the present ministers, but under any set of ministers, be brought together, and incited to act against any of the institutions of the country-against the hierarchyagainst the existence of a standing army-against the legislative authority of that House. In the scheme of the constitution of this country, it was generally admitted that the Sovereign, or those who represented him, joined the conservative mass in order to keep down the democratic power. It never was imagined that the Crown would throw itself into the democratic scale against the conservative body. Lord Bolingbroke, in his Essays, as well as another very able writer, had stated, that if such an occurrence took place, it would inevitably lead to the overthrow of the constitution. From the time the measure had first been brought into the other house of Parliament, ministers had been challenged to point out any sufficient reason for so extensive a change, and he had heard nothing in the discussions either of the last or of the present parliament which could in any respect justify it. The measure intended to have been proposed by the noble and learned lord on the woolsack would, he believed, have been approved by all parties; but it was a measure that would have been less extensive and sweeping than that now called for. They were told that they ought to have strictly independent representatives in the House of Commons. Taking the meaning of the word independence as those who advanced the argument used it, he would maintain, that, if the principle were conceded, there would be an end to the other two powers in the state. Never, in any part of the world, had such a system existed. It had been tried in more instances than one, and constantly failed. Fifty years ago Mr. Hume wrote a treatise on this very point, and the result of his enquiry was, that the scheme was wholly impracticable. In our own times, a learned lord, a member of the other house of parliament, had canvassed the same subject in a quarterly publication, and had arrived at the same conclusion. Lord Bolingbroke had also considered the question, and he thought the plan impracticable, unless it was accompanied by another change in the constitution. And what was the remedy he proposed? An extension of the prerogative of the Crown. Under this bill, the House of Commons would be so constituted that no government could be carried on with it, unless in such a way as the House itself should dictate, and by ministers who would implicitly obey its commands. There were, it seemed, to be sixty-four members for great towns. Was it possible to think that this would not throw a great preponderance into the scale of extreme democracy? And from whence were those sixty-four members to be taken? They were to supply the places of those who were taken from the conservative class. Let it be considered that two-thirds of the members returned from Scotland would be on the side of extreme democracy, and that nearly the whole of the elections by the catholics of Ireland would be on the same democratic side. If their lordships would take the trouble of making the calculation of the probable, the almost certain results of the elections, they would find that they would make a difference of 200 members at the democratic side. And what was on the other? The noble earl supposed that there would be some counterpoise on the other side but no, there would be 200 members taken from the conservative class, and added to their opponents; and was it possible, he would ask, for the government of the country, in its present form, to be carried on with a House of Commons so constituted? The House of Commons, having, as was known, the power of disbanding the army, would be the only power of the state. What necessity, then, was there of running such a risk,-of risking all on such a cast. There might be some risk, though he be lieved it would be but slight, in rejecting the bill,-but it would be nothing compared to the danger of passing it. The danger of having a House of Commons which might dispose of their lives and liberties without control, would be infinitely worse than any which had yet been pointed out. The danger of collision between the two houses, he treated as chimerical. The House of Lords had as much right to reject the bill a second time, as the House of Commons had to send it to them a second time. Earl Grey, in his reply, repeated the answers which had been already put forward to the different views taken of the bill by its opponents, and, in particular, denied the charge of having either caused the excitement, or carried change to an unnecessary and extravagant extent. Heaverred, he said, without fear of contradiction, that the late ministers, when they quitted office in November, 1830, were unanimously of opinion, with the exception of the duke of Wellington, that the government could not be VOL. LXXIV. carried on unless some degree of reform were conceded. Lord Lyndhurst himself had then expressed the same sentiments. "We," continued his lordship, "succeeding to that administration, found it necessary to look at some measure of reform, and the question, therefore, with us only was, how far the reform should go. Government may have erred-our views may have been wrong-but applying our best judgment to the best information we could obtain, and examining minutely the situation and prospects of the country, the view we took was this-that, something being to be done in the way of reform, it should be done to that extent as to give us a resting place, on which the constitution could repose in future free from all farther discussion and agitation. We acted on that principle. Reform being necessary, the other consequences were the result of our honest and unbiassed judgment. Then this measure of reform was introduced and was received with satisfaction by the whole country. In the progress of the feeling of reform it was strongly directed to those injurious systems, annual parliaments, universal suffrage, and vote by ballot. Those I have declared on other occasions, even when I was most eager for reform, to be in opposition to my principles; but this measure, founded on the satisfaction of the publicand without it I admit the measure would be good for nothing-was no sooner propagated, than all agitation became silent, and an unanimity manifested itself to a degree which was hardly conceivable." On the subject of the threatened creation of peers, which had been so frequently and so pointedly alluded to, his lordship said, that the best [L] 41; the majority on Saturday, the 14th reformers gained 3, who voted on the latof April, 1832, was 9-50. The antiter and not on the former occasion,—viz. · Marquis of Abercorn, Earl of Ashburnham and Lord Oriel (Viscount Ferrard) : the reformers lost 3, who voted on the former but not on the latter occasion,viz. Marquis of Donegal, Marquis of Westmeath, and Lord Dawnay (Viscount Downe :-56. A comparison