een
raised, because our bill, whether it could have effected the object or
not, was a bill which proposed greatly to enfranchise the working
classes. And as regards the statement I made, it simply was this.
The election was over--we were still menaced, but we, still acting
according to our sense of duty, recommended in the royal speech that
the question of a reform of Parliament should be dealt with; because I
must be allowed to remind the house that whatever may have been our
errors, we proposed a bill which we intended to carry. And having
once taken up the question as a matter of duty, no doubt greatly
influenced by what we considered the unhappy mistakes of our
predecessors, and the difficult position in which they had placed
Parliament and the country, we determined not to leave the question
until it had been settled. But although still menaced, we felt it to
be our duty to recommend to her Majesty to introduce the question of
reform when the Parliament of 1859 met; and how were we, except in
that spirit of compromise which is the principal characteristic of our
political system, how could we introduce a Reform Bill after that
election, without in some degree considering the possibility of
lowering the borough franchise? But it was not a franchise of 6
pounds, but it was an arrangement that was to be taken with the rest
of the bill, and if it had been met in the same spirit we might have
retained our places. But, says the right honorable gentleman,
pursuing his history of the Reform question, when the government of
Lord Derby retired from office "we came in, and we were perfectly
sincere in our intentions to carry a Reform Bill; but we experienced
such opposition, and never was there such opposition. There was the
right honorable gentleman," meaning myself, "he absolutely allowed our
bill to be read a second time."

That tremendous reckless opposition to the right honorable
gentleman, which allowed the bill to be read a second time, seems to
have laid the government prostrate. If he had succeeded in throwing
out the bill, the right honorable gentleman and his friends would
have been relieved from great embarrassment. But the bill having
been read a second time, the government were quite overcome, and it
appears they never have recovered from the paralysis up to this
time. The right honorable gentleman was good enough to say that the
proposition of his government was rather coldly received upon his
side o