The Greville Memoirs, Part 1 (of 3), Volume 2 (of 3) / A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV

by Charles Greville

1831.

January 2nd, 1831

A DINNER AT THE ATHENÆUM. Came up to town yesterday to dine with the Villiers at a dinner of clever men, got up at the Athenæum, and was extremely bored. The original party was broken up by various excuses, and the vacancies supplied by men none of whom I knew. There were Poulett Thomson, three Villiers, Taylor, Young, whom I knew; the rest I never saw before—Buller, Romilly, Senior, Maule,[9] a man whose name I forget, and Walker, a police magistrate, all men of more or less talent and information, and altogether producing anything but an agreeable party. Maule was senior wrangler and senior medallist at Cambridge, and is a lawyer. He was nephew to the man with whom I was at school thirty years ago, and I had never seen him since; he was then a very clever boy, and assisted to teach the boys, being admirably well taught himself by his uncle, who was an excellent scholar and a great brute. I have young Maule now in my mind’s eye suspended by the hair of his head while being well caned, and recollect as if it was yesterday his doggedly drumming a lesson of Terence into my dull and reluctant brain as we walked up and down the garden walk before the house. When I was introduced to him I had no recollection of him, but when I found out who he was I went up to him with the blandest manner as he sat reading a newspaper, and said that ‘I believed we had once been well acquainted, though we had not met for twenty-seven years.’ He looked up and said, ‘Oh, it is too long ago to talk about,’ and then turned back to his paper. So I set him down for a brute like his uncle and troubled him no further. I am very sure that dinners of all fools have as good a chance of being agreeable as dinners of all clever people; at least the former are often gay, and the latter are frequently heavy. Nonsense and folly gilded over with good breeding and les usages du monde produce often more agreeable results than a collection of rude, awkward intellectual powers.

[9] [Afterwards Mr. Justice Maule.]

Roehampton, January 4th, 1831

Called on Lady Canning this morning, who wanted me to read some of her papers. Most of them (which are very curious) I had seen before, but forgotten. I read the long minute of Canning’s conversation with the King ten days before his Majesty put the formation of the Administration in his hands. They both appear to have been explicit enough. The King went through his whole life, and talked for two hours and a half, particularly about the Catholic question, on which he said he had always entertained the same opinions—the same as those of George III. and the Duke of York—and that with the speech of the latter he entirely concurred, except in the ‘so help me God’ at the end, which he thought unnecessary. He said he had wished the Coronation Oath to be altered, and had proposed it to Lord Liverpool. His great anxiety was not to be annoyed with the discussion of the question, to keep Canning and Lord Liverpool’s colleagues, and to put at the head of the Treasury some anti-Catholic Peer. This Canning would not hear of; he said that having lost Lord Liverpool he had lost his only support in the Cabinet, that the King knew how he had been thwarted by others, and how impossible it would have been for him to go on but for Lord Liverpool, that he could not serve under anybody else, or act with efficacy except as First Minister, that he would not afford in his person an example of any such rule as that support of the Catholic question was to be ipso facto an exclusion from the chief office of the Government, that he advised the King to try and make an anti-Catholic Ministry, and thought that with his feelings and opinions on the subject it was what he ought to do. This the King said was out of the question. In the course of the discussion Canning said that if he continued in his service he must continue as free as he had been before; that desirous as he was to contribute to the King’s ease and comfort, he could not in any way pledge himself on the subject, because he should be assuredly questioned in the House of Commons, and he must have it in his power to reply that he was perfectly free to act on that question as he had ever done, and that he thought the King would better consult his own ease by THE DUKE AND MR. CANNING. retaining him in office without any pledge, relying on his desire above all things to consult his Majesty’s ease and comfort. He said among other things that, though leader of the House of Commons, he had never had any patronage placed at his disposal, nor a single place to give away.

About the time of this conversation Canning was out of humour with the Duke of Wellington, for he had heard that many of the adherents of Government who pretended to be attached to the Duke had spoken of him (Canning) in the most violent and abusive terms. In their opinions he conceived the Duke to be to a certain degree implicated, and this produced some coldness in his manner towards him. Shortly after Arbuthnot came to him, complained first and explained after, and said the Duke would call upon him. The Duke did call, and in a conversation of two hours Canning told him all that had passed between himself and the King, thereby putting the Duke, as he supposed, in complete possession of his sentiments as to the reconstruction of the Government. A few days after Mr. Canning was charged by the King to lay before him the plan of an Administration, and upon this he wrote the letter to his former colleagues which produced so much discussion. I read the letters to the Duke, Bathurst, Melville, and Bexley, and I must say that the one to the Duke was rather the stiffest of the whole,[10] though it was not so cold as the Duke chose to consider it. Then came his letter to the Duke on his speech, and the Duke’s answer. When I read these last year I thought the Duke had much the best of it; but I must alter this opinion if it be true that he knew Mr. Canning’s opinions, as it is stated that he did entirely, after their long interview, at which the conversation with the King was communicated to him. That materially alters the case. There was a letter from Peel declining, entirely on the ground of objecting to a pro-Catholic Premier, and on the impossibility of his administering Ireland with the First Lord of the Treasury of a different opinion on that subject from his own. There was likewise a curious correspondence relative to a paper written by the Duke of York during his last illness, and not very long before his death, to Lord Liverpool on the dangers of the country from the progress of the Catholic question, the object of which (though it was vaguely expressed) was to turn out the Catholic members and form a Protestant Government for the purpose of crushing the Catholic interest. This Lord Liverpool communicated (privately) to Canning, and it was afterwards communicated to the King, who appears (the answer was not there) to have given the Duke of York a rap on the knuckles, for there is a reply of the Duke’s to the King, full of devotion, zeal, and affection to his person, and disclaiming any intention of breaking up the Government, an idea which could have arisen only from misconception of the meaning of his letter by Lord Liverpool. It is very clear, however, that he did mean that, for his letter could have meant nothing else. The whole thing is curious, for he was aware that he was dying, and he says so.

[10] [This correspondence is now published in the third volume of the Duke’s ‘Correspondence,’ New Series, p. 628.]

January 12th, 1831

Passed two days at Panshanger, but my room was so cold that I could not sit in it to write. Nobody there but F. Lamb and J. Russell. Lady Cowper told me what had passed relative to the negotiation with Melbourne last year, and which the Duke or his friends denied. The person who was employed (and whom she did not name) told F. Lamb that the Duke would take in Melbourne and two others (I am not sure it was not three), but not Huskisson. He said that it would be fairer at once to say that those terms would not be accepted, and to save him therefore from offering them, that Melbourne would not be satisfied with any Government which did not include Huskisson and Lord Grey, and that upon this answer the matter dropped. I don’t think the Duke can be blamed for answering to anybody who chose to ask him any questions on the subject that he had made no offer; it was the truth, though not the whole truth, and a Minister must have some shelter against impertinent questioners, or he would be at their mercy. An Envoy is come here from the Poles,[11] who brought a letter from Prince CROKER’S BOSWELL. Czartoryski to Lord Grey, who has not seen him, and whose arrival has naturally given umbrage to the Lievens.

[11] [This Envoy was Count Alexander Walewski, a natural son of the Emperor Napoleon, who afterwards played a considerable part in the affairs of France and of Europe, especially under the Second Empire. During his residence in London in 1831 he married Lady Caroline Montagu, a daughter of the Earl of Sandwich, but she did not live long. I remember calling upon him in St. James’s Place, and seeing cards of invitation for Lady Grey’s assemblies stuck in his glass. The fact is he was wonderfully handsome and agreeable, and soon became popular in London society.]

January 19th, 1831

To Roehampton on Saturday till Monday, having been at the Grove on Friday. George Villiers at the Grove showed me a Dublin paper with an attack on Stanley’s proclamation, and also a character of Plunket drawn with great severity and by a masterly hand; it is supposed to be by Baron Smith, a judge who is very able, but fanciful and disaffected. He will never suffer any but policemen or soldiers to be hanged of those whom he tries. George Villiers came from Hatfield, where he had a conversation with the Duke of Wellington, who told him that he had committed a great error in his Administration in not paying more attention to the press, and in not securing a portion of it on his side and getting good writers into his employment, that he had never thought it necessary to do so, and that he was now convinced what a great mistake it was. At Roehampton nothing new, except that the Reform plan is supposed to be settled, or nearly so. Duncannon has been consulted, and he and one or two more have had meetings with Durham, who were to lay their joint plans before Lord Grey first, and he afterwards brought them to the Cabinet.

Ellis told me (a curious thing enough) that Croker (for his ‘Boswell’s Life of Johnson’) had collected various anecdotes from other books, but that the only new and original ones were those he had got from Lord Stowell, who was a friend of Johnson, and that he had written them under Stowell’s dictation. Sir Walter Scott wanted to see them, and Croker sent them to him in Scotland by the post. The bag was lost; no tidings could be heard of it, Croker had no copy, and Stowell is in his dotage and can’t be got to dictate again. So much for the anecdote; then comes the story. I said how surprising this was, for nothing was so rare as a miscarriage by the post. He said, ‘Not at all, for I myself lost two reviews in the same way. I sent them both to Brougham to forward to Jeffrey (for the “Edinburgh”), and they were both lost in the same way!’ That villain Brougham!

G. Lamb said that the King is supposed to be in a bad state of health, and this was confirmed to me by Keate the surgeon, who gave me to understand that he was going the way of both his brothers. He will be a great loss in these times; he knows his business, lets his Ministers do as they please, but expects to be informed of everything. He lives a strange life at Brighton, with tagrag and bobtail about him, and always open house. The Queen is a prude, and will not let the ladies come décolletées to her parties. George IV., who liked ample expanses of that sort, would not let them be covered. In the meantime matters don’t seem more promising either here or abroad. In Ireland there is open war between Anglesey and O’Connell, to whom it is glory enough (of his sort) to be on a kind of par with the Viceroy, and to have a power equal to that of the Government. Anglesey issues proclamation after proclamation, the other speeches and letters in retort. His breakfasts and dinners are put down, but he finds other places to harangue at, and letters he can always publish; but he does not appear in quite so triumphant an attitude as he did. The O’Connell tribute is said to have failed; no men of property or respectability join him, and he is after all only the leader of a mob; but it is a better sort of mob, and formidable from their numbers, and the organisation which has latterly become an integral part of mob tactics. Nothing can be more awful than the state of that country, and everybody expects that it will be found necessary to strengthen the hands of the Government with extraordinary powers to put an end to the prevailing anarchy. O’Connell is a coward, and that is the best chance of his being beaten at last.

Lord Lyndhurst took his seat as Chief Baron yesterday morning, Alexander retiring without an equivalent, and only having waited for quarter day. Brougham has had a violent squabble in his Court with Sugden, who having O’CONNELL ARRESTED. bullied the Vice-Chancellor and governed Lyndhurst, has a mind to do the same by Brougham; besides, he hates him for the repeated thrashings he got from him in the House of Commons, and has been heard to say that he will take his revenge in the Court of Chancery. The present affair was merely that Brougham began writing, when Sugden stopped and told him ‘it was no use his going on if his Lordship would not attend to the argument,’ and so forth.

