That sense of proprietorship in an effort of genius, which the House of Commons is ever ready to entertain, effaced for a while all distinctions of party.

"Portions of the speech," said Sir Robert Peel, "were as beautiful as anything I have ever heard or read.

It reminded one of the old times." The names of Fox, Burke, and Canning were during that evening in everybody's mouth; and Macaulay overheard with delight a knot of old members illustrating their criticisms by recollections of Lord Plunket.

He had reason to be pleased; for he had been thought worthy of the compliment which the judgment of Parliament reserves for a supreme occasion.

In 1866, on the second reading of the Franchise Bill, when the crowning oration of that memorable debate had come to its close amidst a tempest of applause, one or two veterans of the lobby, forgetting Macaulay on Reform,--forgetting, it may be, Mr.Gladstone himself on the Conservative Budget of 1852,--pronounced, amidst the willing assent of a younger generation, that there had been nothing like it since Plunket.
The unequivocal success of the first speech into which he had thrown his full power decided for some time to come the tenor of Macaulay's career.
During the next three years he devoted himself to Parliament, rivalling Stanley in debate, and Hume in the regularity of his attendance.