September 1st, 1835 {p.303} Lord John Russell assembled his Whigs and Radicals at the Foreign Office yesterday morning, and announced to them the course he proposed to adopt with regard to the Corporation Bill, the amendments he would accept, those he would modify, and those he would decline. Hume made a violent speech, deprecating any concessions, but O'Connell made a very moderate one, recommending a compromise, and saying that great alarm prevailed among many well-meaning and conscientious persons lest Reform should proceed too far; that it was highly expedient to quiet these apprehensions, and upon every account therefore he recommended a moderate and conciliatory course. There were between two and three hundred present at this meeting. Accordingly in the afternoon John Russell stated over again in the House of Commons pretty much what he had said in the morning, and made a very temperate and conciliatory speech. Peel, who had arrived suddenly and unexpectedly in town,[2] rose after him, and, as everybody said (some with joy, others with rage), 'threw over the Lords.' He declared his concurrence in those amendments which John Russell agreed to, and his acquiescence in most of the other provisions without the amendments of the Lords; to the aldermen for life he objected, and to some other particulars, as his speech shows. The only amendment to which he subscribed (and that was objected to by Government) was the exclusion of Dissenters from the disposal of Church patronage, and I was very much surprised to hear him stand out for this upon (as I think) very insufficient grounds. Nothing could exceed the dismay and the rage (though suppressed) of the Conservatives at his speech. He was not a bit cheered by those behind him, but very heartily by those opposite. One silly, noisy fellow, whose principal vocation in the House of Commons is to bellow, came near me under the gallery, and I asked him why they did not cheer, when he sulkily answered, 'he was so well cheered by the other side that it was not necessary.' Lord Harrowby was under the gallery. I asked him what he said to Peel's speech. 'I did not hear it,' he tartly replied, 'but he seems to have given up the aldermen. I have a great affection for the aldermen.' At the 'Travellers' I met Strangford, and asked him the same question. He said, 'I say, Not content.' 'But,' said I, 'you must take the Bill.' 'Not I, for one; the Lords cannot take it, and if we are to be ruined I think we had better be ruined by real Radicals than by sham Tories.' Afterwards I saw Lord Londonderry, who talked in the same strain, not denying that the Duke of Wellington had unwillingly come into the measures which Lyndhurst had adopted, but talking of Lyndhurst's Conservative scruples as a constitutional lawyer, and such stuff as this. The manner in which the Duke has been ousted from the leadership, and the alacrity with which the Lords have followed Lyndhurst, because he led them