, with a view to prevent the Franchise being given
exclusively to _Numbers_, to the detriment of _Interests_, it might be
desirable to give new seats to certain corporate bodies, such as the
Scotch Universities, the Temple and Lincoln's Inn, the East India
Company, etc., etc.[25]

[Footnote 25: The Government eventually proposed that the four
seats taken from St Albans and Sudbury should be assigned to
South Lancashire and the West Riding; but, on the ground that
a Ministry on sufferance should confine itself to necessary
legislation, Mr Gladstone induced the House by a great
majority to shelve the proposal.]

[Pageheading: MR DISRAELI]

[Pageheading: THE OPPOSITION]

_Mr Disraeli to Queen Victoria._

HOUSE OF COMMONS, _15th March 1852._
(_Monday night._)

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, with his humble duty to your Majesty,
informs your Majesty of what occurred in the House of Commons this
evening.

Mr Villiers opened the proceedings, terse and elaborate, but not in
his happiest style. He called upon the House to contrast the state of
the country at the beginning of the year and at the present moment.
But he could not induce the House to believe that "all now was
distrust and alarm."

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in reply, declined to bring forward
in the present Parliament any proposition to change our commercial
system, and would not pledge himself to propose in a future Parliament
any duty on corn. He said a duty on corn was a measure, not a
principle, and that if preferable measures for the redress of
agricultural grievances than a five-shilling duty on corn (mentioned
by Mr Villiers) could be devised, he should adopt them--a declaration
received with universal favour on the Government side.

Lord John Russell replied to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in
consequence of some notice by the former of the strange construction
of a new Opposition to force a Dissolution of Parliament by a Minister
who, three weeks ago, had declared such Dissolution inexpedient. It
was not a successful speech.

The great speech on the Opposition side was that of Sir James Graham:
elaborate, malignant, mischievous. His position was this: that Lord
Derby, as a man of honour, was bound to propose taxes on food, and
that if he did so, revolution was inevitable.

Mr Gladstone and Lord Palmerston both spoke in the same vein,
the necessity of immediate Dissolution after the passing of
the "n