Schedule B. are well founded. But His Majesty is very much pleased with the plan of taking the eleven highest boroughs out of Schedule B. altogether, as including the county towns, the disfranchisement of which he also has always been inclined to consider objectionable. Nor does His Majesty see the objection in practice, while the measure would be quite consistent with the principle, to give two votes to the largest towns, which by the late Bill had only one member; or the proposed number of twenty-three, including one to Chatham and one to the county of Monmouth (that is to say, the ten proposed as second members to large towns), might be partly made up by giving additional members to the largest towns, and additional members to the largest counties which have not, in the former Bill, been so considered; thereby, at all events, and in either way, restoring the numbers of the House of Commons, and shutting out the claim. of Ireland to more members.

His Majesty enters cordially into the reasons which your Lordship gives for inclining to this proposition, and, notwithstanding the objections which have been made to it, and what is stated in your P.S., His Majesty hopes you will adhere to it; at any rate, that you will not abandon the intention of taking the eleven highest boroughs out of Schedule B.

This alteration, the very essential one, which will be produced by substituting for the criterion of population a combined one of houses and taxation, which goes to the establishment of the principle on which the King from the first laid so much stress, that it should be a representation of property as well as of numbers, and

the adoption of the census of 1831 instead of that of 1821, which His Majesty had also early urged as being most equitable, will, he trusts, have considerable effect in disarming the opposition to the Bill, and cannot, in his opinion, lay your Lordship open to the imputation of having departed from the principle of the Bill,

Your Lordship's letter and my answer to it embrace so much the essential parts of Lord Wharncliffe's memorandum, that it is almost unnecessary that I should trouble you with many more words on the subject.

The number of representatives for London and Westminster and adjoining districts, adverting to the extent and the wealth of the population, does not appear to His Majesty too great. The character of a large portion of the constituency, from the local operation of the rate of qualification, was the objection which appeared to him to call for attention, and against this your Lordship has endeavoured to guard.

His Majesty does not understand the peculiar occasion of the objection to Brighton and Cheltenham being represented, unless shall view them as places of luxury and dissipation, which should not be countenanced and encouraged. The great amount of population is certainly fluctuating, but there is a resident population in each quite sufficient to establish a claim to be represented.

There appears to His Majesty some force in Lord Wharncliffe's observation as to the preponderance which the manufacturing interest may obtain over the agricultural interest, from the counties of York, Lancaster,

Stafford, &c., receiving additional county members, as well as representatives for the large towns which abound in them; but his Majesty does not see how this can be remedied without abandoning the principle of representing numbers as well as property. The principle appears, however, to have been departed from, or rather inadvertently broken in upon, by the operation of the provision which fixes a 107. householding as the universal qualification, and on which Lord Wharncliffe next observes. It cannot be denied that it has the effect of excluding from the right of voting many householders of greater respectability than those who may obtain it from local situation and contingencies. Whether this could have been obviated in the first instance, His Majesty does not pretend to judge; though he conceives that considerable difficulty would have been found in determining the relative value of the tenement and respectability of the householder in large and small towns, so as to apply the regulation generally, and upon any principle invariably admissible. But he is satisfied of the embarrassment which would result from any attempt now to introduce this alteration in the Bill.

The King is aware that many persons, whose opinions are deserving of attention, think it would have been advisable to give a double representation to every place, and to reduce accordingly the number of places represented; but His Majesty, without giving any opinion on this point, admits that it is too late to entertain the proposition.

His Majesty does not see the advantage of dividing the Bill into three Bills, as proposed by Lord Wharn cliffe on the contrary, he conceives that it might have

the effect of extending the discussion, and of paving the way for renewed objections and opposition. I beg to return Lord Wharncliffe's papers, and have, &c.

H. TAYLOR.

P. S.-I had received very full instructions from the King for this letter, and His Majesty having read it with great attention, orders me to add that he approves of every part of it, and that it conveys correctly what he intended to say.

No. 267.

Earl Grey to Sir H. Taylor.

Downing Street, Dec. 3, 1831.

My dear Sir,-This accompanies a very long letter to the King, comprehending an answer to those which I have received both from His Majesty and from you to-day.

I am not sure that I have stated quite distinctly the objections (I think I did so in my former letter), which Lords Palmerston and Melbourne felt to the proposed alteration in Schedule B. It was not in fact to the reduction of the numbers of that schedule, but to the counterpoise which was proposed by giving ten additional members to the large towns; and I conceived the two propositions to be so identified, as I could not have consented to one without the other, or rather to the first without the second, that I spoke of the alteration of Schedule B. as the shortest way, after the explanation

which had before been given, of describing the whole proposed arrangement.

I am, &c.

No. 268.

GREY.

Earl Grey to the King.

Downing Street, Dec. 3, 1831.

Earl Grey begs leave to offer to your Majesty his best thanks for the communication of your Majesty's sentiments on what has lately passed between Earl Grey and Lord Wharncliffe on the subject of the Reform Bill; and to express the high gratification he has derived from the near correspondence of your Majesty's opinions with his own. Earl Grey is still of opinion that the proposed plan of taking eleven boroughs from Schedule B. would have been a great improvement of the measure; but when the objections to it were so strongly felt by Lord Palmerston and Lord Melbourne (Lord J. Russell also dissenting from a change in Schedule B.), and finding also that the opposition of those who before objected to the Bill was more likely to be increased than diminished by such an arrangement, Earl Grey felt, as he before stated to your Majesty, that as a question of expediency it might be better to relinquish it. This matter, however, is still open for reconsideration, and in any further discussion that may take place upon it, Earl Grey will not fail to