cy. It was true he had treated a similar proposition to Lord
Lyndhurst's, when made in the house of commons, as a matter of small
importance; but after the decision to which the lords had come, there
was no hope left of carrying the measure. From that moment the bill
had passed into the hands of its declared enemies; and ministers had to
choose between two alternatives,--either to resign immediately, or to
tender such advice as would place them in a situation in which they
might be responsible for the further progress of the bill; they had
adopted the latter alternative, and their advice having been rejected,
all that was left them was to resign. Mr. Hume, in supporting the
proposition, stated that it did not go far enough. Lord Morpeth
supported, and Sir Robert Peel opposed the motion. The latter said,
that the first resolution implied a complete confidence in the existing
government. He could not consent to this; with reference to the
general course they had taken, he could not say that they deserved his
confidence. With respect to the reform question, and with reference
to some other points, he was decidedly opposed to the course which the
government had pursued. Mr. Macaulay, in supporting the proposition,
contended that the house had a right, with respect to the prerogative of
the sovereign in the choice of his ministers, as with regard to all the
other prerogatives of the crown, to offer its respectful advice. The
prerogative vested in the crown of creating peers, for the purpose
of carrying any public question, was a valuable and useful power, the
existence of which was absolutely necessary, in order, on important
questions, to obviate great and pressing inconveniences. He argued,
also, that there existed a strong necessity for counter-balancing, by a
creation of peers from the Whig party, the number of peers which, during
the last forty years, had been made from the Conservative party. There
could not be a strong objection to the creation of fifty peers in one
day, when no objection had been raised to the creation of two hundred in
the course of a generation by the one party that held power during that
period. He heartily concurred in the advice which ministers had given to
the king, and he regretted it had not been taken: unless ministers were
recalled, the reform bill would be lost. On a division, the resolutions
were carried by a majority of two hundred and eighty-eight against two
hundred and eight.

F