between Ridgway's Lists will account for the 56. A. 17 peers who voted against the bill in 1831, voted for it in 1832, each counting as two; B. 10 peers who voted against it in 1831, did not vote at all in 1832; C. 812 peers who had not voted at all in 131, voted for it in 1832 :-56. A. (17.) Earls of Harrowby, Tankerville, Bradford, and Coventry. Lords De Roos, Calthorpe, Wharncliffe, Gambier, Gage, Ravensworth, Northwick, and Melros (Earl of Haddington). Bishops of Lincoln, Llandaff, Lichfield and Coventry, Bath and Wells, and one Irish Bishop, viz. Killaloe; All the four Irish Prelates having voted against the measure in 1831. B. (10.) Marquis of Bath, Earls of St. Germains, Stamford, and Dudley. Lords Carberry, Skelmersdale, Ribblesdale, Dufferin, and Ross (Earl of Glasgow. Bishop of Peterborough. C. (12.) Earls Stanhope, Somers, O'Neill, Stradbroke. Lords Middleton, Crewe, and Stuart (Earl of Moray). Archbishop of York. Bishops of London, St. David's, Worcester, and Chester. CHAP. IV. Committee on the Bill in the Lords-Motion that the Disfranchising Clauses be postponed to the Enfranchising Clauses, carried against Ministers by a majority of thirty-five-Ministers apply to the King to create Peers-The King refuses-Ministers resign-Commons vote an address to the King to recall them-Violence of the Reformers-Petitions to the Commons to refuse the SuppliesFailure of the attempts to form a new Administration-Ministers recalled-Explanations of the Duke of Wellington and Lord Lyndhurst-Discussions in the Lords on the late proceedings of Ministers -Application of the King to the opposition Peers to withdrawExplanation of Sir R. Peel-Committee on the Bill in the Peers -Reform intended to have been proposed by the Opposition-The Bili passes and receives the Royal Assent. HE majority, by which the bill had been carried in the House of Lords, was greatly too insignificant to give the Ministers any confifidence of being masters of it in the committee. They had nevertheless gained much. A creation of an hun dred new peers, fatal in any circumstances to the independent existence of the House of Lords, would have appeared, if possible, still more unjustifiable, if it had preceded the second reading, when it was yet unknown what effect might have been produced on the temper of the House by the continued excitement of the public, the deter mination of the government, and the changes which had been made in the bill itself. On the other hand, if the second reading were again lost, the bill was thrown out for the session, unless all parliamentary law were set at defiance; and, if the ministers did not become the victims of the violence which had hitherto been exerted in their behalf, they would at least have forfeited the more furious journals, which had hitherto been useful partisans. A great danger was thus avoided by getting the bill into committee, by however small a majority. As no proxies count in committees in the House of Lords, they might, perhaps, reckon on the more constant attendance of the friends of government, and the relaxed hostility of those who thought that the only position, from which the substantial mischiefs of the bill could have been effectually rescated, had already been abandoned. At the worst, they had still the same power of creating peers. They might expect to strip such a measure of part of its odium by representing the votes of the committee as contradictory to the decision of the House adopting the principles of the bill, and by insisting that the conduct of the majority was a disingenuous and insulting contrivance to destroy in detail what they had been afraid openly to oppose. That they must have laid their account with having recourse at last to this extreme measure seems to follow from this, that, knowing as they did the sentiments of the peers who had now given them a majority, they could not reasonably expect to carry the bill unscathed through the committee by means of that majority, unless they were prepared to make greater concessions than they had yet shown any symptoms of granting. Parliament met, after the Easter recess, on the 7th of May. The House of Lords went into committee on the reform bill, no attempt having been made by the opposition to move any instructions to it. In the committee, Earl Grey stated that the House would probably be inclined to follow the course which had been adopted by the House of Commons, viz. to dispose of the enacting parts of the disfranchising clauses, leaving the schedules for future consideration. Thus, in regard to the first clause, they had begun by determining that fifty-six boroughs should be disfranchised, and had delayed the schedule of the particular boroughs till the other clauses should be disposed of. As there were some, however, who objected to say, in the first instance, that the number of fifty-six should be disfranchised, it was his intention, when they came to that clause, to propose that the words "fifty-six" should be omitted, and to propose that each of the boroughs in schedule A., that is, the different boroughs in the schedule, as they were afterwards to be separately proposed to the House, should cease to send members to parliament. He thought this the best mode of obviating the objection to the clause as it now stood. On this, Lord Lyndhurst suggested that it would be still more convenient to postpone altogether the consideration of the first clause. If this were done, he should likewise propose the postponement of the second clause; and he would take this course, for the purpose of entering on the consideration of the boroughs and places to be enfranchised, a matter which he thought ought to be discussed, before the House entered on the question of disfranchisement. This would involve nothing like a prejudgment of these clauses. To borrow the language of his profession, he desired that the clauses should be postponed "without prejudice,"-in fact, that the House should reserve itself for the consideration of them unprejudiced and unfettered, precisely as if they had not been postponed at all. He recommended this mode of proceeding, because a bill of this kind ought to be essentially a bill of enfranchisement, of which principle disfranchisement ought only to be the consequence. The proper mode of proceeding in disfranchising a number of places was, to begin by establishing the necessity of the occasion, and by ascertaining previously what places were to be enfranchised. Earl Grey's proposal met the objection in part, but not altogether; for by coming to the consideration of the first clause they would still make disfranchisement precede enfranchisement; but if his lordship would not only omit the number "fiftysix," but abstain from incorporating the schedule with the clause,the objection would be entirely obviated. It was more gracious to begin with an act of favour, or if they would, of justice. Now to begin with disfranchisement was to |