be kept up. I tell him that if that affair be
passed over without notice, new attempts will be made, every one of them
more and more dishonourable and disadvantageous to this country. When I
am told that we should not utter remonstrances against the French
government lightly, nor too readily impute a disposition to disturb the
amicable relations at present subsisting between the two countries, I
answer that no one more earnestly desires peace than I do. There is no
one entertains a higher estimate than I do of the resources--the
immensity of the resources--possessed by that country both in peace and
in war--no man living estimates more highly than I do the wisdom of her
statesmen and the skill of her generals--no man is more ready than
myself to concede to the French people the possession of a large amount
of talent and of virtue, of physical and of moral resources, and of all
that renders a state respectable or formidable in the eyes of other
nations. But in proportion as we admit these facts, we are bound to
watch closely that nothing be done or said derogatory from British
honour or injurious to British interests.

_March 16, 1832._

* * * * *

_Opinion of the Reform Bill, 1832._

I beg your Lordships to recollect that this is the point which the
House will have to consider:--the question is not whether alterations
have been made in this part or that part, or in many parts of the bill
which your Lordships objected to last session, but the question you will
have to consider is this--Whether this bill, if passed and accompanied,
let it be recollected, with the other bills at present in the other
House of Parliament, will afford to the country a prospect of having a
government under which the country can go on--under which it will be
practicable that this or any other can be governed--or which, in the
words of the noble Earl who addressed your Lordships first this evening
employed last session--if practicable, would not be pernicious. That is
the question which your Lordships will have to consider, when you come
to the second reading of the bill. The principle of this measure is not
reform, but the disfranchisement of some places and the enfranchisement
of others, and also the granting of votes to large bodies of persons on
a new qualification. The total alteration of the representation of this
country, coupled with an alteration of the representation of Scotland,
amounting there to a