In the Lords, where the Marquis of Normanby worked pain-
fully through the Address, with a long and painful suspense of animation just as he got to the Cattle Plague, evidently fearing to take the bull by the horns, and the Earl of Morley followed him in a very fluent and proper speech, winning great cheers from the Tories by the taunts he directed against the negro-sympa- thizers of Exeter Hall, the debate was almost one long low of distress;—a voice from the cattle-sheds. The Duke of Rutland, the Duke of Richmond, the Earl of Essex, the Earl of Winchilsea, and Lord Feversham, all expressed, in language some- times articulate, sometimes quite as inarticulate as the cattle themselves, their reproaches agr • ,st the Government for not doing
more to stave off this disaster. . answered blandly and rather meekly, the Duke _ with more force and more self-assertion, for the GoN ment, and at last Earl de Grey had the courage, after paying ( .sent respect to the cows, to attack the question of Reform. He rebuked Lord Russell almost " as a father" on the folly of introducing a little suffrage Bill which could not settle, which could only at most open, a great constitu- tional question, and which, as its warmest supporters admitted, was chiefly of use to gain "a leverage" for further reform. Lord Derby's oratorical instinct also led him away from the cows. He was very bitter on Lord Russell's desertion of Mr. Eyre, and chaffed him rather happily with regard to his uncertain attitude on reform. Lord Russell intimated curtly that when 500 lives of Her Majesty's subjects, at a minimum estimate, had been taken in Jamaica, it was at least time for inquiry, and not for punctilious etiquette, and tried to say that the proposed suffrage measure was all he intended to introduce, and not a mere preliminary to farther changes, bdt evidently the words stuck in his throat. Clearly if the Peers could get rid of the cattle plague by a massacre of the negroes in Jamaica, and the surrender (say) of the Reformed House of Commons, their only difficulty would be how to manage it in a seemly and dignified way.
