we could not be severely beaten.  The doors were thrown open, and in they came.  Each of them, as he entered, brought some different report of their numbers.  It must have been impossible, as you may conceive, in the lobby, crowded as they were, to form any exact estimate.  First we heard that they were three hundred and three; then that number rose to three hundred and ten; then went down to three hundred and seven.  Alexander Barry told me that he had counted, and that they were three hundred and four.  We were all breathless with anxiety, when Charles Wood, who stood near the door, jumped up on a bench and cried out, “They are only three hundred and one.”  We set up a shout that you might have heard to Charing Cross, waving our hats, stamping against the floor, and clapping our hands.  The tellers scarcely got through the crowd; for the House was thronged up to the table, and all the floor was fluctuating with heads like the pit of a theatre.  But you might have heard a pin drop as Duncannon read the numbers.  Then again the shouts broke out, and many of us shed tears.  I could scarcely refrain.  And the jaw of Peel fell; and the face of Twiss was as the face of a damned soul; and Herries looked like Judas taking his necktie off for the last operation.  We shook hands, and clapped each other on the back, and went out laughing, crying, and huzzaing into the lobby.  And no sooner were the outer doors opened than another shout answered that within the House.  All the passages, and the stairs into the waiting-rooms, were thronged by people who had waited till four in the morning to know the issue.  We passed through a narrow lane between two thick masses of them; and all the way down they were shouting and waving their hats, till we got into the open air.  I called a cabriolet, and the first thing the driver asked was, “Is the Bill carried?” “Yes, by one.”  “Thank God for it, Sir.”  And away I rode to Gray’s Inn,—­and so ended a scene which will probably never be equalled till the reformed Parliament wants reforming; and that I hope will not be till the days of our grandchildren, till that truly orthodox and apostolical person Dr. Francis Ellis is an archbishop of eighty.

As for me, I am for the present a sort of lion.  My speech has set me in the front rank, if I can keep there; and it has not been my luck hitherto to lose ground when I have once got it.  Sheil and I are on very civil terms.  He talks largely concerning Demosthenes and Burke.  He made, I must say, an excellent speech; too florid and queer, but decidedly successful.

Why did not Price speak?  If he was afraid, it was not without reason; for a more terrible audience there is not in the world.  I wish that Praed had known to whom he was speaking.  But, with all his talent, he has no tact, and he has fared accordingly.  Tierney used to say that he never rose in the House without feeling his knees tremble under him; and I am sure that no man who has not some of that feeling will ever succeed there.