While Peel was making this great speech in the House of Commons, Stanley was making a very different sort of speech in the Lords. There he denounced the measure in strong terms, exhibited a bitter feeling, and a disposition to put himself at the head of the Protectionists and throw out the measure. Such was the impression he gave, and his speech was rapturously hailed both there and elsewhere. It filled with alarm all the moderate people, and encouraged the violent. It is, however, quite impossible to conjecture what he will do when it comes to the point. It is difficult to decide whether his object is ambition and power, or only sport and mischief. As to his forming a Government, he is himself quite as unfit as the rest are incompetent. There is probably not a public man in the country who inspires so little confidence. His speech, however, has made the cauldron boil more hotly than ever, and increased the doubt whether the measure will pass. [Sidenote: INCONSISTENCY OF BOTH PARTIES.] I have had a long correspondence with the Duke of Bedford about people and things connected with this affair, and as he was always drawing comparisons between the purity and consistency of Lord John, and the dishonesty and inconsistency of others, I at last resolved to show him what Lord John's own course had been (though without finding fault with him), but letting him see that he was just as obnoxious to the charge of inconsistency or insincerity, if an enemy wished to urge it, as Peel or anybody else. I proved to him that between 1828 when he became (by his own avowal) the advocate of a fixed duty and 1839, during eleven years, he never opened his lips in favour of it; and on every occasion when it was brought forward by anybody else, he voted against it or stayed away. Then he advocated a fixed duty in 1841; and having done so with cogent reasons up to June 1845, in November of the same year he blurted out his famous letter declaring for total Repeal. The only excuse that his conduct admits of is that of expediency, the very same that is demanded, on grounds at least as strong, for Peel; but circumstances place the one man beyond the necessity of an apology, and render the other incapable of making the real and true one. Peel's best excuse for not having done before what he is doing now is afforded by the actual state of affairs. In spite of four or five years of discussion, of the dissemination of sound principles, of the diffusion of knowledge, of numerous and respectable conversions, of the success of his partial experiments in Free Trade, and of his having the potato famine as a base for his operation, he cannot do what he does now without entirely breaking up his party, and he has to encounter difficulties almost insurmountable--_si argumentum requiris circumspice_.