Lord Derby's two speeches were not e q ual to his reputation.
There was neither thought nor statesmanship in either of them. The first, which opened the debate, was mainly a statement of his un- willingness to be constantlyMinister of a minority, and of his convic- tion that between 101. and household suffrage there was no halting line. His Lordship defended the lodger franchise as Conservative, and the redistribution scheme as based on the principle of dis- franchising no one, and denounced the proposal to submit the Reform Bill to a Committee as an insult to the Lower House. The second speech was chiefly an attack on Lord Carnarvon, fu l of rhetorical t0 points," but included a sneer at the lodger franchise as an idea of Mr. Gladstone's, and a demand that if anybody wanted more redistribution he should produce his scheme. It 'will be noted that the Premier on neither night expressed cordial liking for the Bill, though he praised Mr. Disraeli's " imperturbable " temper. He treated the Bill always as a necessity, a dose which might be nice or nasty, but must and should be swallowed.