I met Lyndhurst at dinner yesterday, who talks of himself as standing on neutral ground, disconnected with politics. It is certainly understood that he is not to fight the battles of the present Government, but of course he is not to be against them. His example is a lesson to statesmen to be frugal, for if he had been rich he would have had a better game before him. He told a curious anecdote about a trial. There was a (civil) cause in which the jury would not agree on their verdict. They retired on the evening of one day, and remained till one o’clock the next afternoon, when, being still disagreed, a juror was drawn. There was only one juror who held out against the rest—Mr. Berkeley (member for Bristol). The case was tried over again, and the jury were unanimously of Mr. Berkeley’s opinion, which was in fact right, a piece of conscientious obstinacy which prevented the legal commission of wrong.

Roehampton, January 22nd, 1831

The event of the week is O’Connell’s arrest on a charge of conspiracy to defeat the Lord-Lieutenant’s proclamation. Lord Anglesey writes to Lady Anglesey thus:—‘I am just come from a consultation of six hours with the law officers, the result of which is a determination to arrest O’Connell, for things are now come to that pass that the question is whether he or I shall govern Ireland.’ We await the result with great anxiety, for the opinion of lawyers seems divided as to the legality of the arrest, and laymen can form none.

January 23rd, 1831

No news; Master of the Rolls, George Ponsonby, and George Villiers here. The latter told a story of Plunket, of his wit. Lord Wellesley’s aide-de-camp Keppel wrote a book of his travels, and called it his personal narrative. Lord Wellesley was quizzing it, and said, ‘Personal narrative? what is a personal narrative? Lord Plunket, what should you say a personal narrative meant?’ Plunket answered, ‘My Lord, you know we lawyers always understand personal as contradistinguished from real.’ And one or two others of Parsons, the Irish barrister. Lord Norbury on some circuit was on the bench speaking, and an ass outside brayed so loud that nobody could hear. He exclaimed, ‘Do stop that noise!’ Parsons said, ‘My Lord, there is a great echo here.’ Somebody said to him one day, ‘Mr. Parsons, have you heard of my son’s robbery?’ ‘No; whom has he robbed?’

Nothing but talk about O’Connell and his trial, and we have more fears he will be acquitted than hopes that he will be convicted. They still burn in the country, and I heard the other day that the manufacturing districts, though quiet, are in a high state of organisation.

January 25th, 1831

Met Colonel Napier[12] last night, and talked for an hour of the state of the country. He gave me a curious account of the organisation of the manufacturers in and about Manchester, who are divided into four different classes, with different objects, partly political, generally to better themselves, but with a regular Government, the seat of which is in the Isle of Man. He says that the agriculturists are likewise organised in Wiltshire, and that there is a sort of free-masonry among them; he thinks a revolution inevitable; and when I told him what Southey had said—that if he had money enough he would transport his family to America—he said he would not himself leave England in times of danger, but that he should like to remove his family if he could.

[12] [Sir William Napier, author of the ‘History of the Peninsular War.’]

The King is ill. I hope he won’t die; if he does, and the little girl, we shall have Cumberland, and (though Lyndhurst said he would make a very good King the other night) that would be a good moment for dispensing with the regal office. It is reported that they differ in the Cabinet O’CONNELL’S CASE. about Reform; probably not true. What a state of terror and confusion we are in, though it seems to make no difference.

January 31st, 1831

At Roehampton on Saturday; Lord Robert Spencer and Sir G. Robinson. Agar Ellis had just resigned the Woods, after asking to be made a Peer, which they refused. All last week nobody thought of anything but O’Connell, and great was the joy at the charge of Judge Jebb, the unanimous opinion of the King’s Bench, and the finding of the Grand Jury. Whatever happens, Government are now justified in the course they have taken; and now he has traversed, which looks like weakness, and it is the general opinion that he is beaten; but he is so astute, and so full of resources, that I would never answer for his being beaten till I see him in prison or find his popularity gone. The subscription produced between 7,000ℓ. and 8,000ℓ. It is an extraordinary thing, and the most wonderful effect I ever heard of the power of moral causes over the human body, that Lord Anglesey, who has scarcely been out of pain at all for years during any considerable intervals, has been quite free from his complaint (the tic douloureux) since he has been in Ireland; the excitement of these events, and the influence of that excitement on his nervous system, have produced this effect. There is a puzzler for philosophy, and such an amalgamation of moral and physical accidents as is well worth unravelling for those who are wise enough.

Yesterday there was a dinner at Lord Lansdowne’s to name the Sheriffs, and there was I in attendance on my old school-fellows and associates Richmond, Durham, Graham, all great men now!

While some do laugh, and some do weep,
Thus runs the world away.

Lord Grey was not there, for he was gone to Brighton to lay the Reform Bill before the King. What a man Brougham is; he wants to ride his Chancery steed to the Devil, as if he had not enough to do. Nothing would satisfy him but to come and hear causes in our Court;[13] but as I knew it was only to provoke Leach, I would not let him come, and told the Lord President we had no causes for him to hear. He insisted, so did I, and he did not come; but some day I will invite him, and then he will have forgotten it or have something else to do, and he won’t come. He is a Jupiter-Scapin if ever there was one.

[13] [At the Privy Council, where the Master of the Rolls was at that time in the habit of sitting with two lay Privy Councillors to hear Plantation Appeals.]

February 6th, 1831

Parliament met again on the 3rd, and the House of Commons exhibited a great array on the Opposition benches; nothing was done the first day but the announcement of the Reform measure for the 2nd of March, to be brought in by Lord John Russell in the House of Commons, though not a Cabinet Minister. The fact is that if a Cabinet Minister had introduced it, it must have been Althorp, and he is wholly unequal to it; he cannot speak at all, so that though the pretence is to pay a compliment to John Russell because he had on former occasions brought forward plans of Reform, it is really expedient to take the burden off the leader of the Government. The next night came on the Civil List, and as the last Government was turned out on this question, there had existed a general but vague expectation that some wonderful reductions were to be proposed by the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. Great, then, was the exultation of the Opposition when it was found that no reductions would be made, and that the measure of this Government only differed from that of the last in the separation of the King’s personal expenses from the other charges and a prospective reduction in the Pension List. There was not much of a debate. Althorp did it ill by all accounts; Graham spoke pretty well; and Calcraft, who could do nothing while in office, found all his energies when he got back to the Opposition benches, and made (everybody says) a capital speech. There is certainly a great disappointment that the Civil List does not produce some economical novelty, and to a certain degree the popularity THE CIVIL LIST. of the Government will be affected by it. But they have taken the manliest course, and the truth is the Duke of Wellington had already made all possible reductions, unless the King and the Government were at once to hang out the flag of poverty and change their whole system. After what Sefton had told me of the intentions of Government about the Pension List, and my reply to him, it was a satisfaction to me to find they could not act on such a principle; and accordingly Lord Althorp at once declared the opinion and intentions of Government about the Pensions, instead of abandoning them to the rage of the House of Commons. There is not even a surmise as to the intended measure of Reform, the secret of which is well kept, but I suspect the confidence of the Reformers will be shaken by their disappointment about the Civil List. It is by no means clear, be it what it may, that the Government will be able to carry it, for the Opposition promises to be very formidable in point of numbers; and in speaking the two parties are, as to the first class, pretty evenly divided—Palmerston, the Grants, Graham, Stanley, John Russell, on one side; Peel, Calcraft, Hardinge, Dawson, on the other; fewer in numbers, but Peel immeasurably the best on either side—but in the second line, and among the younger ones, the Opposition are far inferior.

February 9th, 1831

Just got into my new home—Poulett Thomson’s house, which I have taken for a year. The day before yesterday came the news that the French had refused the nomination of the Duc de Nemours to the throne of Belgium, the news of his being chosen having come on Sunday. The Ministers were rayonnants; Lord Lansdowne came to his office and told it me with prodigious glee.

Met with Sir J. Burke on Sunday at Brooks’s, who said that O’Connell was completely beaten by the address of the merchants and bankers, among whom were men—Mahon, for instance (O’Gorman Mahon’s uncle)—who had always stood by him. I do not believe he is completely beaten, and his resources for mischief are so great that he will rally again before long, I have little doubt. However, what has occurred has been productive of great good; it has elicited a strong Conservative demonstration, and proved that out of the rabbleocracy (for everything is in ocracy now) his power is anything but unlimited. There are 20,000 men in Ireland, so Lord Hill told me last night. Hunt[14] spoke for two hours last night; his manner and appearance very good, like a country gentleman of the old school, a sort of rural dignity about it, very civil, good-humoured, and respectful to the House, but dull; listened to, however, and very well received.

[14] [Henry Hunt, a well-known Radical, had just been returned for Preston, where he had beaten Mr. Stanley.]

February 12th, 1831

The debate three nights ago on Ireland, brought on by O’Gorman Mahon, is said to have been the best that has been heard in the House of Commons for many years. Palmerston, Burdett, Althorp, Peel, Wyse, all made good speeches; it was spirited, statesmanlike, and creditable to the House, which wanted some such exhibition to raise its credit. I saw the day before yesterday a curious letter from Southey to Brougham, which some day or other will probably appear. Taylor showed it me. Brougham had written to him to ask him what his opinion was as to the encouragement that could be given to literature, by rewarding or honouring literary men, and suggested (I did not see his letter) that the Guelphic Order should be bestowed upon them. Southey’s reply was very courteous, but in a style of suppressed irony and forced politeness, and exhibited the marks of a chafed spirit, which was kept down by an effort. ‘You, my Lord, are now on the Conservative side,’ was one of his phrases, which implied that the Chancellor had not always been on that side. He suggested that it might be useful to establish a sort of lay fellowships; 10,000ℓ. would give 10 of 500ℓ. and 25 of 200ℓ.; but he proposed them not to reward the meritorious, but as a means of silencing or hiring the mischievous. It was evident, however, that he laid no stress on this plan, or considered it practicable, and only proposed it because he thought he must suggest something. He said that honours might be desirable to scientific men, as they were so considered on the Continent, and Newton and THE FIRST WHIG BUDGET. Davy had been titled, but for himself, if a Guelphic distinction was adopted, ‘he should be a Ghibelline.’ He ended by saying that all he asked for was a repeal of the Copyright Act which took from the families of literary men the only property they had to give them, and this ‘I ask for with the earnestness of one who is conscious that he has laboured for posterity.’ It is a remarkable letter.

February 13th, 1831

The Budget, which was brought forward two nights ago, has given great dissatisfaction; Goulburn attacked the taxation of the funds (half per cent. on transfer of stock and land) in the best speech he ever made, Peel in another good speech. The bankers assailed it one after another, and not a man on the Government side spoke decently. Great of course was the exultation of the Opposition, and it is supposed that this will be withdrawn and a Property Tax laid on instead. There is a meeting to-day in Downing Street, at which I suspect it will be announced. The Budget must appear hurried, and nothing but the circumstances in which they are placed could have justified their bringing it on so soon. In two months, besides having foreign affairs of the greatest consequence on their hands, they have concocted a Reform Bill and settled the finances of the nation for the next year, which is quite ludicrous; but they are obliged to have money voted immediately, that in case they should be beaten on Reform or any other vital question which may compel them to dissolve Parliament, they may have passed their estimates and be provided with funds. Their secrets are well kept—rather too well, for nobody knew of this Budget, and not a soul has a guess what their Reform is to be. At present nothing can cut a poorer figure than the Government does in the House of Commons, and they have shown how weak a Government a strong Opposition may make.

