destruction of Irish liberty has often been quoted: "We will avenge ourselves," he said, "by sending into the ranks of your parliament, and into the very heart of your constitution, one hundred of the greatest scoundrels in the kingdom"; but it is generally forgotten that he had in mind the kind of members nominated by peers and borough-mongers to represent them in an unreformed House of Commons.
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