son, and Miss Forester.]

[5] [Compare the details of the preparation of the Reform
Bill published by Lord Russell in the last edition of
his 'Essay on the British Constitution.' Much of this
conversation of Lord Lyndhurst's is extremely wide of
the truth, but it is retained to show what was said and
believed by competent persons at the time.]

In the meantime the elections have been going languidly on, and
are now nearly over; contrary to the prognostications of the
Tories, they have gone off very quietly, even in Ireland not many
contests, the anti-Reformers being unable to make any fight at
all; except in Shropshire they are dead-beat everywhere.
Northamptonshire the sharpest contest, and the one which has made
the most ill blood; this particular election has produced a good
deal of violence; elsewhere the Reformers have it hollow, no
matter what the characters of the candidates, if they are only for
the Bill. Calcraft and Wellesley, the former not respected, the
latter covered with disgrace, have beat Bankes and Tyrrell.
Lowther had not a chance in Cumberland, where Sir James Graham got
into another scrape, for in an impertinent speech he made an
attack upon Scarlett, which drew upon him a message and from him
an apology. Formerly, when a man made use of offensive expressions
and was called to account, he thought it right to go out and stand
a shot before he ate his words, but now-a-days that piece of
chivalry is dispensed with, and politicians make nothing of being
scurrilous one day and humble the next. Hyde Villiers has been
appointed to succeed Sandon at the Board of Control as a Whig and
a Reformer. He was in a hundred minds what line he should take,
and had written a pamphlet to prove the necessity of giving
Ministers seats in both Houses (as in France), which he has
probably put in the fire. I am very glad he has got the place, and
though his opinions were not very decided before, he has always
been anti-Tory, and has done nothing discreditable to get it, and
it was offered to him in a very flattering manner.

May 28th, 1831 {p.146}

Yesterday Lord Grey was invested with the blue ribband, though
there is no vacancy; the only precedent is that of Lords
Liverpool and Castlereagh (which was thought wrong), but it was
on the occasion of the peace after Bonaparte's overthrow and when
Castlereagh returned with such _eclat_ from Paris that the whole
Ho