'65._--Our interesting
conversation of Wednesday evening, which looked before and after,
and for your share in which I heartily thank you, has led me to
review the subject matters, a process which every man in public
life as well as elsewhere ought often to perform, but which the
pressure of overwork, and the exhaustion it leaves behind, sadly
hinder. But I sum up in favour of a verdict of "Not guilty," on
the following grounds.

As far as I know, there are but three subjects which have exposed
me to the charge of radicalism: the Irish church, the franchise,
the paper duty, and the consequent struggle with the House of
Lords.

My opinions on the Irish church were, I know, those of Newcastle
and Sidney Herbert twenty years ago; and they were not radicals.
Ever since Maynooth, in 1845, I have seen that resistance _in
principle_ was gone. That was the main reason which led me to make
such a serious affair of my own case about the Maynooth grant in
that year. But I held this embryo opinion in my mind as there was
no cause to precipitate it into life, and waited to fortify or
alter or invalidate it by the teachings of experience. At last the
time for speaking, and therefore for formulating my ideas came,
and I have spoken according as I believe to be the sense of all
the leading men with whom I acted from Peel's death onwards, and
within the sense not only of Lord Macaulay, but of the present
Lord Grey.

With respect to the franchise, my belief is that the objection
taken to my speech really turned not upon the doctrine of _prima
facie_ title, but upon the fact that it was a speech decisively
and warmly in favour of the L6 franchise or something equivalent
to it. That is to say, of the very franchise which as a member of
the cabinet I had supported in 1860, on the credit and promise of
which Lord Derby had been put out in 1859, and which, if it did
not appear in the Aberdeen Reform bill of 1852, was represented
there by other concessions equally large. The truth is this, that
ever since the Aberdeen Reform bill, I have remained just where it
placed me; but many seem to think that it is a subject to be
played with or traded on. In thinking and acting otherwise I feel
myself to be upholding principles essential to the confidence of
the people in governments and parliaments