[Sidenote: LORD JOHN RUSSELL'S RESOLUTIONS.]
The other great topic of interest, viz. the Reform Bill and John Russell's Resolutions, does not look in a more satisfactory state. While many sensible people deprecate this move of John Russell's, and lament that Palmerston should have consented to support it, the probability seems that it will be carried, but the greatest uncertainty prevails as to the course which the Government will adopt, and whether they will try to go on, dropping their Bill altogether, or continue the fight with its remaining clauses, or whether they will take the chance of a dissolution. It is now clear enough that Derby made a great blunder in undertaking to deal with the question of Reform at all, and that a consistent Conservative course would have been the most honourable and the wisest, and have afforded him the best chance of staying in office. By bringing forward a measure to the principle of which it is well known that he and his whole Government and party are in their hearts adverse, and then trying to vitiate the principle by certain contrivances in the details, by which the scruples of his own party may be obviated, he exposes himself to the charge of producing a dishonest measure, and this is what the Whigs urge as their ground for attacking it in front and at once. This is what Lewis said to me, 'We are bound to defeat a measure which is so dishonest that it is not susceptible of such improvement in Committee as would warrant our passing it.' The conduct of the Whigs, however, is not a whit more honest. Their allegation is a mere pretext, and their real motive is that they think they see their way back to office through an attack upon the Government Bill; they are indifferent to the consequences, and all they want is to get the coast clear for themselves, and take the chance of settling the difficult questions which will arise as to the formation of a Government and the conditions on which it can be formed. All this appears to me quite as dishonest as anything the Government have done or are doing. Palmerston never was a Reformer. He was opposed as much as he dared and could be even to the great measure of 1832, which all the world was for. When he brought forward a measure of his own two or three years ago, he did it without sincerity or conviction, and merely for a party object, and now he is uniting with John Russell without any real agreement with him in opinion, and with full knowledge that if they succeed and climb into office on the ruins of the Government Bill he will be obliged to propose a measure much stronger than he believes to be either necessary or safe. Believing that Palmerston and John Russell were agreed no further than upon the Resolutions on Monday next, I thought that a difference must arise between them (in the event of their coming into office) on the Reform Bill they should produce, but I was told just now that upon this point they are already nearly if not completely agreed. They are, however, not yet agreed upon the great question of the Premiership, or which of them shall go to the House of Lords. The impatience and confidence of Lord John seems to be unbounded, and in spite of his being the younger by seven years, his eagerness to be in office again much more intense than that of Palmerston. Although this is such a miserable Government, both discreditable and incompetent, and it is a misfortune to have the country ruled by such men, I cannot desire the success of such selfish and unpatriotic manoeuvres as those by which the Whigs are endeavouring to supplant them, and consequently I regard the whole state of affairs with indescribable disgust and no small apprehension. I believe the country to be in nearly equal danger from Louis Napoleon abroad and Mr. Bright at home, and I fear that there is no capacity in the Government to cope with the one, and no such amount of wisdom and patriotism amongst the chief men of all parties as is requisite to defeat the designs of the other.