Lord Grey made an excellent speech in the House of Lords in reply to Aberdeen's questions about Ancona, and Peel made another in the House of Commons on Irish Tithes, smashing Sheil, taking high ground and a strong position, but doing nothing towards settling the question. He forgets that the system is bad, resting on a false foundation, and that it has worked ill and been bolstered up by him and his party till now it can no longer be supported, and it threatens to carry away with it that which is good in itself. We owe these things to those who wilfully introduced a moral confusion of ideas into their political machinery, and, by destroying the essential distinction between right and wrong, have deprived the things which are right of the best part of their security. I have never been able to understand why our system should be made to rest on artificial props when it did not require them, nor the meaning of that strange paradox which a certain school of statesmen have always inculcated, that institutions of admitted excellence required to be conjoined with others which were founded in crime and error, and which could only be supported by power. This has brought about Reform; it would be easy to prove it. The Ancona affair will blow over. George Villiers writes me word that it was a little escapade of Perier's, done in a hurry, a mistake, and yet he is a very able man. Talleyrand told me 'c'est une betise.' Nothing goes on well; the world is out of joint. Fanny Kemble's new tragedy came out last night with complete success, written when she was seventeen, an odd play for a girl to write. The heroine is tempted like Isabella in 'Measure for Measure,' but with a different result, which result is supposed to take place between the acts. March 26th, 1832 {p.270} [Page Head: REFORM BILL IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.]