I have just been to hear Benson preach at the Temple, but I was so distant that I heard ill. His manner is impressive, and language good without being ambitious, but I was rather disappointed. Brougham was there, with Lord King of all people!

February 15th, 1831

Yesterday morning news came that O’Connell had withdrawn his plea of not guilty and (by his counsel, Mr. Perrin) pleaded guilty, to the unutterable astonishment of everybody, and not less delight. Sheil wrote word that his heart sank at the terror of a gaol, and ‘how would such a man face a battle, who could not encounter Newgate?’ Everybody’s impression was that it was a compromise with the law officers, and that he pleaded guilty on condition that he should not be brought up for judgment, but it was no such thing; he made in the preceding days several indirect overtures to Lord Anglesey, who would listen to nothing, and told him that after his conduct he could do nothing for him, and that he must take his own course. He comes to England directly, and will be brought up for judgment (if at all, which I doubt) next term. He gives out that he was forced to do this in order to hasten to England and repair in the House of Commons the errors of O’Gorman Mahon. There is no calculating what may be the extent of the credulity of an Irish mob with regard to him, but after all his bullies and bravadoes this will hardly go down even with them. Sheil says ‘O’Connell is fallen indeed.’ I trust, though hardly dare hope, that ‘he sinks like stars that fall to rise no more.’ It is impossible to form an idea of the astonishment of everybody at this termination of the law proceedings, which have ended so triumphantly for Lord Anglesey and Plunket. Lord Anglesey, however, wrote word to Lady Anglesey that no one could form an idea of the state of that country: that fresh plots were discovered every day, that from circumstances he had been able to do more than another man would, but that it was not, he firmly believed, possible to save it.

There was a meeting at Althorp’s on Sunday, when he agreed to withdraw the Transfer Tax, and that there should be no Property Tax. A more miserable figure was never cut than his; but how should it be otherwise? A respectable country gentleman, well versed in rural administration, in farming and sporting, with all the integrity of 15,000ℓ. a year in possession and 50,000ℓ. in reversion, is all of a sudden LORD ALTHORP’S BUDGET. made leader in the House of Commons without being able to speak, and Chancellor of the Exchequer without any knowledge, theoretical or practical, of finance. By way of being discreet, and that his plan may be a secret, he consults nobody; and then he closets himself with his familiar Poulett Thomson, who puts this notable scheme into his head, and out he blurts it in the House of Commons, without an idea how it will be received, without making either preparations for defending it or for an alternative in case of its rejection. If Althorp and Poulett Thomson are to govern England, these things are likely to happen. The Opposition cannot contain themselves; the women think they are to come in directly. Goulburn said to Baring as they left the House on Friday, ‘Mr. Baring, you said last year you thought my Budget was the most profligate that any Chancellor of the Exchequer had ever brought forward; I think you will now no longer say it was the most profligate.’ Last night Praed[15] made his first speech, which was very good.

[15] [Winthrop Mackworth Praed, a young man of great promise, who had just entered Parliament. He took his degree in 1825, and was regarded by the Tories as the rival and competitor of Thomas Babington Macaulay. But unhappily he died in 1839.]

February 17th, 1831

The day before yesterday Duncannon called on me, and told me O’Connell had got up an opposition to him in Kilkenny; that he was of opinion that the recent events would diminish neither his power nor his popularity, and that in fact he was infallible with the Irish mob. As Richard says, ‘if this have no effect, he is immortal.’

The Duke of Wellington called on my family yesterday; he says the Reform question will not be carried, and he thinks the Government cannot stand, that things are certainly better (internally), and that the great fear is lest people should be too much afraid.

Went to Lady Dudley Stewart’s last night; a party; saw a vulgar-looking, fat man with spectacles, and a mincing, rather pretty pink and white woman, his wife. The man was Napoleon’s nephew, the woman Washington’s granddaughter. What a host of associations, all confused and degraded! He is a son of Murat, the King of Naples, who was said to be ‘le dieu Mars jusqu’à six heures du soir.’ He was heir to a throne, and is now a lawyer in the United States, and his wife, whose name I know not, Sandon told me, was Washington’s granddaughter. (This must be a mistake, for I think Washington never had any children.)[16]

[16] [Achille Murat and his wife were living at this time in the Alpha Road, Regent’s Park. It was said she was Washington’s grand-niece, but I am not sure what the relationship was, if any. She was certainly not his granddaughter.]

February 24th, 1831

At Newmarket for three days, from Saturday till Tuesday; riding out at eight o’clock every morning and inhaling salubrious air. Came back the night before last and found matters in a strange state. The Government, strong in the House of Lords (which is a secondary consideration), is weak in the House of Commons to a degree which is contemptible and ridiculous. Even Sefton now confesses that Althorp is wretched. There he is leading the House of Commons without the slightest acquaintance with the various subjects that come under discussion, and hardly able to speak at all; not one of the Ministers exhibits anything like vigour, ability, or discretion. As Althorp cannot speak, Graham is obliged to talk, or thinks he is, and, as I predicted, he is failing;[17] with some cleverness and plenty of fluency, he is unequal to the situation he is placed in, and his difference with Grant the other night and his apology to O’Gorman Mahon have been prejudicial to the Government and to his own character. The exultation of the Opposition is unbounded, and Peel plays with his power in the House, only not putting it forth because it does not suit his convenience; but he does what he likes, and it is evident that the very existence of the Government depends upon his pleasure. His game, however, is to display candour and moderation, and rather to protect them than not, so he defends many of their measures and restrains the fierce animosity of his friends, but with a sort of sarcastic civility, which, while it is put forth in their defence, is WEAKNESS OF THE GOVERNMENT. always done in such a manner as shall best exhibit his own authority and his contempt for their persons individually. While he upholds the Government he does all he can to bring each member of it into contempt, and there they are, helpless and confused, writhing under his lash and their own impotence, and only intent upon staving off a division which would show the world how feeble they are. Neither the late nor any other Government ever cut so poor a figure as this does. Palmerston does nothing, Grant does worse, Graham does no good, Althorp a great deal of harm; Stanley alone has distinguished himself, and what he has had to do has done very well. It is not, however, only in the House of Commons that the Government are in such discredit; the Budget did their business in the City, and alienated the trading interest. It is a curious circumstance that both Goulburn and Herries have been beset by deputations and individual applications for advice and assistance nearly as much since they left office as when they were in it by merchants and others, who complain to them that it was quite useless to go to Lord Althorp, for they find that he has not the slightest acquaintance with any of the subjects and interests on which they addressed themselves to him, and one man told Herries this, at the same time owning that he was a Whig in principle, and had been an opponent of the late and a supporter of the present Government. The press generally are falling off from the Government, which is an ominous sign. While the Government is thus weak and powerless the elements of confusion and violence are gathering fresh force, and without any fixed and loyal authority to check them will pursue their eccentric course till some public commotion arrives, or till the Conservative resources of the country are called into action and the antagonistic principles are fairly brought to trial.

[17] It was on Lord Chandos’s motion to take into consideration the state of the West Indies.

The King went to the play the night before last; was well received in the house, but hooted and pelted coming home, and a stone shivered a window of his coach and fell into Prince George of Cumberland’s lap. The King was excessively annoyed, and sent for Baring, who was the officer riding by his coach, and asked him if he knew who had thrown the stone; he said that it terrified the Queen, and ‘was very disagreeable, as he should always be going somewhere.’

In the House of Commons Committee on the Parliament Offices they are making the whole thing ridiculous by the sort of reductions they suggest. Hume proposed to cut down the President of the Council to 1,000ℓ. a year, on which Stormont moved he should have nothing, and this (which was intended to ridicule Hume’s proposal) was carried, but will probably be rescinded. There is no directing power anywhere, and the sort of anarchy that is fast increasing must beget confusion. Nobody has the least idea how reform will go, or of the nature of what they mean to propose, but the King said to Cecil Forrester yesterday, who went to resign his office of Groom of the Bedchamber, ‘Why do you resign?’ He said he could not support Government or vote for Reform. ‘Well, but you don’t know what it is, and you might have waited till it came on, for it probably will not be carried;’ and this he repeated twice. Lord Durham has volunteered to give up his salary as Privy Seal, which is no great sacrifice, considering how long he is likely to enjoy it, and everybody gives him credit for having suggested the relief to coals for his own interest. Lady Holland, who has got a West Indian estate, attacked him about the sugar duties, and asked him if they would not reduce them. He said ‘No.’ She retorted, ‘That is because you have no West Indian estate; you have got your own job about coals done, and you don’t care about us.’ In the House of Lords they have it all their own way. The other night, on Lord Strangford’s motion about the Methuen treaty, Brougham exhibited his wonderful powers in his very best style. Without any preparation for the question, and after it had been exhausted in a very good speech of Goderich’s, he got up, and in answer to Strangford and Ellenborough banged their heads together, and displayed all his power of ridicule, sarcasm, and argument in a manner which they could not themselves help admiring. The next night he brought forward his Chancery LADY JERSEY AND LORD DURHAM. Reform measure in a speech of three hours, which, however luminous, was too long for their Lordships, and before the end of it the House had melted away to nothing. But, notwithstanding this success, he must inwardly chafe at being removed from his natural element and proper sphere of action, and he must burn with vexation at seeing Peel riot and revel in his unopposed power, like Hector when Achilles would not fight, though this Achilles can never fight again, but he would give a great deal to go back to the field, and would require much less persuasion than Achilles did.

February 25th, 1831

A drawing-room yesterday, at which the Princess Victoria made her first appearance. I was not there. Lady Jersey made a scene with Lord Durham. She got up and crossed the room to him and said, ‘Lord Durham, I hear that you have said things about me which are not true, and I desire that you will call upon me to-morrow with a witness to hear my positive denial, and I beg that you will not repeat any such things about me,’ or, as the Irishman said, ‘words to that effect.’ She was in a fury, and he, I suppose, in a still greater. He muttered that he should never set foot in her house again, which she did not hear, as after delivering herself of her speech she flounced back again to her seat, mighty proud of the exploit. It arose out of his saying that he should make Lady Durham demand an audience of the Queen to contradict the things Lady Jersey had said of her and the other Whig ladies.

I saw Lady Jersey last night and had a long conversation with her about her squabbles. She declares solemnly (and I believe it) that she never said a syllable to the Queen against her quondam friends, owns she abused Sefton to other people, cried, and talked, and the end was that I am to try to put an end to these tracasseries. She was mighty glorious about her sortie upon Lambton, whom she dislikes, but she is vexed at the hornets’ nest she has brought round her head. All this comes of talking. The wisest man mentioned in history was the vagrant in the Tuileries Gardens some years ago, who walked about with a gag on, and when taken up by the police and questioned why he went about in that guise, he said he was imprudent, and that he might not say anything to get himself into jeopardy he had adopted this precaution. I wonder what Lambton would say now about appointing others instead of Palmerston and Co. if they should go out, which he talked of as such an easy and indifferent matter. What arrogance and folly there is in the world! I don’t know how long this will last, but it must end in Peel’s being Prime Minister. What a foolish proverb that is that ‘honesty is the best policy!’

