Yesterday the Lords finished the Committee on the Corporation Bill. Their last amendment (which I do not very well understand at present), by which certain aldermen elected for life are to be taken in the first instance from the present aldermen, has disgusted the authors of the Bill more than all the rest. In the morning I met Duncannon and Howick, both open-mouthed against the amendments, and this in particular, and declaring that though the others might have been stomached, this could not go down, as it was in direct opposition to the principle of the Bill. Howick talked of 'the Lords being swept away like chaff' and of 'the serious times that were approaching.' Duncannon said there would be a conference, and if the Lords insisted on these amendments the Bill would be lost. I asked if a compromise was not feasible, the Lords abandoning this and the Commons taking the other amendments, which he said would not be undesirable, but difficult to effect. The continual discussions about this Bill have made me perforce understand something of it towards the end of them. I am too ignorant of the details and of the tendency of the Bill to have an opinion of the comparative merits of its present and its original shape, but I am sure the Lords are bound in prudence not to mutilate it more than is absolutely necessary to make it a safe measure, and to have a good, and moreover a popular, case to go to the country with, if eventually such an appeal is to be made. On the other hand the House of Commons, powerful as it is, must not assert its power too peremptorily, and before the Ministers determine to resign, for the purpose of making their resignation instrumental to the consolidation of their power and the destruction of the House of Lords; they also must have a good case, and be able to show that the amendments made by the Lords are incompatible with the object proposed, that they were made in a factious spirit and for the express purpose of thwarting the principle contended for, and that their conduct in this matter forms part of a general system, which can only be counteracted by some fundamental change in the constitution of the Upper House itself. These are violent conclusions to come to, and when one reflects calmly upon the possible and probable consequences of a collision, and the manner in which the interests of the antagonistic parties collectively and individually are blended together, it is difficult to believe that both will not pause on the brink of the precipice and be influenced by a simultaneous desire to come to a decent and practicable compromise. This would probably be easy if both parties were actuated by a sincere desire to enact a law to reform corporations in the safest, best, and most satisfactory manner; but the reformation of the corporations is not the first object in the minds of either. One wants to save as much as possible of the Tory influence, which is menaced by the Bill, and the other wants to court the democratic