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Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 4 by Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay
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regard them with much favour.

I should wish, Sir, to say what I have to say in the temperate
tone which has with so much propriety been preserved by the right
honourable Baronet the Secretary for the Home Department (Sir
James Graham.); but, if I should use any warm expression, I trust
that the House will attribute it to the strength of my
convictions and to my solicitude for the public interests. No
person who knows me will, I am quite sure, suspect me of
regarding the hundreds of thousands who have signed the petition
which we are now considering, with any other feeling than cordial
goodwill.

Sir, I cannot conscientiously assent to this motion. And yet I
must admit that the honourable Member for Finsbury (Mr Thomas
Duncombe.) has framed it with considerable skill. He has done
his best to obtain the support of all those timid and interested
politicians who think much more about the security of their seats
than about the security of their country. It would be very
convenient to me to give a silent vote with him. I should then
have it in my power to say to the Chartists of Edinburgh, "When
your petition was before the House I was on your side: I was for
giving you a full hearing." I should at the same time be able to
assure my Conservative constituents that I never had supported
and never would support the Charter. But, Sir, though this
course would be very convenient, it is one which my sense of duty
will not suffer me to take. When questions of private right are
before us, we hear, and we ought to hear, the arguments of the
parties interested in those questions. But it has never been,
and surely it ought not to be, our practice to grant a hearing to
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