I am just come home from breakfasting with Henry Taylor to meet Wordsworth; the same party as when he had Southey—Mill, Elliot, Charles Villiers. Wordsworth may be bordering on sixty; hard-featured, brown, wrinkled, with prominent teeth and a few scattered grey hairs, but nevertheless not a disagreeable countenance; and very cheerful, merry, courteous, and talkative, much more so than I should have expected from the grave and didactic character of his writings. He held forth on poetry, painting, politics, and metaphysics, and with a great deal of eloquence; he is more conversible and with a greater flow of animal spirits than Southey. He mentioned that he never wrote down as he composed, but composed walking, riding, or in bed, and wrote down after; that Southey always composes at his desk. He talked a great deal of Brougham, whose talents and domestic virtues he greatly admires; that he was very generous and affectionate in his disposition, full of duty and attention to his mother, and had adopted and provided for a whole family of his brother’s children, and treats his wife’s children as if they were his own. He insisted upon taking them both with him to the drawing-room the other day when he went in state as Chancellor. They remonstrated with him, but in vain.

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CHAPTER XIV.

Introduction of the Reform Bill — Attitude of the Opposition — Reform Debates — Peel — Wilberforce and Canning — Old Sir Robert Peel — The City Address — Agitation for Reform — Effects of the Reform Bill — Brougham as Chancellor — Brougham at the Horse Guards — Miss Kemble — Vote on the Timber Duties — Lord Lansdowne’s Opinion of the Bill — Reform Bill carried by one Vote — The King in Mourning — The Prince of Orange — Peel’s Reserve — Ministers beaten — Parliament dissolved by the King in Person — Tumult in both Houses — Failure of the Whig Ministry — The King in their Hands — The Elections — Illumination in the City — The Queen alarmed — Lord Lyndhurst’s View of the Bill — Lord Grey takes the Garter — The King at Ascot — Windsor under William IV. — Brougham at Whitbread’s Brewery and at the British Museum — Breakfast at Rogers’ — The Cholera — Quarantine — Meeting of Peers — New Parliament meets — Opened by the King — ‘Hernani’ at Bridgewater House — The Second Reform Bill — The King’s Coronation — Cobbett’s Trial — Prince Leopold accepts the Crown of Belgium — Peel and the Tories — A Rabble Opposition — A Council for the Coronation.

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March 2nd, 1831

The great day at length arrived, and yesterday Lord John Russell moved for leave to bring in his Reform Bill. To describe the curiosity, the intensity of the expectation and excitement, would be impossible, and the secret had been so well kept that not a soul knew what the measure was (though most people guessed pretty well) till they heard it. He rose at six o’clock, and spoke for two hours and a quarter—a sweeping measure indeed, much more so than anyone had imagined, because the Ministers had said it was one which would give general satisfaction, whereas this must dissatisfy all the moderate and will probably just stop short enough not to satisfy the Radicals. They say it was ludicrous to see the faces of the members for those places which are to be disfranchised as they were severally announced, and Wetherell, who began to take notes, as the plan was gradually developed, after sundry contortions and grimaces and flinging about his arms and legs, threw down his notes with a mixture of despair and ridicule and horror. Not many people spoke last night: Inglis followed John Russell, and Francis Leveson closed the debate in the best speech he has ever made, though rather too flowery. Everything is easy in these days, otherwise how Palmerston, Goderich, and Grant can have joined in a measure of this sweeping, violent, and speculative character it is difficult to conceive, they who were the disciples of Castlereagh and the adherents of Canning; but after the Duke of Wellington and Peel carrying the Catholic question, Canning’s friends advocating Radical Reform, and Eldon living to see Brougham on the Woolsack, what may one not expect?

What everybody enquires is what line Peel will take, and though each party is confident of success in this question, it is thought to depend mainly upon the course he adopts and the sentiments he expresses. Hitherto he has cautiously abstained from committing himself in any way, and he is free to act as he thinks best, but he certainly occupies a grand position when he has omnium oculos in se conversos, and the whole House of Commons looking with unalterable anxiety to his opinions and conduct. Such has the course of events and circumstances made this man, who is probably yet destined to play a great part, and it may be a very useful one. God knows how this plan may be received in the country, and what may be its fate in Parliament. The Duke of Wellington, however, is right enough when he says that the great present danger is lest people should be too much afraid, for anything like the panic that prevails I never saw, the apprehension that enough will not be done to satiate the demon of popular opinion, and the disposition to submit implicitly to the universal bellow that pervades this country for what they call Reform without knowing what it is. As to this measure, the greatest evil of it is that it is a pure speculation, and may be productive of the best THE FIRST REFORM BILL. consequences, or the worst, or even of none at all, for all that its authors and abettors can explain to us or to themselves.

O’Connell made his explanation the other night, which was wretched, and Stanley’s was very good, but it matters not; he will tell the people in Ireland that he had a victory, and they will believe him. Nevertheless his defeat in Kilkenny is an excellent thing, and will contribute greatly to destroy the prestige of his power.

March 3rd, 1831

Last night the debate went on, nobody remarkably speaking but Macaulay and Wetherell; the former very brilliant, the latter long, rambling, and amusing, and he sat down with such loud and long cheering as everybody agreed they had never heard before in the House of Commons, and which was taken not so much as a test of the merits of the speech as of an indication of the disposition of the majority of the House. Wetherell was very good fun in a conversation he imagined at Cockermouth between Sir James Graham and one of his constituents. It is thought very strange that none of the Ministers have spoken, except Althorp the first night. The general opinion is that the Bill will be lost in the House of Commons, and that then Parliament will be dissolved, unless the King should take fright and prefer to change his Ministers.

March 5th, 1831

On Thursday night the great speeches were those of Hobhouse on one side and Peel on the other, which last was received with the greatest enthusiasm, and some said (as usual) that it was the finest oration they had ever heard within the walls of Parliament; it seems by the report of it to have been very able and very eloquent. The people come into the ‘Travellers’ after the debate, and bring their different accounts all tinctured by their particular opinions and prejudices, so that the exact truth of the relative merits of the speakers is only attainable by the newspaper reports, imperfect as they are, the next day. The excitement is beyond anything I ever saw. Last night Stanley answered Peel in an excellent speech and one which is likely to raise his reputation very high. He is evidently desirous of pitting himself against Peel, whom he dislikes; and it is probable that they are destined to be the rival leaders of two great Parliamentary parties, if things settle down into the ancient practices of Parliamentary warfare. The other events of last night were the resignation of Charles Wynne and his opposition to the Bill, and the unexpected defection from Government of Lord Seymour, the Duke of Somerset’s son, and Jeffrey’s speech, which was very able, but somewhat tedious.

March 7th, 1831

Nothing talked of, thought of, dreamt of, but Reform. Every creature one meets asks, What is said now? How will it go? What is the last news? What do you think? and so it is from morning till night, in the streets, in the clubs, and in private houses. Yesterday morning met Hobhouse; told him how well I heard he had spoken, and asked him what he thought of Peel’s speech; he said it was brilliant, imposing, but not much in it. Everybody cries up (more than usual) the speeches on their own side, and despises those on the other, which is peculiarly absurd, because the speaking has been very good, and there is so much to be said on both sides that the speech of an adversary may be applauded without any admission of his being in the right. Hobhouse told me he had at first been afraid that his constituents would disapprove this measure, as so many of them would be disfranchised, but that they had behaved nobly and were quite content and ready to make any sacrifices for such an object. I asked him if he thought it would be carried; he said he did not like to think it would not, for he was desirous of keeping what he had, and he was persuaded he should lose it if the Bill were rejected. I said it was an unlucky dilemma when one-half of the world thought like him and the other half were equally convinced that if it be carried they shall lose everything.

Dined at Boodle’s with the Master of the Rolls and Charles Grant, who talked about Peel and the reconstruction of the Tory party; that Peel and Wetherell do not yet speak, but that the parties have joined, and at the meeting at Wetherell’s Herries went to represent Peel with sixteen or eighteen of his friends. Ross, another of Peel’s âmes THE FIRST SIR ROBERT PEEL. damnées, told me the same thing and that they would soon come together again. Grant said he knew that the Duke of Wellington had expressed his readiness to take any part in which it was thought he could render service, either a prominent or a subordinate one or none at all. If so he will be a greater man than he has ever been yet.

Grant talked long and pathetically about the West Indies, and told me a curious anecdote on the authority of Scarlett, who was present. When Wilberforce went out of Parliament he went to Canning and offered him the lead and direction of his party (the Saints), urging him to accept it, and assuring him that their support would give him a strength which to an ambitious man like him was invaluable. Canning took three days to consider it, but finally declined, and then the party elected Brougham as their chief; hence the representation of Yorkshire and many other incidents in Brougham’s career.

Grant gave me a curious account of old Sir Robert Peel. He was the younger son of a merchant, his fortune (very small) left to him in the house, and he was not to take it out. He gave up the fortune and started in business without a shilling, but as the active partner in a concern with two other men—Yates (whose daughter he afterwards married) and another—who between them made up 6,000ℓ.; from this beginning he left 250,000ℓ. apiece to his five younger sons, 60,000ℓ. to his three daughters each, and 22,000ℓ. a year in land and 450,000ℓ. in the funds to Peel. In his lifetime he gave Peel 12,000ℓ. a year, the others 3,000ℓ. and spent 3,000ℓ. himself. He was always giving them money, and for objects which it might have been thought he would have undervalued. He paid for Peel’s house when he built it, and for the Chapeau de Paille (2,700 guineas) when he bought it.

March 10th, 1831

The debate has gone on, and is to be over to-night; everybody heartily sick of it, but the excitement as great as ever. Last night O’Connell was very good, and vehemently cheered by the Government, Stanley, Duncannon, and all, all differences giving way to their zeal; Attwood, the other way, good; Graham a total failure, got into nautical terms and a simile about a ship, in which he floundered and sank. Sir J. Yorke quizzed him with great effect. To-day the City went up with their address, to which the King gave a very general answer. There was great curiosity to know what his answer would be. I rather think this address was got up by Government. Brougham had written to Liverpool to encourage the Reformers there, as he owned to George Villiers last night; and Pearson was with Ellice at the Treasury for an hour the day before this address was moved in the City. They have gone so far that they certainly wish for agitation here. The Duke of Wellington is alarmed; nobody guesses how the question will go. Went to Lady Jersey the day before yesterday to read her correspondence with Brougham, who flummeried her over with notes full of affection and praise, to which she responded in the same strain, and so they are friends again. While I was reading her reply the Duke of Wellington came in, on which she huddled it up, and I conclude he has not seen her effusion. News arrived that the Poles have been beaten and have submitted. There is a great fall in the French funds, as they are expected not to pay their dividends. Europe is in a nice mess. The events of a quarter of a century would hardly be food for a week now-a-days.

