What do the London Reformers expect to get by worrying
the Queen? It is becoming a regular practice with them to ask permission to send deputations to Her Majesty, and be mightily offended if it is not at once accorded. Suppose they have a legal right to send them, what then? They have a legal right to wear their hats in the house when asked out to dinner, but do they perpetually assert it? There would be common sense in these persistent requests if the Queen were refusing the Reform Bill, or likely to refuse it, or interesting herself against it in any way, but there is not the faintest sign of any such intention on Her Majesty's part. On the contrary, the belief in well informed quarters is that the Prince Consort was on the franchise more liberal than any Minister avows himself to be, went as far as Sir Roundell Palmer, who did not fear that even household suffrage would endanger the Constitution. At all events, to press by per- sonal importunity on a Queen, willing or reluctant, measures she has no power to pass, is neither courteous nor constitutional.
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