The debate at night was carried on with extraordinary temper and calmness; Brougham complimented Lyndhurst in very glowing terms. The matter now stands over till Monday, when the Commons must determine whether to accept the Bill with these alterations or reject it on account of them. There is great division of opinion as to the result, but I cannot bring myself to believe that they will let the Bill drop for such trifles. I asked Wharncliffe last night to explain to me in what manner these things would operate _politically_, and he owned that he thought their political importance was greatly overrated, but that the division proposed by Government gave greater influence to numbers, while that substituted by the Peers gave more to property, and that the constitution of the town councils, whether they were more or less Radical or Conservative, would have a political effect in this way; that in every borough little democracies would be established, which would be continually exercising a democratic influence and extending democratic principles, and that the greater the infusion of Conservative interest you could make in these new bodies the more that tendency would be counteracted. In my opinion a fallacy lurks under this argument; they assume the certain democratic, even revolutionary, character of the new town councils without any sufficient reason, but if this be so, and if they are correct in their anticipations, I doubt whether the guards and drawbacks with which they are endeavouring to counteract the pernicious influence they dread will be found efficacious. I do not despair of the prevalence of sound Conservative principles _upon a Liberal basis_, and it appears to me that the Peers have committed a great blunder in expressing such violent suspicion and distrust of the new corporations; that nothing is so likely to make them Radical as to insist that they must and will be so, or to render them inimical to the aristocracy and to aristocratic institutions as to exhibit a violent hostility on the part of the aristocracy towards them. I apply this observation generally to their way of dealing with the question rather than to the particular words of the disputed clause, which is probably on the whole fairer and better as the Peers amended it than as the Commons framed it, so much so that I do not understand the tenacity with which the Government cling to it. One thing is very clear, that neither for this nor for the justices clause is it worth while (to either party) that the prevailing harmony should be broken and the Bill be lost. If both parties were sincerely desirous of an accommodation, and there was any common interest, any common ground on which they could meet, there would be no difficulty in an adjustment; but this is not the case. Not only are the interests and wishes of the two parties at variance, but the desires of the moderate and the violent in each party are so too. The moderate in both probably do wish for an accommodation.