March 11th, 1831

It is curious to see the change of opinion as to the passing of this Bill. The other day nobody would hear of the possibility of it, now everybody is beginning to think it will be carried. The tactics of the Opposition have been very bad, for they ought to have come to a division immediately, when I think Government would have been beaten, but it was pretty certain that if they gave time to the country to declare itself the meetings and addresses would fix the wavering and decide the doubtful. There certainly never was anything like the unanimity which pervades the country on the subject, and though I do not think they will break out into rebellion if it is lost, it is impossible not to see that the feeling for it (kept alive as it will be by every sort of excitement) must prevail and that if this particular Bill is not carried some other must very like it, PROBABLE RESULTS OF THE REFORM BILL. and which, if it is much short of this, will only leave a peg to hang fresh discussions upon. The Government is desperate and sees no chance of safety but from their success in the measure, but I have my doubts whether they will render themselves immortal by it. It is quite impossible to guess at its effects at present upon the House of Commons in the first return which may be made under it, but if a vast difference is not made, and if it shall still leave to property and personal influence any great extent of power, the Tory party, which is sure to be revived, will in all probability be too strong for the Reforming Whigs. The Duke of Wellington expected to gain strength by passing the Catholic question, whereas he was ruined by it.

March 15th, 1831

It is universally believed that this Bill will pass, except by some of the ultras against it, or by the fools. But what next? That nobody can tell, though to see the exultation of the Government one would imagine they saw their way clearly to a result of wonderful good. I have little doubt that it will be read a second time, and be a good deal battled in Committee. Although they are determined to carry it through the Committee with a high hand, and not to suffer any alterations, probably some sort of compromise in matters of inferior moment will be made. But when it comes into operation how disappointed everybody will be, and first of all the people! Their imaginations are raised to the highest pitch, but they will open their eyes very wide when they find no sort of advantage accruing to them, when they are deprived of much of the expense and more of the excitement of elections, and see a House of Commons constructed after their own hearts, which will probably be an assembly in all respects inferior to the present. Then they will not be satisfied, and as it will be impossible to go back, there will be plenty of agitators who will preach that we have not gone far enough; and if a Reformed Parliament does not do all that popular clamour shall demand, it will be treated with very little ceremony. If, however, it be true that the tendency of this Bill will be to throw power into the hands of the landed interest, we shall have a great Tory party, which will be selfish, bigoted, and ignorant, and a Radical party, while the Whig party, who will have carried the measure, will sink into insignificance. Such present themselves to my mind as possible alternatives, as far as it is practicable to take anything like a view of probabilities in the chaos and confusion that mighty alterations like these produce.

I dined with Lord Grey on Sunday; they are all in high spirits. Howick told his father that he had received a letter from some merchant in the north praising the Bill, and saying he approved of the whole Government except of Poulett Thomson. In the evening Brougham, John Russell, and others arrived. I hear of Brougham from Sefton, with whom he passes most of his spare time, to relieve his mind by small talk, persiflage, and the gossip of the day. He tells Sefton ‘that he likes his office, but that it is a mere plaything and there is nothing to do; his life is too idle, and when he has cleared off the arrears, which he shall do forthwith, that he really does not know how he shall get rid of his time;’ that ‘he does not suffer the prolixity of counsel, and when they wander from the point he brings them back and says, “You need not say anything on that point; what I want to be informed upon is so.” He is a wonderful man, the most extraordinary I ever saw, but there is more of the mountebank than of greatness in all this. It may do well enough for Sefton, who is as ignorant as he is sharp and shrewd, and captivated with his congenial offhandism, but it requires something more than Brougham’s flippant ipse dixit to convince me that the office of Chancellor is such a sinecure and bagatelle. He had a levee the other night, which was brilliantly attended—the Archbishops, Duke of Wellington, Lord Grey, a host of people. Sefton goes and sits in his private room and sees his receptions of people, and gives very amusing accounts of his extreme politeness to the Lord Mayor and his cool insouciance with the Archbishop of Canterbury. The stories of him as told by Sefton would be invaluable to his future biographer, and never was a life more sure to be written hereafter.

March 17th, 1831

BROUGHAM AT THE HORSE GUARDS. The night before last Wynford attacked Brougham’s Bill, and got lashed in return with prodigious severity. He is resolved to press it, though George Villiers told me he had promised Lyndhurst to wait for his return to town. Notwithstanding his vapouring about the Court of Chancery, and treating it as such child’s play, Leach affirms (but he is disappointed and hates him) that he is a very bad judge and knows nothing of his business. ‘He was a very bad advocate; why should he make a good judge?’

The Reform Bill is just printed, and already are the various objections raised against different parts of it, sufficient to show that it will be pulled to pieces in Committee. Both parties confident of success on the second reading, but the country will have it; there is a determination on the subject, and a unanimity perfectly marvellous, and no demonstration of the unfitness of any of its parts will be of any avail; some of its details may be corrected and amended, but substantially it must pass pretty much as it is.

Brougham has been getting into a squabble with the military. At the drawing-room on Thursday they refused to let his carriage pass through the Horse Guards, when he ordered his coachman to force his way through, which he did. He was quite wrong, and it was very unbecoming and undignified. Lord Londonderry called for an explanation in the House of Lords, when Brougham made a speech, and a very lame one. He said he ordered his coachman to go back, who did not hear him and went on, and when he had got through he thought it was not worth while to turn back. The Lords laughed. A few days after he drove over the soldiers in Downing Street, who were relieving guard; but this time he did no great harm to the men, and it was not his fault, but these things are talked of.

Dined yesterday with General Macdonald to meet the Kembles. Miss Fanny is near being very handsome from the extraordinary expression of her countenance and fine eyes, but her figure is not good. She is short, hands and feet large, arms handsome, skin dark and coarse, and her manner wants ease and repose. Her mother is a very agreeable woman. I did not sit next to Fanny, and had no talk with her afterwards.

March 18th, 1831

Met Robert Clive yesterday morning; very low about the Bill, which he thinks so sure to be carried that he questions the expediency of dividing on the second reading; complained bitterly of the bad tactics and want of union of the party, and especially of Peel’s inactivity and backwardness in not having rallied and taken the lead more than he has; he is in fact so cold, phlegmatic, and calculating that he disgusts those who can’t do without him as a leader; he will always have political but never personal influence.

March 20th, 1831

On Friday night, after not a long but an angry and noisy debate, there was a division on the timber duties, and Government was beaten by forty-three, all the Saints, West Indians, and anti-Free-traders voting with the great body of Opposition. Their satisfaction was tumultuous. They have long been desirous of bringing Ministers to a trial of strength, and they did not care much upon what; they wanted to let the world see the weakness of Government, and besides on this occasion they hoped that a defeat might be prejudicial to the Reform Bill, so that this matter of commercial and fiscal policy is not decided on its own merits, but is influenced by passion, violence, party tactics, and its remote bearing upon another question with which it has no immediate relation. Althorp was obliged to abandon his original proposition of taking off 5s. from the duty on Baltic timber, which is 55s. (and 45s. on deals), and adding 10s. to the Canadian, which is already 10s. He proposed instead to take off 6s. from the former this year, 6s. next, and 3s. next, so as to give plenty of time for the withdrawal of capital, and to meet all contingencies. The proposal was not unfair, and in other times would have been carried. Poulett Thomson made a very good speech, clear and satisfactory. Peel was what is called very factious—that is, in opposition—just what the others were, violent and unreasonable as far as the THE REFORM BILL. question is concerned, but acting upon a system having for its object to embarrass the Government.

I still think the second reading of the Reform Bill will pass, and, all things considered, that it would be the best thing that could happen; it is better to capitulate than to be taken by storm. The people are unanimous, good-humoured, and determined; if the Bill is thrown out, their good humour will disappear, the country will be a scene of violence and uproar, and a most ferocious Parliament will be returned, which will not only carry the question of Reform, but possibly do so in a very different form. We should see the iræ leonum vincla recusantûm, and this proposition is so evident, this state of things is so indisputable, that it is marvellous to me how anybody can triumph and exult in the anticipation of a victory the consequences of which would be more unfortunate than a defeat. If indeed a victory could set the matter at rest, confirm our present institutions, and pacify the people, it would be very well; but Reform the people will have, and no human power, moral or physical, can now arrest its career. It would be better, then, to concede with a good grace, and to modify the measure in Committee, which may still be practicable, than to oppose it point blank without a prospect of success.

March 22nd, 1831

The debate began again last night, and was adjourned. It was dull, and the House impatient. To-night they will divide, and after a thousand fluctuations of opinion it is thought the Bill will be thrown out by a small majority. Then will come the question of a dissolution, which one side affirms will take place directly, and the other that the King will not consent to it, knowing, as ‘the man in the street’ (as we call him at Newmarket) always does, the greatest secrets of kings, and being the confidant of their most hidden thoughts. As for me, I see nothing but a choice of difficulties either way, and victory or defeat would be equally bad. It is odd enough, but I believe Lord Lansdowne thinks just the same, for he asked me yesterday morning what I expected would be the result, and I told him my opinion on the whole question, and he replied, ‘I can add nothing to what you have said; that is exactly my own opinion,’ and I have very little doubt that more than half the Cabinet in their hearts abhor the measure. Knatchbull was taken ill in the morning, and could not go to the House at all.

March 23rd, 1831

The House divided at three o’clock this morning, and the second reading was carried by a majority of one in the fullest House that ever was known—303 to 302—both parties confident up to the moment of division; but the Opposition most so, and at last the Government expected to be beaten. Denman told somebody as they were going to divide that the question would be lost; Calcraft and the Wynnes’ going over at the eleventh hour did the business. I believe that this division is the best thing that could happen, and so I told the Duke in the morning, and that I had wished it to be carried by a small majority; I met him walking with Arbuthnot in the Park. He said, ‘I could not take such a course’ (that was in answer to my saying I wished it to be read a second time, to be lost in the Committee). I said, ‘But you would have nothing to do with it personally.’ ‘No; but as belonging to the party I could not recommend such a course,’ which seemed as if he did not altogether disagree with my view of it. I stopped at the ‘Travellers’ till past three, when a man came in and told me the news. I walked home, and found the streets swarming with members of Parliament coming from the House. My belief is (if they manage well and are active and determined) that the Bill will be lost in Committee, and then this will be the best thing that could have occurred.

March 24th, 1831

The agitation the other night on the division was prodigious. The Government, who stayed in the House, thought they had lost it by ten, and the Opposition, who were crowded in the lobby, fancied from their numbers that they were sure of winning. There was betting going on all night long, and large sums have been won and lost. The people in the lobby were miscounted, and they thought they had 303. At the levee yesterday and Council; the Government are by way of being satisfied, but hardly can be. I met the Duke of Wellington afterwards, who owned to me that he REFORM BILL CARRIED BY ONE VOTE. thought this small majority for the Bill was on the whole the best thing that could have occurred, and that seems to be the opinion generally of its opponents.

Nothing particularly at the levee; Brougham very good fun. The King, who had put off going to the Opera on account of the death of his son-in-law Kennedy, appeared in mourning (crape, that is), which is reckoned bad taste; the public allow natural feeling to supersede law and etiquette, but it is too much to extend that courtesy to a ‘son-in-law,’ and his daughter is not in England. Somebody said that ‘it was the first time a King of England had appeared in mourning that his subjects did not wear.’ In the evening to the Ancient Concert, where the Queen was, and by-the-bye in mourning, and the Margravine and Duchess of Gloucester too, but they (the two latter) could hardly be mourning for Lord Cassilis’s son. Horace Seymour, Meynell, and Calvert were all turned out of their places in the Lord Chamberlain’s department on account of their votes the other night.

