“Well, what think you of our Reform plan? My raptures with it encrease every hour, and my astonishment at its boldness. It was all very well for an historian like Thomas Creevey to lay down the law, as he did in his pamphlet, that all these rotten nomination boroughs were modern usurpations, and that the communities of all substantial boroughs were by law the real electors; but here is a little fellow not weighing above 8 stone—Lord John Russell by name—who, without talking of law or anything else, creates in fact a perfectly new House of Commons, quite in conformity to the original formation of that body. . . . What a coup it is! It is its boldness that makes its success so certain. . . . A week or ten days must elapse before the Bill is printed and ready for a 2nd reading; by that time the country will be in a flame from one end to the other in favor of the measure. . . . I saw the stately Buckingham going down to the Lords just now. I wonder how he likes the boroughs of Buckingham and St. Mawe’s being bowled out. He would never have been a duke without them, and can there be a better reason for their destruction?”
