Peel said to Graham that he should express no opinion, make no promise, and would not say whether or how his conduct would be affected by what he had heard. I replied on this, that I did not desire or expect that he should, and that my object was attained when he was made aware of what I knew. I repeated that I had no authority, and he must attach as much or as little importance to my opinion as he thought it was worth. Graham said that, notwithstanding his annoyance, he was in fact fully sensible of the importance of the circumstances, and that he would look with the greatest solicitude for what fell from John Russell himself, considering that his speech would afford the test of the correctness of my impressions, and that if the tenour of that speech confirmed them, their speeches would be of a corresponding character; that he might defend the policy of the Government, and the administration of Ireland, as strenuously as he pleased; but if he attacked the House of Lords, or truckled to the Radicals, they must give a vent to the indignant feelings that such conduct would inevitably excite, and it would be impossible for them to satisfy their followers by a mere milk-and-water debate, and by abstaining from the use of their weapons when the other side were unscrupulous in the use of theirs. I said I did not desire that they should go into action with their swords in their scabbards, while their enemies were to have theirs drawn; that I admitted that this opening speech might be considered a fair test, and that all I desired was, that if they _could_ be moderate they _would_, and always keep in sight the motives for moderation. This, he assured me, I might depend upon. Peel thinks _the motion_ itself so violent, that it announces violent dispositions; and he says it is moving the Appropriation Clause over again.[11] The only individual to whom all this has been communicated, besides Peel and Stanley, is Arbuthnot, for the purpose of being conveyed to the Duke of Wellington, but without any mention of my name. [11] [The terms of Lord John's resolution were these: 'That it is the opinion of this House that it is expedient to persevere in those principles which have guided the Executive Government of Ireland of late years, and which have tended to the effectual administration of the law and the general improvement of that part of the Kingdom.' It is difficult to perceive any violence in this language.]