With regard to the Reform Bill, it is being proposed by a large committee of the Cabinet, but George Lewis has the chief management of it. The state of public opinion admits, indeed compels, the utmost moderation, but hitherto the anticipated difficulty has been the sort of pledge which John Russell foolishly gave last year with reference to the franchise, to which it has been supposed he must consider himself bound. But there is reason to believe that he is not taking any active part in the concoction of this Bill, probably on account of his being so absorbed in foreign affairs, and under these circumstances we may not unreasonably expect that a fair Bill will be produced, and the question eventually settled. [Sidenote: A CONGRESS PROPOSED.] The question of still greater and more pressing interest is that of the Congress. The nomination of Hudson met with such opposition in the Cabinet that it was not pressed, and Lord Wodehouse was named instead. He is a clever man, well informed, speaks French fluently, and has plenty of courage and _aplomb_; his opinions are liberal, but not extravagant. Clarendon, who had him down at the Grove, was pleased and satisfied with him. Granville is much _contrarié_ that Clarendon himself has not been asked to go, thinking justly that he would have much more weight than any other man, and would be far more likely to conduct our affairs in the Congress with credit and success; but Clarendon now tells me he certainly would not have gone if it had been proposed to him. My own conviction _was_ that he would have accepted a proposal, and though for many reasons he would not have liked such a mission, I think he is somewhat mortified that it was not offered to him. The recent appearance of the pamphlet of '_Le Pape et le Congrès_,'[1] which has produced such a sensation and so much astonishment, has no doubt been a great thing for us, and rendered our diplomatic course much more easy and promising. Clarendon writes to me: 'This last pamphlet of the Emperor's is important and I am sure authentic, as it is simply a developement of what I have heard twenty times from his own lips. It ought of course to have been reserved for the Congress, but as far as we are concerned it is well timed.' It was a bold, but a clever stroke of policy to give notice to the whole world of the sentiments and intentions with which the Emperor enters the Congress, and it renders a good understanding and joint action between France and England feasible and perhaps easy, unless Palmerston spoils everything by some obstinate and extravagant pretensions which he may insist on his plenipotentiaries bringing forward. But if he should be so ill advised, I believe that he would meet with an insuperable resistance in his own Cabinet and at Court, and that Cowley certainly, perhaps Wodehouse also, would decline being made the instruments of such a vicious and mischievous policy.