"My Lords, if I know anything of the constitutional value of this House, it is to interpose a salutary obstacle to rash and inconsiderate legislation—it is to protect the people from the consequences of their own imprudence. It never has been the course of this House to resist a continued and deliberately formed public opinion; your Lordships always have bowed, and always will bow, to the expression of such an opinion; but it is yours to check hasty legislation, leading to irreparable evils; and it is yours—though the Constitution can hardly have been deemed to have provided for such a contingency—to protect the people, not against their own hasty judgments, but against the treachery of those whom they have chosen to be their representatives."