be a little obstinate, etc.  In short, it all comes to this, that many M.P.’s are afraid of losing their seats by a dissolution, and many others whose boroughs are disfranchised hate the Reform Bill, and many more are anti-Reformers by nature, and all these combine to stifle it....  And to tell Lord John that really he has such a quantity of spare character that it can bear a little damaging!  I am ashamed and sick of such things, and should think my country no longer worth caring for, but for those brave men who have gone off to fight for her with a spirit worthy of themselves, and but for those lower classes in which Frederick [41] tells me to put my faith....  I must stop, not without fear that you may think me blind to the very real evil and danger of dissolution or resignation at the beginning of a great war.  Indeed I am not—­but those who see nothing but these dangers are taking the very way to lead us into them....  Lord Aberdeen is firm as a rock; it is due to him to say so.  How shall I prevent my boys growing up to be cowards and selfish like the rest?  You see what a humour I am in....  I never let out to anybody.  When my friends give all this noble advice I sit to all appearance like Patience on a monument, but not feeling like her at all—­keeping silence because there is not time to begin at the first rudiments of morality, and there would be no use in anything higher up.  Good-bye, poor Lizzy, doomed to suffer under my bad moods.  God bless you all.

    Yours ever, F.R.

[41] Colonel Romilly, husband of Lady Elizabeth Romilly, and son of Sir Samuel Romilly.

    Lord Granville to Lady John Russell

    February 28, 1854

I have just heard that Lord John has consented to put off Reform till after Easter.  It must have been a great personal sacrifice to him, but I am delighted for his own sake and the public cause that he has done it.  There is no doubt but that nearly all who cry for delay are at bottom enemies to Reform.  Reform is not incompatible with war, and it is not clear that a dissolution would be dangerous during its continuance, but an enormous majority of the House of Commons have persuaded themselves of the contrary.

In all probability the apathetic approved of the Reform Bill only because it was out of the question for the present.  Newcastle agrees with me in thinking that a wall has been built which, at present, could not have been knocked down by the few who really desire Reform.

    PEMBROKE LODGE, April 8, 1854

    Painfully anxious day.  Cabinet to decide on Reform or no Reform
    this session.