The Peers and the working-men have both pat in their
accounts of the different side of the shield presented to their view,—Mr. Scott Russell being the shield, of which apparently one aide was inscribed with a very vague, and the other with a very defi- nite inscription. According to the Peers, " early in the summer" Mr. Scott Russell made the first application to them, "in the name of a representative Council of working-men, of which he was chairman, expressing a wish that some leading members of both Houses should consent to act together in considering the reasonable requirements of the working-class and such legis- lative measures as might be proposed to them." Tho result was that Lords Salisbury, Carnarvon, Lichfield, John Manners, Sandon (a new name in the matter), together with Sir John Pakington, Sir Stafford Nortbcote, and Mr. Gathorue Hardy, signed a very innocent, not to say milk-and-water, sort of memorandum, in which they declared that " at the request of Mr. Scott Russell, as chair- man of a Council of representative working-men," they undertook " to consider in a friendly and impartial spirit whether and in what measure we can co-operate with this Council in measufes calculated to remove the disadvantages which affect the well- being of the working-classes ;" but reserving " to ourselves the most unfettered discretion in the selection of objects, and the modification or rejection of measures proposed to us for con- sideration." Very cautious and safe stipulations, but hardly promising much tangible result !
