his course; still less can I acknowledge that merely to amuse himself, or in a moment of difficulty to excite some popular sympathy, Lord John Russell was a statesman always with Reform in his pocket, ready to produce it and make a display.  How different from that astute and sagacious statesman now at the head of her Majesty’s government, whom I almost hoped to have seen in his place this evening.  I am sure it would have given the house great pleasure to have seen him here, and the house itself would have assumed a more good-humored appearance.  I certainly did hope that the noble lord would have been enabled to be in his place and prepared to support his policy.  According to the animated but not quite accurate account of the right honorable gentleman who has just sat down, all that Lord Derby did was to sanction the humor and caprice of Lord John Russell.  It is true that Lord John Russell when prime minister recommended that her Majesty in the speech from the throne should call the attention of Parliament to the expediency of noticing the condition of our representative system; but Lord John Russell unfortunately shortly afterwards retired from his eminent position.

He was succeeded by one of the most considerable statesmen of our days, a statesman not connected with the political school of Lord John Russell, who was called to power not only with assistance of Lord John Russell and the leading members of the Whig party, but supported by the whole class of eminent statesmen who had been educated in the same school and under the same distinguished master.  This eminent statesman, however, is entirely forgotten.  The right honorable gentleman overlooks the fact that Lord Aberdeen, when prime minister, and when all the principal places in his cabinet were filled with the disciples of Sir Robert Peel, did think it his duty to recommend the same counsel to her Majesty.  But this is an important, and not the only important, item in the history of the Reform Bill which has been ignored by the right honorable gentleman.  The time, however, came when Lord Aberdeen gave place to another statesman, who has been complimented on his sagacity in evading the subject, as if such a course would be a subject for congratulation.  Let me vindicate the policy of Lord Palmerston in his absence.  He did not evade the question.  Lord Palmerston followed the example of Lord John Russell.  He followed the example also of Lord Aberdeen, and recommended her Majesty to notice the subject in the speech from the throne.  What becomes, then, of the lively narrative of the right honorable gentleman, and what becomes of the inference and conclusions which he drew from it?  Not only is his account inaccurate, but it is injurious, as I take it, to the course of sound policy and the honor of public men.  Well, now you have three prime ministers bringing forward the question of Parliamentary Reform; you have Lord John Russell, Lord Aberdeen, and you have even that