t clauses; but all that was done in the
committee might be undone on bringing up the report. Lord Eldon, on the
same side, said that no man was or could be an enemy to reform; but, he
thought, the first duty of every peer was to consider whether what
was proposed was or was not reform; whether it was a measure which the
people ought to expect, and which would confer any additional happiness
on those for whom it was intended. He had opposed reform for forty
years, because he had seen no plan which, in his opinion, would improve
the condition of the people: and this last was so vicious in its
principles and details, that it would be impossible to carry it
into effect with any safety to the institutions of the country. Lord
Tenterden likewise declared his continued hostility to the bill; and he
went so far as to say that he would never enter the doors of the house
again if the bill should be carried, "after it had become the phantom
of its departed greatness." The Bishops of Rochester and Gloucester
likewise expressed their determination to vote against the bill; and the
latter took occasion to animadvert, with pointed but just severity, on
the attack which had been made by the Catholic Earl of Shrewsbury on
the ecclesiastical bench. The Earl of Carnarvon opposed the motion,
and Viscount Goderich spoke in favour of it. They were followed by the
lord-chancellor, who referred to the petitions which had been addressed
to the house, the resolutions adopted at public meetings of merchants
and bankers, and the composition of the majorities and minorities in the
house of commons, to show that the opinion of property, as well as
of members, was in favour of the measure, and that the feeling of the
people had in no degree subsided. Lord Lyndhurst said that he had not
heard or seen anything to convince him that he had acted erroneously
in voting against the principles of the former bill; and as the present
bill was admitted to be the same, he should vote against the second
reading. Earl Grey, in his reply, repeated the answers which had already
been put forward to the views taken of the bill by its opponents, and
denied the charge of having excited the country. On the subject of the
threatened creation of peers, which had been so frequently alluded to,
his lordship said that the best writers on the constitution admitted
that, although the creation of a large number of peers for a particular
object was a measure which should rarely be