f the Reform
Measures. It was animated, but it was not accurate. Mine will be
accurate, though I fear it will not be animated. I am not prepared
to believe that English statesmen, though they be opposed to me in
politics, and may sit on opposite benches, could ever have intended
to trifle with this question. I think that possibly they may have
made great mistakes in the course which they took; they may have
miscalculated, they may have been misled; but I do not believe that
any men in this country, occupying the posts, the eminent posts, of
those who have recommended any reconstruction of our parliamentary
system in modern days, could have advised a course which they
disapproved. They may have thought it perilous, they may have
thought it difficult, but though they may have been misled I am
convinced they must have felt that it was necessary. Let me say a
word in favor of one with whom I have had no political connection,
and to whom I have been placed in constant opposition in this house
when he was an honored member of it--I mean Lord Russell. I
cannot at all agree with the lively narrative of the right honorable
gentleman, according to which Parliamentary Reform was but the
creature of Lord John Russell, whose cabinet, controlled by him with
the vigor of a Richelieu, at all times disapproved his course; still
less can I acknowledge that merely to amuse himself, or in a moment
of difficulty to excite some popular sympathy, Lord John Russell was
a statesman always with Reform in his pocket, ready to produce it
and make a display. How different from that astute and sagacious
statesman now at the head of her Majesty's government, whom I almost
hoped to have seen in his place this evening. I am sure it would
have given the house great pleasure to have seen him here, and the
house itself would have assumed a more good-humored appearance. I
certainly did hope that the noble lord would have been enabled to be
in his place and prepared to support his policy. According to the
animated but not quite accurate account of the right honorable
gentleman who has just sat down, all that Lord Derby did was to
sanction the humor and caprice of Lord John Russell. It is true
that Lord John Russell when prime minister recommended that her
Majesty in the speech from the throne should call the attention of
Parliament to the expediency of noticing the condition of our
representative system; but Lord John Russell unfortunately short