FORE:DEPARTURE OF THE BRITISH TROOPS FROM ALEXANDRIA. (See p. 539.)As the Government was determined to persevere, and to carry the Reform Bill by means of a large creation of peers, if necessary, some of the leading members of the Opposition in the Upper House began to think seriously of their position, a sort of appeal having been made to them in a letter from the king's private secretary, suggesting the prudence of compromise and concession in order to save his Majesty from the painful alternative of a creation of peers. Accordingly, Lords Wharncliffe and Harrowby put themselves in communication with Lord Grey, and this fact was announced by the former in a letter to the Duke of Wellington, stating that he entertained good hope of being able to arrange such a plan of compromise as would prevent the necessity of a second rejection of the Bill by the Lords, and so enable them to alter and amend it when it came into committee. The Duke, in reply to this, said that he was glad of a possibility of an arrangement by mutual concession on the Reform question; and that, for his part, all that he desired to see, under the new system, was a chance of a Government for this hitherto prosperous, happy, and great country, which should give security to life and property hereafter. "The political unions," he said, "had assumed an organisation which any man who could read would pronounce to be for military purposes, and nothing else." In the meantime Lord Wharncliffe had waited by appointment upon the Prime Minister at his house, in Sheen, where he discussed the Reform question with him for two hours, without ever adverting to the political unions, and he reported the issue in a long letter to the Duke of Wellington. The result was that Lord Grey made some trifling concession in matters of detail, and in return Lord Wharncliffe gave him the assurance that he would do what he could to bring the Opposition lords to take a more favourable view of the Ministerial scheme and its probable consequences. This was followed by cordial shaking of hands, and[346] permission was given on each side to communicate with intimate friends and colleagues. The Duke of Wellington, however, declined to take any part in these deliberations. He believed that the Government could be carried on, though with difficulty, under the existing system; but under the system which the Reform Bill would introduce he doubted if the Government could be carried on at all. Nothing came of Lord Wharncliffe's negotiation with the Government, which declined to make any material concession. It had the effect, however, of splitting the Conservative party in the Upper House, breaking the phalanx of the Opposition, and thus preparing the way for the triumph of the Government.
