Further, Mr. Gladstone pledged the Government to the intro- duction
of the Ballot Bill. As to the House of Lords, he thought there were "various particulars in which the constitution of that House might, under favourable circumstances, be improved,"—a very safe opinion,—and blamed the Peers for not sitting through August to consider the Ballot Bill, as they did under the Duke of Welling- ton's guidance in 1835 to consider the Municipal Corporations' Bill. He did not think the elimination of the hereditary principle would be favoured by either the middle or the working-class ; and told an amusing story of a popular combination of about forty Mem- bers of Parliament, containing only one lord, against the Whig phalanx, but which singled out that one lord to present the peti- tion of some powerful town against aristocratic exclusiveness. And the working-men whom Mr. Scott Russell represented were evidently taken, Mr. Gladstone remarked, by Mr. Scott Russell's description of the combination in their favour as consisting of "peers, lords, baronets, and a single Commoner,"—" one soli- tary commoner amongst peers, lords, and baronets." Mr. Scott Russell knew the working-men's heart when he gave this descrip- tion; and while the House of Lords continues to have such power, both in middle-class and working-class regions, Mr. Gladstone would refuse to attempt any crusade against it. His speech con- cluded with an energetic warning to the working-class not to rely on legislation for the amelioration of their own condition, but to rely on themselves, and cited a verse of Mr. Bradlaugh's (without mentioning his name) to that effect, for which he has been blamed as if it were a sin either to know what Mr. Bradlaugh thinks, or to quote him when he thinks right. British prudery is sickening in its silliness.
