We may be proud that England is the ancient country of Parliaments. With scarcely any intervening period, Parliaments have met constantly for 600 years, and there was something of a Parliament before the Conquest. England is the mother of Parliaments.

Any Reform Bill which is worth a moment's thought, or the smallest effort to carry it, must at least double, and it ought to do much more than double, the representation of the metropolitan boroughs and of all the great cities of the United Kingdom.

The angel of death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings.

It was in the year 1820, when I was nearly nine years old, that I first went to a regular school.

What is a great love of books? It is something like a personal introduction to the great and good men of all past times. Books, it is true, are silent as you see them on their shelves; but, silent as they are, when I enter a library I feel as if almost the dead were present, and I know if I put questions to these books they will answer me with all the faithfulness and fulness which has been left in them by the great men who have left the books with us.

I am for peace, retrenchment and reform, the watchword of the great Liberal Party thirty years ago.

The corn law was intended to keep wheat at the price of 80s. the quarter; it is now under 40s. the quarter.