_December 1st._--I went to the House of Lords the night Parliament opened, and heard Stanley's speech. It lasted above two hours, was a declaration of war, very slashing and flashing, and drew forth vehement cheers from the Lords behind him. It was a regular Stanleyan speech, just like himself, and exhibits all his unfitness for the great functions of government and legislation: not but what there was much truth in a great deal he said, especially about Ireland. The next day George Bentinck bellowed and gesticulated for two hours in the House of Commons with the same violence but without the same eloquence as Stanley. Everybody looked with impatience for the Irish measures, and everybody expected (most people earnestly desiring) that they should be as strong as they could be made. In the House of Lords I had seen the Duke of Bedford for a moment, who told me they were the result of a compromise between Clarendon and the Government, the latter refusing to give all he had required, and the former having resolved not to stay with less than he eventually obtained. The night before last Sir George Grey introduced the Government measures, which appeared to almost everybody insufficient for the object. Peel however supported them in a very dexterous speech. He said he felt bound to support the Government in whatever they thought fit to propose, and that it was not for Parliament to force upon them greater powers than they in their discretion required; but he hinted his apprehensions lest some of the provisions of the Bill, or rather its deficiencies, would be found obstructions of the objects in view. The Irish were evidently surprised and had expected more stringent measures, and in truth it would have been just as easy to carry a really efficient measure as this, which will probably prove abortive. This morning I have a letter from Clarendon, who tells me what took place between himself and the Cabinet on the subject. He says, 'I expect the Bill will prove unsatisfactory to all parties...nevertheless I hope it will answer not so much by its own provisions as by the evidence it will afford that Parliament and the Government are in earnest.... In the present temper of England fancy what a figure the Government would have cut if they had opened Parliament without any repressive measure and announced that the ordinary law would prove sufficient, and that _to it_ things were left! they would have been looked on as little better than accessories or instigators, and at all events I have the satisfaction of having saved them from this very serious scrape, which really would have caused an immediate increase of murder here. No one could be more desirous than myself to avoid Coercion Bills, or indeed to ask for any increased powers; but when I found that the ordinary law was insufficient to protect life and property, I sent over the heads of two Bills, both of which I meant should be permanent--one for punishing districts in which