Lord Russell received a deputation from the Reform League and
the working men of the metropolis on the subject of the Reform Bill on Tuesday. Several working men spoke at length. He dismissed them with characteristic curtness—" I shall not be able, having an important engagement, to listen to you any longer." After a haughty oompliment to the working men's speeches, " I have been always of opinion that great injustice has been done to the working men by attempting not only to depreciate their talents, but their habits of life," of course he added, "It is impossible for me to agree with the sentiments that have been expressed." It would be his duty, he said, to introduce a measure that would " improve the representation, and that would be likely to obtain the assent of Parliament,"--which has a sound rather ominous of a ricketty and sickly constitution for the measure itself. But this at least is stronger and important :—" We will stand by the measure, which we think is calculated for that purpose, and which we expect to carry, and we shall not remain except we can." That is manly, but why does Lord John always feel so keenly that he is a superior order of being to the people for whom he fights ? They are " at least vertebrated animals," and he spoke to the woriring men the other day as the late Mr. Justice Maule once accused the late Sir Cresswell Cromwell of speaking to the Bench, ••■4' like God Almighty to a black beetle."
