hon. Gentleman will remember occurrences that are past, he will remember that he has been in office, and that I have been in opposition to the Government for many years; but I think he will not recollect that during the whole of that time I have been at all disposed to change any opinion I have once maintained or to qualify any opinion for the sake of offering an opposition to the Government. The right hon. Baronet says, and others say, that those who were most loud against the late Government, are now, like ourselves, attacking the present. Does this observation apply only to us? Are there not among the hon. Gentlemen whom I now see arranged upon the opposite benches some who opposed the right hon. Baronet with a far other spirit, and with a very different kind of bitterness from that with which the Whigs ever attacked him? I do remember when we were attending, night after night, in large numbers to offer him our humble support, when he was acting in accordance with our principles, that at the end of the evening the right hon. Baronet got up and called the House to witness that three-fourths of the debate had been occupied in personal invective. Personal invective! from whom? Why, from the very men who are now his staunchest friends and his firmest supporters. There was a comparison made at that time affecting the right hon. Baronet personally; he was described as a Protestant Jesuit, conceding measures which he allowed to be dangerous, and altering his course when he declared that he had not altered his opinion. Did that elaborate and severe comparison come from a Whig, or a liberal Member of Parliament ? Did it not come from one of the high Tories?

There was another attack made upon the right hon. Baronet. He was accused, not of yielding the Catholic Question, but of not having yielded it to Mr. Canning, the conscientious and eminent supporter of the Catholic Claims. It was urged that the state of Ireland had not changed

that the state of the Catholics had not changed-that the state of the House of Commons had not changedand that the right hon. Baronet having no ground for his change of conduct, was offering an example which would destroy all confidence in public men. The orator who pronounced this strong and bitter philippic closed it by lifting up his hands and exclaiming- Nusquam tuta fides!' From whom did this invective come? It came from the paymaster of the Forces. Why to be sure, it might be the Ex-paymaster of the Forces,-the Member for Devonshire. Was it? No, it was the present Paymaster of the Forces, the Member for Kent! And yet, after all this, we are to be told, that there is something strange and wonderful— something almost unprecedented-in our (with no change in our opinion) coming to the same vote with those who severely censured the late Government. I know very well, that there are many Members who differed from the late Government. Whether it was because the late Ministry did not go far enough, or that those Gentlemen were too impatient, is a question I will not raise again now. My opinion, of course, is the latter. I think they were going too quickly; they thought, no doubt, that we were moving too slowly. I really see no reason, however, why we should discuss that question in the present House of Commons, any more than I see why the right hon. Baronet, the First Lord of the Treasury, and the Paymaster of the Forces, should discuss the question, whether all confidence in public men has been destroyed by the conduct of himself and his colleagues on the Catholic Question.

Sir, I have but one more comment to make upon the statement of the right hon. Gentleman. He said, if I understood him-and I think I remember to have met with the same assertion before, couched in somewhat similar terms-that, under the present Administration, the measures proposed to this House are likely to be carried

without difficulty in the other House of Parliament. There really does arise upon this point a very nice and delicate question. That question is this-are these measures to be similar to, or are they to be different from, those measures, the announcement of which gave satisfaction to the country generally? If you say they are similar measures, you tell the country in plain terms, that the House of Lords will not agree to Reform measures unless they see in office a Ministry of their own selection. If the measures are to be different-if they are to be less effective measures of Reform, then are we told that we must yield to the House of Lords with respect to the measures themselves, and that that which we think necessary cannot be proposed to Parliament ?

Sir, I have always been opposed to attacks upon the authority of the House of Lords. My own opinion has been, and is, that if measures, which had the cordial concurrence of the country, were sent up to the House of Lords, though they might have been rejected once, though possibly they might have been rejected twice, still the House of Lords would eventually yield to what was the well-expressed and deliberate sense of the people of this country. In thinking and saying this, I pay a due tribute to the wisdom, I pay a due tribute to the patriotism, of the House of Lords. I wish them to have their due part and share in the Constitution, but I cannot allow that that power over the House of Commons which was held by them indirectly before the Reform Bill was passed, shall now be restored to them to be used directly. Sir, I know that we are now placed in a difficult crisis-the consequence, I must say, of the events of November; because I do not believe that if Parliament had met at its usual time, with no interruption, any one would have thought for a moment that there was any difficulty in the case. But, without having had anything to do with the creation of that crisis, I must

say that we are all bound to see that it passes over with safety to the peace, and with safety to the institutions of the country; but, at the same time, with good effect, and with success to the reformation of the Church and State. If this House should yield too ready and implicit an obedience to everything that is suggested from the Crown, we may incur the danger of losing the just and necessary reforms we seek to obtain; if, on the contrary, we proceed too rapidly and impatiently in the exercise of our highest prerogatives to alter that which the state of the country and the welfare of the people do not require to be altered, we shall be deeply responsible to our constituents and to posterity for our act. That we may safely steer between these two dangers is my fervent prayer-and I think that if we send to the foot of the Throne the Address, as amended by my noble Friend, stating clearly, but stating respectfully, the Reforms which are required, we shall have done our duty to those constituents and that posterity; and that we shall not deserve either to be reproached with pusillanimous weakness on the one hand, or inconsiderate rashness on the other.

LONDON UNIVERSITY.

March 26, 1835.

LORD JOHN RUSSELL said, that when the right hon. Baronet acknowledged that the claims of the Dissenters to admission to Universities were well grounded, and when he said that those who did not conform to the Church of England should have an opportunity of obtaining academical honours, he wished that the right hon. Baronet had, at the same time, pointed out some way in which the House could have expressed its acquiescence in his opinion. But while the right hon. Baronet allowed the justice of

the claim under consideration, he did not point out any mode by which it could be satisfied. The right hon. Baronet could not say, that the Motion 'took him by surprise.' The notice was sufficiently long before the House, and time enough had been afforded for the production of the Memorial. If it were the opinion of the right hon. Baronet that some better, some more enlarged course should have been adopted, he had had full time for taking the matter into consideration, and for developing the plan which he should recommend the Government to adopt. The present position of the House with regard to this question, he begged to say, was not that in which it stood last year; because the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge having opposed the admission of Dissenters into those two Universities, and having succeeded in their opposition in the other House of Parliament, and having the power, by their rules and regulations, to exclude Dissenters, they thus stood forward and said, that not only should these persons be excluded from the ancient Universities, but that an institution which had been established at the expense of 150,000l., and which was fully capable of teaching learning and the arts, should not have the power of conferring honours and degrees. This was deemed a grievance by the Dissenters, and ought to be remedied. The House had been told by the right hon. Baronet, who had argued the case with ability, that what the Universities objected to was, that the London University should confer the title of master and bachelor of arts. He knew that there was a certain degree of honour attached to these names, and that they conveyed with them the idea of proficiency and skill; but if new names were to be employed in the London University, for the mere purpose of making a distinction between the degrees which were conferred in Oxford and Cambridge, and those which were conferred in London,--and if the new names were not to