ia--Lord Howick's Bitterness against the Lords--Lord
Lyndhurst's Opinion of the Corporation Bill--The King's
Language on the Regency--Talleyrand's View of the English
Alliance--Comparison of Burke and Macintosh--The St. Leger--
Visit of Princess Victoria to Burghley--O'Connell's Progress
through Scotland--Mackintosh's Life.

August 19th, 1835 {p.290}

[Page Head: MUNICIPAL CORPORATION BILL.]

Yesterday the Lords finished the Committee on the Corporation
Bill. Their last amendment (which I do not very well understand
at present), by which certain aldermen elected for life are to be
taken in the first instance from the present aldermen, has
disgusted the authors of the Bill more than all the rest. In the
morning I met Duncannon and Howick, both open-mouthed against the
amendments, and this in particular, and declaring that though the
others might have been stomached, this could not go down, as it
was in direct opposition to the principle of the Bill. Howick
talked of 'the Lords being swept away like chaff' and of 'the
serious times that were approaching.' Duncannon said there would
be a conference, and if the Lords insisted on these amendments
the Bill would be lost. I asked if a compromise was not feasible,
the Lords abandoning this and the Commons taking the other
amendments, which he said would not be undesirable, but difficult
to effect. The continual discussions about this Bill have made me
perforce understand something of it towards the end of them. I am
too ignorant of the details and of the tendency of the Bill to
have an opinion of the comparative merits of its present and its
original shape, but I am sure the Lords are bound in prudence not
to mutilate it more than is absolutely necessary to make it a
safe measure, and to have a good, and moreover a popular, case to
go to the country with, if eventually such an appeal is to be
made. On the other hand the House of Commons, powerful as it is,
must not assert its power too peremptorily, and before the
Ministers determine to resign, for the purpose of making their
resignation instrumental to the consolidation of their power and
the destruction of the House of Lords; they also must have a good
case, and be able to show that the amendments made by the Lords
are incompatible with the object proposed, that they were made in
a factious spirit and for the express purpose of thwarting the
principle contended for, and that their conduct in this matter
form