The change of Ministers at Paris and Casimir Périer’s speech have restored something like confidence about French affairs. The Prince of Orange is gone back to Holland, to his infinite disgust; he was escorted by Lady Dudley Stewart and Mrs. Fox as far as Gravesend, I believe, where they were found the next day in their white satin shoes and evening dresses. He made a great fool of himself here, and destroyed any sympathy there might have been for his political misfortunes; supping, dancing, and acting, and little (rather innocent) orgies at these ladies’ houses formed his habitual occupation.

A sort of repose from the cursed Bill for a moment, but it is said that many who opposed it before are going to support it in Committee; nobody knows. When the Speaker put the question, each party roared ‘Aye’ and ‘No’ totis viribus. He said he did not know, and put it again. After that he said, ‘I am not sure, but I think the ayes have it.’ Then the noes went out into the lobby, and the others thought they never would have done filing out, and the House looked so empty when they were gone that the Government was in despair. They say the excitement was beyond anything. I continue to hear great complaints of Peel—of his coldness, incommunicativeness, and deficiency in all the qualities requisite for a leader, particularly at such a time. There is nobody else, or he would be deserted for any man who had talents enough to take a prominent part, so much does he disgust his adherents. Nobody knows what are his opinions, feelings, wishes, or intentions; he will not go en avant, and nobody feels any dependence upon him. There is no help for it and the man’s nature can’t be altered. I said all this to Ross yesterday, his devoted adherent, and he was obliged to own it, with all kinds of regrets and endeavours to soften the picture.

April 14th, 1831

The Reform campaign has reopened with a violent speech from Hunt denouncing the whole thing as a delusion; that the people begin to find out how they are humbugged, and that as it will make nothing cheaper they don’t care about it. The man’s drift is not very clear whether the Bill is really unpalatable at Preston or whether he wants to go further directly. At the same time John Russell announced some alterations in the Bill, not, as he asserted, trenching upon its principle, but, as the Opposition declares, altering it altogether. On the whole, these things have inspirited its opponents, and, as they must produce delay, are in so far bad for the Reform cause. Besides, though the opinion of the country is universally in its favour, people are beginning to think that it may be rejected without any apprehension of such dreadful consequences ensuing as have been predicted. Then the state of Ireland is such that it is thought the Ministers cannot encounter a dissolution, not that I feel any security on that head, for I believe the Cabinet is ruled by two or three men reckless of everything provided they can prolong their own power.

April 24th, 1831

At Newmarket all last week, and returned to town last night to hear from those who saw them the extraordinary scenes in both Houses of Parliament (the day before) which closed the eventful week. The Reform battle began again on Monday last. The night before I went out of town DEFEAT AND DISSOLUTION. I met Duncannon, and walked with him up Regent Street, when he told me that he did not believe the Ministers would be beaten, but if they were they should certainly dissolve instantly; that he should have liked to dissolve long ago, but they owed it to their friends not to have recourse to a dissolution if they could help it. On Monday General Gascoyne moved that the Committee should be instructed not to reduce the members of the House of Commons, and this was carried after two nights’ debate by eight. The dissolution was then decided upon. Meanwhile Lord Wharncliffe gave notice of a motion to address the King not to dissolve Parliament, and this was to have come on on Friday. On Thursday the Ministers were again beaten in the House of Commons on a question of adjournment, and on Friday morning they got the King to go down and prorogue Parliament in person the same day. This coup d’état was so sudden that nobody was aware of it till within two or three hours of the time, and many not at all. They told him that the cream-coloured horses could not be got ready, when he said, ‘Then I will go with anybody else’s horses.’ Somebody went off in a carriage to the Tower, to fetch the Crown, and they collected such attendants as they could find to go with his Majesty. The Houses met at one or two o’clock. In the House of Commons Sir R. Vyvyan made a furious speech, attacking the Government on every point, and (excited as he was) it was very well done. The Ministers made no reply, but Sir Francis Burdett and Tennyson endeavoured to interrupt with calls to order, and when the Speaker decided that Vyvyan was not out of order Tennyson disputed his opinion, which enraged the Speaker, and soon after called up Peel, for whom he was resolved to procure a hearing. The scene then resembled that which took place on Lord North’s resignation in 1782, for Althorp (I think) moved that Burdett should be heard, and the Speaker said that ‘Peel was in possession of the House to speak on that motion.’ He made a very violent speech, attacking the Government for their incompetence, folly, and recklessness, and treated them with the utmost asperity and contempt. In the midst of his speech the guns announced the arrival of the King, and at each explosion the Government gave a loud cheer, and Peel was still speaking in the midst of every sort of noise and tumult when the Usher of the Black Rod knocked at the door to summon the Commons to the House of Peers. There the proceedings were if possible still more violent and outrageous; those who were present tell me it resembled nothing but what we read of the ‘Serment du Jeu de Paume,’ and the whole scene was as much like the preparatory days of a revolution as can well be imagined. Wharncliffe was to have moved an address to the Crown against dissolving Parliament, and this motion the Ministers were resolved should not come on, but he contrived to bring it on so far as to get it put upon the Journals. The Duke of Richmond endeavoured to prevent any speaking by raising points of order, and moving that the Lords should take their regular places (in separate ranks), which, however, is impossible at a royal sitting, because the cross benches are removed; this put Lord Londonderry in such a fury that he rose, roared, gesticulated, held up his whip, and four or five Lords held him down by the tail of his coat to prevent his flying on somebody. Lord Lyndhurst was equally furious, and some sharp words passed which were not distinctly heard. In the midst of all the din Lord Mansfield rose and obtained a hearing. Wharncliffe said to him, ‘For God’s sake, Mansfield, take care what you are about, and don’t disgrace us more in the state we are in.’ ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said; ‘I will say nothing that will alarm you;’ and accordingly he pronounced a trimming philippic on the Government, which, delivered as it was in an imposing manner, attired in his robes, and with the greatest energy and excitation, was prodigiously effective. While he was still speaking, the King arrived, but he did not desist even while his Majesty[1] was THE KING DISSOLVES PARLIAMENT. entering the House of Lords, nor till he approached the throne; and while the King was ascending the steps, the hoarse voice of Lord Londonderry was heard crying ‘Hear, hear, hear!’ The King from the robing-room heard the noise, and asked what it all meant. The conduct of the Chancellor was most extraordinary, skipping in and out of the House and making most extraordinary speeches. In the midst of the uproar he went out of the House, when Lord Shaftesbury was moved into the chair. In the middle of the debate Brougham again came in and said, ‘it was most extraordinary that the King’s undoubted right to dissolve Parliament should be questioned at a moment when the House of Commons had taken the unprecedented course of stopping the supplies,’ and having so said (which was a lie) he flounced out of the House to receive the King on his arrival. The King ought not properly to have worn the Crown, never having been crowned; but when he was in the robing-room he said to Lord Hastings, ‘Lord Hastings, I wear the Crown; where is it?’ It was brought to him, and when Lord Hastings was going to put it on his head he said, ‘Nobody shall put the Crown on my head but myself.’ He put it on, and then turned to Lord Grey and said, ‘Now, my Lord, the coronation is over.’ George Villiers said that in his life he never saw such a scene, and as he looked at the King upon the throne with the Crown loose upon his head, and the tall, grim figure of Lord Grey close beside him with the sword of state in his hand, it was as if the King had got his executioner by his side, and the whole picture looked strikingly typical of his and our future destinies.

[1] When Lord Mansfield sat down he said, ‘I have spoken English to them at least.’ Lord Lyndhurst told me that Lord Mansfield stopped speaking as soon as the door opened to admit the King. He said he never saw him so excited before, and in his robes he looked very grand. He also told me that he was at Lady Holland’s giving an account of the scene when Brougham came in. He said, ‘I was telling them what passed the other day in our House,’ when Brougham explained his part by saying that the Usher of the Black Rod (Tyrwhit) was at his elbow saying, ‘My Lord Chancellor, you must come; the King is waiting for you: come along; you must come,’ and that he was thus dragged out of the House in this hurry and without having time to sit down or say any more.

Such has been the termination of this Parliament and of the first act of the new Ministerial drama; there never was a Government ousted with more ignominy than the last, nor a Ministry that came in with higher pretensions, greater professions, and better prospects than the present, but nothing ever corresponded less than their performances with their pretensions. The composition of the Government was radically defective, and with a good deal of loose talent there was so much of passion, folly, violence, and knavery, together with inexperience and ignorance mixed up with it, that from the very beginning they cut the sorriest possible figure. Such men as Richmond, Durham, Althorp, and Graham, in their different ways, were enough to spoil any Cabinet, and consequently their course has been marked by a series of blunders and defeats. Up to the moment of the dissolution few people expected it would happen, some thinking the King would not consent, others that the Government would never venture upon it, but the King is weak and the Ministry reckless. That disposition, which at first appeared so laudable, of putting himself implicitly into the hands of his Ministers, and which seemed the more so from the contrast it afforded to the conduct of the late King, who was always thwarting his Ministers, throwing difficulties in their way, and playing a double part, becomes vicious when carried to the extent of paralysing all free action and free opinion on his part, and of suffering himself to be made the instrument of any measures, however violent. It may be said, indeed, that he cordially agrees with these men, and has opinions coincident with theirs, but this is not probable; and when we remember his unlimited confidence in the Duke up to the moment of his resignation, it is impossible to believe that he can have so rapidly imbibed principles the very reverse of those which the Duke maintained.[2] It is more likely that he has no opinions, and is really a mere puppet in the hands into which he may happen to fall. Lord Mansfield had an audience, and gave him his sentiments upon the state of affairs. He will not say what passed between them, but it is clear that it was of no use.

[2] The King was extremely opposed to the dissolution, and had remonstrated against it ever since it was first proposed to him in March. See Lord Grey’s letter in the ‘Times’ of March 26, 1866.

The Queen and the Royal Family are extremely unhappy at all these things, but the former has no influence whatever THE GENERAL ELECTION. with the King. In the meantime there are very different opinions as to the result of the elections, some thinking that Government will not gain much by the dissolution, others that they (or at least Reform) will win everything. It seems to me quite impossible that they should not win everything, but time is gained to the other side. The census of 1831 will be out, and the chapter of accidents may and must make much difference; still I see no possibility of arresting the progress of Reform, and whether this Bill or another like it passes is much the same thing. The Government have made it up with O’Connell, which is one mouthful of the dirty pudding they have had to swallow, as one of their own friends said of them.

April 26th, 1831

Last night at the Queen’s ball; heaps of people of all sorts; everybody talking of the elections. Both parties pretend to be confident, but the Government with the best reason. The county members, as Sefton says, are tumbling about like nine-pins, and though it seems not improbable that the Opposition will gain in the boroughs, they must lose greatly in the counties; and we must not only look to the relative numbers, but to the composition of the respective parties. A large minority composed of borough nominees, corporation members, and only a sprinkling of what is called independence would not look well. Large sums have been subscribed on both sides, but on that of the Opposition there is a want of candidates more than of places to send them to.

