Head: LORD STANLEY AND GRAHAM CROSS THE HOUSE.]

The night before last Lord Stanley and Graham quitted their
neutral seats below the gangway, and established themselves on
the opposite bench below Peel. This was considered as an
intimation of a more decided hostility to the present Government,
and as an abandonment of the neutrality (if such it can be
called) which they have hitherto professed. Last night O'Connell
made a very coarse attack upon Stanley in consequence of this
change, which lashed him into a fury, and a series of retorts
followed between them, without any result. O'Connell half
shuffled out of his expressions, but refused to apologise; the
chairman (Bernal) took no notice, and the matter ended by a
speech from Stanley and a few remarks upon it from Lord John
Russell. The former stated his reasons for this ostentatious
locomotion, which amounted to this: that he had been rudely
treated in the House by ironical cheers and other intelligible
sounds, and attacked by the Government newspapers, and he had,
therefore, departed from a society for which he owned he was not
fitted. It was not, I think, dignified or judicious, and George
Bentinck, the most faithful of his followers, was not satisfied
with the proceeding or the explanation. His party, such as it
was, was finally extinguished by this act, though it hardly had
any existence before; some five or six men, among whom were Gally
Knight, George Bentinck, Stratford Canning, and Sir Matthew
Ridley, went over to the Opposition benches; the others dispersed
where they chose.

The real history of the transaction is this: it originated with
Graham, and it is not the first time he has lugged Stanley into
what may be called a scrape. He was returning from some division
to his usual seat when he was assailed by those cheers, and some
voice cried out, 'Why don't you stay where you are?' on which he
bowed in acquiescence to the quarter whence the recommendation
proceeded, and instantly retreated to the other side. The next
day he told Stanley that _he_ must now stay where he was, and at
the same time he produced the 'Globe' newspaper, which contained
a very coarse attack upon Stanley himself. This article, together
with Graham's representation, determined him to take up his
position on the Opposition bench, and accordingly there he went,
but without any intimation to his friends, who, to their great
surprise, found him there, and only got from him the above
exp