He belonged to the famous debating society known as the Oxford Union,
was a brilliant debater, and in 1831 was its secretary, and later its
president. On various occasions he carried, by a majority of one only, a
motion that the Wellington Administration was undeserving of the
confidence of the country; he defended the results of the Catholic
Emancipation; he opposed a motion for the removal of Jewish
disabilities, and he persuaded 94 students out of 130 to condemn Earl
Grey's Reform Bill as a measure "which threatened not only to change the
form of government, but ultimately to break up the very foundation of
social order." His last speech at Oxford was in support of his own
amendment to a motion for the immediate emancipation of the slaves in
the West Indies. On a certain occasion he entertained a party of
students from Cambridge, consisting of Sir Francis Doyle, Monckton
Milnes, Sunderland, and Arthur H. Hallam, who discussed among them the
superiority of Shelley over Byron as a poet. The motion was opposed by
one Oxonion, the late Cardinal Manning, but Shelley received 90 votes to
33 for Byron.
One who heard the debate on the Reform Bill says that "it converted
Alston, the son of the member in Parliament for Hertford, who
immediately on the conclusion of Gladstone's speech walked across from
the Whig to the Tory side of the house, amidst loud acclamations.
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