gan to take notes, as the plan was gradually developed,
after sundry contortions and grimaces and flinging about his arms
and legs, threw down his notes with a mixture of despair and
ridicule and horror. Not many people spoke last night: Inglis
followed John Russell, and Francis Leveson closed the debate in
the best speech he has ever made, though rather too flowery.
Everything is easy in these days, otherwise how Palmerston,
Goderich, and Grant can have joined in a measure of this
sweeping, violent, and speculative character it is difficult to
conceive, they who were the disciples of Castlereagh and the
adherents of Canning; but after the Duke of Wellington and Peel
carrying the Catholic question, Canning's friends advocating
Radical Reform, and Eldon living to see Brougham on the Woolsack,
what may one not expect?

What everybody enquires is what line Peel will take, and though
each party is confident of success in this question, it is thought
to depend mainly upon the course he adopts and the sentiments he
expresses. Hitherto he has cautiously abstained from committing
himself in any way, and he is free to act as he thinks best, but
he certainly occupies a grand position when he has _omnium oculos
in se conversos_, and the whole House of Commons looking with
unalterable anxiety to his opinions and conduct. Such has the
course of events and circumstances made this man, who is probably
yet destined to play a great part, and it may be a very useful
one. God knows how this plan may be received in the country, and
what may be its fate in Parliament. The Duke of Wellington,
however, is right enough when he says that the great present
danger is lest people should be too much afraid, for anything like
the panic that prevails I never saw, the apprehension that enough
will not be done to satiate the demon of popular opinion, and the
disposition to submit implicitly to the universal bellow that
pervades this country for what they call Reform without knowing
what it is. As to this measure, the greatest evil of it is that it
is a pure speculation, and may be productive of the best
consequences, or the worst, or even of none at all, for all that
its authors and abettors can explain to us or to themselves.

O'Connell made his explanation the other night, which was
wretched, and Stanley's was very good, but it matters not; he
will tell the people in Ireland that he had a victory, and they
will believe him. Nevertheless his defea