, etc. In short, it all comes to this, that many M.P.'s
are afraid of losing their seats by a dissolution, and many others
whose boroughs are disfranchised hate the Reform Bill, and many
more are anti-Reformers by nature, and all these combine to stifle
it.... And to tell Lord John that really he has such a quantity of
spare character that it can bear a little damaging! I am ashamed
and sick of such things, and should think my country no longer
worth caring for, but for those brave men who have gone off to
fight for her with a spirit worthy of themselves, and but for those
lower classes in which Frederick [41] tells me to put my faith....
I must stop, not without fear that you may think me blind to the
very real evil and danger of dissolution or resignation at the
beginning of a great war. Indeed I am not--but those who see
nothing but these dangers are taking the very way to lead us into
them.... Lord Aberdeen is firm as a rock; it is due to him to say
so. How shall I prevent my boys growing up to be cowards and
selfish like the rest? You see what a humour I am in.... I never
_let out_ to anybody. When my friends give all this noble
advice I sit to all appearance like Patience on a monument, but not
feeling like her at all--keeping silence because there is not time
to begin at the first rudiments of morality, and there would be no
use in anything higher up. Good-bye, poor Lizzy, doomed to suffer
under my bad moods. God bless you all.

Yours ever, F.R.

[41] Colonel Romilly, husband of Lady Elizabeth Romilly, and son of
Sir Samuel Romilly.

_Lord Granville to Lady John Russell_

_February_ 28, 1854

I have just heard that Lord John has consented to put off Reform
till after Easter. It must have been a great personal sacrifice to
him, but I am delighted for his own sake and the public cause that
he has done it. There is no doubt but that nearly all who cry for
delay are at bottom enemies to Reform. Reform is not incompatible
with war, and it is not clear that a dissolution would be dangerous
during its continuance, but an enormous majority of the House of
Commons have persuaded themselves of the contrary.

In all probability the apathetic approved of the Reform Bill only
because it was out of the question for the present. Newcastle
agrees with me in thinking that a wall