the house desire. We endeavored in that bill to make proposals
which were in the genius of the English constitution. We did not
consider the constitution a mere phrase. We knew that the
constitution of this country is a monarchy tempered by co-ordinate
estates of the realm. We knew that the House of Commons is an estate
of the realm; we knew that the estates of the realm form a political
body, invested with political power for the government of the country
and for the public good; yet we thought that it was a body founded
upon privilege and not upon right. It is, therefore, in the noblest
and properest sense of the word, an aristocratic body, and from that
characteristic the Reform Bill of 1832 did not derogate; and if at
this moment we could contrive, as we did in 1859, to add considerably
to the number of the constituent body, we should not change that
characteristic, but it would still remain founded upon an aristocratic
principle. Well, now the Secretary of State [Sir G. Grey] has
addressed us to-night in a very remarkable speech. He also takes up
the history of Reform, and before I touch upon some of the features of
that speech it is my duty to refer to the statements which he made
with regard to the policy which the government of Lord Derby was
prepared to assume after the general election. By a total
misrepresentation of the character of the amendment proposed by Lord
John Russell, which threw the government of 1858 into a minority, and
by quoting a passage from a very long speech of mine in 1859, the
right honorable gentleman most dexterously conveyed these two
propositions to the house--first, that Lord John Russell had proposed
an amendment to our Reform Bill, by which the house declared that no
bill could be satisfactory by which the working classes were not
admitted to the franchise--one of our main objects being that the
working classes should in a great measure be admitted to the
franchise; and, secondly, that after the election I was prepared, as
the organ of the government, to give up all the schemes for those
franchises founded upon personal property, partial occupation, and
other grounds, and to substitute a bill lowering the borough
qualification. That conveyed to the house a totally inaccurate idea
of the amendment of Lord John Russell. There was not a single word in
that amendment about the working classes. There was not a single
phrase upon which that issue was raised, nor could it have b