"September 3.--This King is a queer fellow. Our Council was, principally, for a new Great Seal, and to deface the old Seal. The Chancellor claims the old one as his perquisite. I had forgotten the hammer,[9] so the King said, 'My Lord, the best thing I can do, is to give you the Seal, and tell you to take it, and do what you please with it.' The Chancellor said, 'Sir, I believe there is some doubt whether Lord Lyndhurst ought not to have half of it, as he was Chancellor at the time of your Majesty's accession.' 'Well,' said the King, 'then, I will judge between you, like Solomon; here' (turning the Seal round and round), 'now do you cry heads or tails?' We all laughed, and the Chancellor said, 'Sir, I take the bottom part.' The King opened the two compartments of the Seal, and said, 'Now, then, I employ you as Ministers of taste. You will send for Bridge, my silversmith, and desire him to convert the two halves, each into a salver, with my arms on one side, and yours on the other, and Lord Lyndhurst's the same; and you will take one, and give him the other, and both keep them as presents from me.'" [Footnote 9: Defacing an old Great Seal is a very perfunctory performance. The two halves are slightly tapped with a hammer, and the seal is, by a fiction, supposed to be so defaced as to be incapable of being used again.] We, lately, have heard a great deal against the House of Lords, even to its being abolished, but this was as nothing compared to the feeling excited by the Reform Bill. At half-past five on the morning of September 22nd, the Bill was read a third time, and passed, in the House of Commons, by a majority of 113. It then went to the Lords, and on the second reading Lord Wharncliffe moved, "That the Bill be read that day six months." The Lords had five days' debate upon the Bill, and rejected it on October 7th by a majority of 41. This raised the ire of the Reform party; and, as was the custom of the age, riots ensued. The _Annual Register_ gives the following condensed account of them:-- "The rejection of the Reform Bill caused some partial disturbances in the country. At Derby, a mob, on Saturday and Sunday, the 8th and 9th, committed several outrages, attacked the city gaol, set the prisoners at liberty, and then proceeded to the county gaol, where they were resisted and foiled in the attempt: on Monday evening quiet was restored, but not before several lives were lost, and many persons wounded. One young man, son of Mr. Haden, surgeon, was killed by the mob.