o go to the arm of the chair to say something
to the Speaker, Manners Sutton--the first of seven whose subject I
have been--who was something of a Keate, I remember the revival in
me bodily of the frame of mind in which a schoolboy stands before
his master. But apart from an incidental recollection of this
kind, I found it most difficult to believe with, any reality of
belief, that such a poor and insignificant creature as I, could
really belong to, really form a _part_ of, an assembly which,
notwithstanding the prosaic character of its entire visible
equipment, I felt to be so august. What I may term its corporeal
conveniences were, I may observe in passing, marvellously small. I
do not think that in any part of the building it afforded the means
of so much as washing the hands. The residences of members were at
that time less distant: but they were principally reached on foot.
When a large House broke up after a considerable division, a
copious dark stream found its way up Parliament Street, Whitehall,
and Charing Cross.

I remember that there occurred some case in which a constituent
(probably a maltster) at Newark sent me a communication which made
oral communication with the treasury, or with the chancellor of the
exchequer (then Lord Althorp), convenient. As to the means of
bringing this about, I was puzzled and abashed. Some experienced
friend on the opposition bench, probably Mr. Goulburn, said to me,
There is Lord Althorp sitting alone on the treasury bench, go to
him and tell him your business. With such encouragement I did it.
Lord Althorp received me in the kindest manner possible, alike to
my pleasure and my surprise.

The exact composition of the first reformed House of Commons was usually
analysed as tories 144; reformers 395; English and Scotch radicals 76;
Irish repealers 43. Mr. Gladstone was for counting the decided
conservatives as 160 and reckoning as a separate group a small party who
had once been tories and now ranked between conservative opposition and
whig ministers. The Irish representatives he divided between 28 tories,
and a body of 50 who were made up of ministerialists, conditional
repealers, and tithe extinguishers. He heard Joseph Hume, the most
effective of the leading radicals, get the first word in the reformed
parliament, speaking for an hour and perhaps