I had a long talk with Tom Baring at Norman Court about the Government, their proceedings and their prospects, and we agreed entirely on the subject. I wanted him to speak to some of his friends the ministers, and to endeavour to get them to act a bolder and more consistent part as a Conservative Government, and he urged me to speak to Disraeli, which I told him I would do, and only refrained from doubting if I could do any real good with him. The Government are certainly placed in a difficult position. The Government and party whom they replaced were determined to thrust them out again as soon as possible, and their weakness and danger drove them into a quasi-alliance with the Radicals, or at least into so much deference and so many concessions to Radicals and Ultra-Liberals, that the Whigs, who were baffled and kept out by this policy, held them up to bitter scorn and reproach for acting in this manner, and now, when they agree to any measure with regard to which concession is reasonable and prudent, they are always assailed with the same reproaches instead of getting credit for so doing. To be sure they often contrive to make their concessions in such a way as to deprive them of all grace and merit. This has been pre-eminently the case with the Jew Bill. [Sidenote: ADMISSION OF THE JEWS TO PARLIAMENT.] Among the events of last week one of the most interesting was the Queen's visit to Birmingham, where she was received by the whole of that enormous population with an enthusiasm which is said to have exceeded all that was ever displayed in her former receptions at Manchester or elsewhere. It is impossible not to regard such manifestations as both significant and important. They evince a disposition in those masses of the population in which, if anywhere, the seeds of Radicalism are supposed to lurk, most favourable to the Conservative cause, by which I mean not to this or that party, but to the Monarchy and the Constitution under which we are living and flourishing, and which we may believe to be still dear to the hearts of the people of this country. This great fact lends some force to the notion entertained by many political thinkers, that there is more danger in conferring political power on the middle classes than in extending it far beneath them, and in point of fact that there is so little to be apprehended from the extension of the suffrage, that universal suffrage itself would be innocuous. Amongst the concessions of last week was the passing of Locke King's Bill for abolishing a property qualification, which was done with hardly any opposition. There can be no doubt that the practice was a mere sham, and that a property qualification was very often a fiction or a fraud, and such being the case, that it was useless to keep up the distinction; but it struck me, though I do not find that it occurred to anybody else, that the abolition might sooner or later have an indirect