I met Lyndhurst last night, and asked him what it was he said in the House of Lords. He said it was nothing very violent, but that it was not heard. The Duke of Richmond had spoken to the point of order, and said in a very marked way ‘he saw a noble Earl sitting by a junior Baron.’ This was Lyndhurst, who was offended at the sneer upon his want of ancienneté, and who retorted that before the noble Duke made such speeches on points of order he would do well to make himself acquainted with the orders of the House, of which it was obvious he knew nothing. The Duke of Devonshire told Lady Lyndhurst that her husband ought to resign his judicial situation because he had displayed hostility to Government the other night, but it would be a new maxim to establish that the judges were to be amenable to the Minister for their political opinions and Parliamentary conduct.

April 29th, 1831

The night before last there was an illumination, got up by the foolish Lord Mayor, which of course produced an uproar and a general breaking of obnoxious windows. Lord Mansfield and the Duke of Buccleuch went to Melbourne in the morning and remonstrated, asking what protection he meant to afford to their properties. A gun (with powder only) was fired over the heads of the mob from Apsley House, and they did not go there again. The Government might have discouraged this manifestation of triumph, but they wished for it for the purpose of increasing the popular excitement. They don’t care what they do, or what others do, so long as they can keep the people in a ferment. It is disgusting to the last degree to hear their joy and exultation at the success of their measures and the good prospects held out to them by the elections; all of which may turn out very well, but if it does not ‘who shall set hoddy-doddy up again?’ Lord Cleveland has subscribed 10,000ℓ. to the election fund.

Lord Yarborough, by a very questionable piece of political morality, has given the Holmes boroughs in the Isle of Wight to Government; they are the property of Sir L. Holmes’s daughter, whose guardian he is as well as executor under the will. In this capacity he has the disposal of the boroughs, and he gives them to the Ministers to fill with men who are to vote for their disfranchisement. A large price is paid for them—4,000ℓ.—but it makes a difference of eight votes, and if the Bill is carried they will be worth nothing. The elections promise well for Government even in the boroughs, as I was persuaded they would. O’Connell has put forth a proclamation entreating, commanding peace, order, and support of the Bill’s supporters. Tom Moore called on me yesterday morning. He said that he was a Reformer and liked the Bill, but he was fully aware of all that it might produce of evil to the THE QUEEN ALARMED IN THE CITY. present system. He owned frankly that he felt like an Irishman and that the wrongs of Ireland and the obstinacy of the faction who had oppressed her still rankled in his heart, and that he should not be sorry at any vengeance which might overtake them at last. I hear renewed complaints of Peel, of his selfish, cold, calculating, cowardly policy; that we are indebted to him principally for our present condition I have no doubt—to his obstinacy and to his conduct in the Catholic question first, to his opposition and then to his support of it. Opposing all and every sort of Reform totis viribus while he dared, now he makes a death-bed profession of acquiescence in something which should be more moderate than this. All these things disgust people inconceivably, and it is not the less melancholy that he is our only resource, and his capacity for business and power in the House of Commons places him so far above all his competitors that if we are to have a Conservative party we must look to him alone to lead it.

May 7th, 1831

Nothing could go on worse than the elections—Reformers returned everywhere, so much so that the contest is over, and we have only to await the event and see what the House of Lords will do. In the House of Commons the Bill is already carried. It is supposed that the Ministers themselves begin to be alarmed at the devil they have let loose, and well they may; but he is out, and stop him who can. The King has put off his visit to the City because he is ill, as the Government would have it believed, but really because he is furious with the Lord Mayor at all the riots and uproar on the night of the illumination. That night the Queen went to the Ancient Concert, and on her return the mob surrounded the carriage; she had no guards, and the footmen were obliged to beat the people off with their canes to prevent their thrusting their heads into the coach. She was frightened and the King very much annoyed. He heard the noise and tumult, and paced backwards and forwards in his room waiting for her return. When she came back Lord Howe, her chamberlain, as usual preceded her, when the King said, ‘How is the Queen?’ and went down to meet her. Howe, who is an eager anti-Reformer, said, ‘Very much frightened, sir,’ and made the worst of it. She was in fact terrified, and as she detests the whole of these proceedings, the more distressed and disgusted. The King was very angry and immediately declared he would not go to the City at all. It is supposed that Government will make a large batch of Peers to secure the Bill in the House of Lords, but the press have already begun to attack that House, declaring that if they pass the Bill it will be from compulsion, and if they do not that they are the enemies of the people.

May 11th, 1831

The elections are going on universally in favour of Reform; the great interests in the counties are everywhere broken, and old connexions dissevered. In Worcestershire Captain Spencer, who has nothing to do with the county, and was brought there by his brother-in-law, Lord Lyttelton, has beaten Lygon, backed by all the wealth of his family; the Manners have withdrawn from Leicestershire and Cambridgeshire, and Lord E. Somerset from Gloucestershire; Lord Worcester too is beaten at Monmouth. Everywhere the tide is irresistible; all considerations are sacrificed to the success of the measure. At the last Essex election Colonel Tyrrell saved Western, who would have been beaten by Long Wellesley, and now Western has coalesced with Wellesley against Tyrrell, and will throw him out. In Northamptonshire Althorp had pledged himself to Cartwright not to bring forward another candidate on his side, and Milton joins him and stands. The state of excitement, doubt, and apprehension which prevails will not quickly subside, for the battle is only beginning; when the Bill is carried we must prepare for the second act.

May 14th, 1831

The elections are still going for Reform. They count upon a majority of 140 in the House of Commons, but the Tories meditate resistance in the House of Lords, which it is to be hoped will be fruitless, and it is probable the Peers will trot round as they did about the Catholic question when it comes to the point. There is a great hubbub at Northampton about a pledge which Althorp is supposed to have LORD MUNSTER’S PEERAGE. given not to bring forward another candidate against Cartwright which the anti-Reformers say he has violated in putting up Milton, and moreover that such conduct is very dishonest; and as his honesty was his principal recommendation, if he should have forfeited that what would remain to him? On the contrary his friends say that he gave no such pledge, that he expressed a hope there might be no contest, but the people would have Milton, and though Althorp regretted his standing, as he did stand they were obliged to join for their common safety. So much for this electioneering squabble, of which time will elicit the truth. Last night I went to Prince Leopold’s, where was George Fitzclarence receiving congratulations on his new dignity (Earl of Munster). He told me everybody had been very kind about it—the King, Lord Grey, his friends, and the public. He had told Lord Grey he was anxious his brothers and sisters should have the rank of marquis’s sons and daughters (to give them titles). Grey had only objected that their titles would then represent a higher rank than his own,[3] but that he laid no stress on that objection, and it would be done directly. Melbourne has written a letter to the Lord Mayor assuring him that ill health is the only obstacle to the King’s visit to the City, and that there is no foundation for the report of his displeasure, the Lord Mayor’s explanation having proved quite satisfactory. This is not true, I believe, but they make him say so.

[3] [If Lord Grey said this it was a mistake. The younger sons and daughters of marquises take rank after earls.]

May 22nd, 1831

At Epsom all last week for the races at a house which Lord Chesterfield took; nobody there but the three sisters[4] and their two husbands. Rode out on the downs every morning, and enjoyed the fine country, as beautiful as any I have seen of the kind. After the races on Friday I went to Richmond to dine with Lord and Lady Lyndhurst, and was refreshed by his vigorous mind after the three or four days I had passed. He thinks the state of things very bad, has a great contempt for this Government, is very doubtful what will happen, thinks Lord Grey will not stand, and that Brougham will be Chancellor and Prime Minister, like Clarendon; he talked of the late Government, the Duke of Wellington and Peel; he said that the former meddled with no department but that of Foreign Affairs, which he conducted entirely; that he understood them better than anything else, and if he came into office again would be Foreign Secretary; that in the Cabinet he was always candid, reasonable, and ready to discuss fairly every subject, but not so Peel. He, if his opinion was not adopted, would take up a newspaper and sulk. Lyndhurst agreed with me about his manners, his coldness, and how he disgusted instead of conciliating people; he said that when any of his friends in Parliament proposed to speak in any debate, he never encouraged or assisted them, but answered with a dry ‘Do you?’ to their notification of a wish or intention. He said that this Bill was drawn up by Lambton himself, but so ill done, so ignorantly and inefficiently, that they were obliged to send for Harrison, who, in conjunction with the Attorney-General, drew it up afresh; that when John Russell brought it forward the Bill was still undrawn.[5] He says that there is not the least doubt they never had an idea of bringing forward any such measure as this till they found themselves so weak in the House of Commons that nothing but a popular cry and Radical support could possibly save them. It is very remarkable when we look back to the moment of the dissolution of the late Government, when Brougham was in the House of Commons armed with his Bill, which, though unknown, was so dreaded, and which turns out to have been mere milk and water compared with this. He said Brougham was offered the Attorney-Generalship by a note, which he tore in pieces and stamped upon, and sent word that there was no answer; that he has long aspired to be Chancellor, and wished to get into the House of Lords. He ridicules his pretensions to LORD BROUGHAM AS A JUDGE. such wonderful doings in his Court and in the Bills he has announced; says that he has decided no bankruptcy cases, and, except some Scotch appeals in the House of Lords, has got rid of hardly any arrears; and as to his Bills, the Bankruptcy Bill was objectionable and the Chancery Bill he has never brought on at all; that he knows he affects a short cut to judicial eminence, but that without labour and reading he cannot administer justice in that Court, although no doubt his great acuteness and rapid perception may often enable him at once to see the merits of a case and hit upon the important points. This he said in reply to what I told him of Brougham’s trumpeter Sefton, who echoes from his own lips that ‘the Court of Chancery is such a sinecure and mere child’s play.’

[4] [Lady Chesterfield, Mrs. Anson, and Miss Forester.]

[5] [Compare the details of the preparation of the Reform Bill published by Lord Russell in the last edition of his ‘Essay on the British Constitution.’ Much of this conversation of Lord Lyndhurst’s is extremely wide of the truth, but it is retained to show what was said and believed by competent persons at the time.]

In the meantime the elections have been going languidly on, and are now nearly over; contrary to the prognostications of the Tories, they have gone off very quietly, even in Ireland not many contests, the anti-Reformers being unable to make any fight at all; except in Shropshire they are dead-beat everywhere. Northamptonshire the sharpest contest, and the one which has made the most ill blood; this particular election has produced a good deal of violence; elsewhere the Reformers have it hollow, no matter what the characters of the candidates, if they are only for the Bill. Calcraft and Wellesley, the former not respected, the latter covered with disgrace, have beat Bankes and Tyrrell. Lowther had not a chance in Cumberland, where Sir James Graham got into another scrape, for in an impertinent speech he made an attack upon Scarlett, which drew upon him a message and from him an apology. Formerly, when a man made use of offensive expressions and was called to account, he thought it right to go out and stand a shot before he ate his words, but now-a-days that piece of chivalry is dispensed with, and politicians make nothing of being scurrilous one day and humble the next. Hyde Villiers has been appointed to succeed Sandon at the Board of Control as a Whig and a Reformer. He was in a hundred minds what line he should take, and had written a pamphlet to prove the necessity of giving Ministers seats in both Houses (as in France), which he has probably put in the fire. I am very glad he has got the place, and though his opinions were not very decided before, he has always been anti-Tory, and has done nothing discreditable to get it, and it was offered to him in a very flattering manner.

May 28th, 1831

Yesterday Lord Grey was invested with the blue ribband, though there is no vacancy; the only precedent is that of Lords Liverpool and Castlereagh (which was thought wrong), but it was on the occasion of the peace after Bonaparte’s overthrow and when Castlereagh returned with such éclat from Paris that the whole House of Commons rose and cheered him as he entered it.

I met Alexander Baring the other night, who said it was certain that the King was full of regrets at the extent of the measures into which he had been hurried, when I told him of Lord Grey’s Garter, and asked him what he said to that, and how that bore out the assertion of the King’s regrets. The fact is that although on one side a most indecent though effectual use of the King’s name has been made, on the other there is nothing that is not asserted with equal confidence about ‘his difficulties and his scruples.’ Sefton told me that it was the sort of things that were said that made the King write to Lord Grey (he saw the letter) and tell him that he thought it of the greatest importance at the present moment to confer upon him a signal mark of his regard and of his satisfaction with the whole of his conduct. It is, I believe, true that the King felt some alarm and some doubt about the dissolution, but I do not believe that he has any doubts or fears at present. Indeed, how should he not have suffered himself to be led away by these people and to become identified with their measure? They have given him an ample share of the praise of it; they assure him it will be eminently successful; he sees himself popular and applauded to the skies, and as far as things have gone it has been successful, for the elections have gone on and gone off very peaceably, and the country in expectation of the passing of the Bill is in a state of profound tranquillity.

June 5th, 1831

THE KING AT ASCOT. All last week at Fern Hill for the Ascot races; the Chesterfields, Tavistocks, Belfasts, George Ansons, Montague, Stradbroke, and Brooke Greville were there. The Royal Family came to the course the first day with a great cortége—eight coaches and four, two phaetons, pony sociables, and led horses—Munster riding on horseback behind the King’s carriage, Augustus (the parson) and Frederick driving phaetons. The Duke of Richmond was in the King’s calèche and Lord Grey in one of the coaches. The reception was strikingly cold and indifferent, not half so good as that which the late King used to receive. William was bored to death with the races, and his own horse broke down. On Wednesday he did not come; on Thursday they came again. Beautiful weather and unprecedented multitudes. The King was much more cheered than the first day, or the greater number of people made a greater noise. A few cheers were given to Lord Grey as he returned, which he just acknowledged and no more. On Friday we dined at the Castle; each day the King asked a crowd of people from the neighbourhood. We arrived at a little before seven; the Queen was only just come in from riding, so we had to wait till near eight. Above forty people at dinner, for which the room is not nearly large enough; the dinner was not bad, but the room insufferably hot. The Queen was taken out by the Duke of Richmond, and the King followed with the Duchess of Saxe Weimar, the Queen’s sister. He drinks wine with everybody, asking seven or eight at a time. After dinner he drops asleep. We sat for a short time. Directly after coffee the band began to play; a good band, not numerous, and principally of violins and stringed instruments. The Queen and the whole party sat there all the evening, so that it was, in fact, a concert of instrumental music. The King took Lady Tavistock to St. George’s Hall and the ball room, where we walked about, with two or three servants carrying lamps to show the proportions, for it was not lit up. The whole thing is exceedingly magnificent, and the manner of life does not appear to be very formal, and need not be disagreeable but for the bore of never dining without twenty strangers. The Castle holds very few people, and with the King’s and Queen’s immediate suite and toute la bâtardise it was quite full. The King’s four sons were there, signoreggianti tutti, and the whole thing ‘donnait à penser’ to those who looked back a little and had seen other days. We sat in that room in which Lyndhurst has often talked to me of the famous five hours’ discussion with the late King, when the Catholic Bill hung upon his caprice. Palmerston told me he had never been in the Castle since the eventful day of Herries’ appointment and non-appointment; and how many things have happened since. What a changement de décoration; no longer George IV., capricious, luxurious, and misanthropic, liking nothing but the society of listeners and flatterers, with the Conyngham tribe and one or two Tory Ministers and foreign Ambassadors; but a plain, vulgar, hospitable gentleman, opening his doors to all the world, with a numerous family and suite, a Whig Ministry, no foreigners, and no toad-eaters at all. Nothing can be more different, and looking at him one sees how soon this act will be finished, and the same be changed for another probably not less dissimilar. Queen, bastards, Whigs,[6] all will disappear, and God knows what replaces them. Came to town yesterday, and found a quarrel between Henry Bentinck and Sir Roger Gresley, which I had to settle, and did settle amicably in the course of the evening.

[6] Not Whigs—they are les bienvenus, which they were not before.—July 1838.

June 7th, 1831

Dined with Sefton yesterday, who gave me an account of a dinner at Fowell Buxton’s on Saturday to see the brewery, at which Brougham was the ‘magnus Apollo.’ Sefton is excellent as a commentator on Brougham; he says that he watches him incessantly, never listens to anybody else when he is there, and rows him unmercifully afterwards for all the humbug, nonsense, and palaver he hears him talk to people. They were twenty-seven at dinner. Talleyrand was to have gone, but was frightened by being told that he would get nothing but beefsteaks and porter, so he stayed DINNER AT HANBURY’S BREWERY. away. They dined in the brewhouse and visited the whole establishment. Lord Grey was there in star, garter, and ribband. There were people ready to show and explain everything, but not a bit—Brougham took the explanation of everything into his own hands—the mode of brewing, the machinery, down to the feeding of the cart horses. After dinner the account books were brought, and the young Buxtons were beckoned up to the top of the table by their father to hear the words of wisdom that flowed from the lips of my Lord Chancellor. He affected to study the ledger, and made various pertinent remarks on the manner of book-keeping. There was a man whom Brougham called ‘Cornelius’ (Sefton did not know who he was) with whom he seemed very familiar. While Brougham was talking he dropped his voice, on which ‘Cornelius’ said, ‘Earl Grey is listening,’ that he might speak louder and so nothing be lost. He was talking of Paley, and said that ‘although he did not always understand his own meaning, he always contrived to make it intelligible to others,’ on which ‘Cornelius’ said, ‘My good friend, if he made it so clear to others he must have had some comprehension of it himself;’ on which Sefton attacked him afterwards, and swore that ‘he was a mere child in the hands of “Cornelius,”’ that ‘he never saw anybody so put down.’ These people are all subscribers to the London University, and Sefton swears he overheard Brougham tell them that ‘Sir Isaac Newton was nothing compared to some of the present professors,’ or something to that effect. I put down all this nonsense because it amused me in the recital, and is excessively characteristic of the man, one of the most remarkable who ever existed. Lady Sefton told me that he went with them to the British Museum, where all the officers of the Museum were in attendance to receive them. He would not let anybody explain anything, but did all the honours himself. At last they came to the collection of minerals, when she thought he must be brought to a standstill. Their conductor began to describe them, when Brougham took the words out of his mouth, and dashed off with as much ease and familiarity as if he had been a Buckland or a Cuvier. Such is the man, a grand mixture of moral, political, and intellectual incongruities.

June 10th, 1831

Breakfasted the day before yesterday with Rogers, Sydney Smith, Luttrell, John Russell, and Moore; excessively agreeable. I never heard anything more entertaining than Sydney Smith; such bursts of merriment and so dramatic. Breakfasts are the meals for poets. I met Wordsworth and Southey at breakfast. Rogers’ are always agreeable.

June 15th, 1831

Five new peerages came out yesterday—Sefton, Kinnaird, Fingall, Leitrim, and Agar Ellis; John Russell and Stanley are to be in the Cabinet. At the ball at St. James’s the other night George Dawson told me that they had 270 people in the House of Commons on the side of the Opposition, if they could command their attendance; that he did not mean to say no Reform Bill would pass, but that the details of this Bill had never yet been discussed, and when they were it would be so clearly shown that it is impracticable that this identical measure never could pass. The Opposition are beginning to recover from their discouragement; there is to be a meeting at Lord Mansfield’s on Friday, and they do, I believe, mean to fight it out.

June 19th, 1831

The last few days I have been completely taken up with quarantine, and taking means to prevent the cholera coming here. That disease made great ravages in Russia last year, and in the winter the attention of Government was called to it, and the question was raised whether we should have to purify goods coming here in case it broke out again, and if so how it was to be done. Government was thinking of Reform and other matters, and would not bestow much attention upon this subject, and accordingly neither regulations nor preparations were made. All that was done was to commission a Dr. Walker, a physician residing at St. Petersburg, to go to Moscow and elsewhere and make enquiries into the nature and progress of the disease, and report the result of his investigation to us. He turned out, however, to be a very useless and inefficient THE CHOLERA. agent. In the meantime as the warm weather returned the cholera again appeared in Russia, but still we took no further measures until intelligence arrived that it had reached Riga, at which place 700 or 800 sail of English vessels, loaded principally with hemp and flax, were waiting to come to this country. This report soon diffused a general alarm, and for many days past the newspapers have been full of letters and full of lies, and every sort of representation is made to Government or through the press, as fear or interest happen to dictate. The Consuls and Ministers abroad had been for some time supplying us with such information as they could obtain, so that we were in possession of a great deal of documentary evidence regarding the nature, character, and progress of the disease. The first thing we did was to issue two successive Orders in Council placing all vessels coming from the Baltic in quarantine, and we sent for Sir Henry Halford and placed all the papers we had in his hands, desiring that he would associate with himself some other practitioners, and report their opinion as speedily as possible whether the disease was contagious and whether it could be conveyed by goods. They reported the next day yes to the first question, no to the second. In 1804, on the occasion of the yellow fever at Gibraltar, Government formed a Board of Health, and took the opinion of the College of Physicians, and it was intended to pursue the same course in this instance, but Lords Lansdowne and Auckland chose to take Halford’s preliminary opinion, contrary to my advice, for I foresaw that there would be a great embarrassment if he and the College did not agree. Just so it turned out, for when the case was submitted, with all the papers, to the College, they would not adopt his opinion, much to his annoyance, and, as I believe, because they did not like to be merely called on to confirm what he had already said, and that they thought their independence required a show of dissent. The report they sent was very short and very unsatisfactory, and entirely against all the evidence they had before them; they advised precautionary measures. I immediately wrote back an answer saying that their report was not satisfactory, and desiring a more detailed opinion, and the reasons which had dictated their conclusion; but in the meantime we set to work in earnest to adopt measures against any emergency. The only way of performing quarantine (with goods), it was found, would be by the employment of men-of-war, and we accordingly asked the Admiralty to supply ships for the purpose. This Lord Grey, Sir James Graham, and Sir Byam Martin objected to, but Sir Thomas Hardy and Captain Elliot did not. We proved that the ships would sustain no injury, so after a battle they agreed to give them. We made a variety of regulations, and gave strict orders for the due performance of quarantine, and to-morrow a proclamation is to be issued for constituting a Board of Health and enjoining obedience to the quarantine laws, so that everything has been done that can be done, and if the cholera comes here it is not our fault. Most of the authorities think it will come, but I doubt it. If indeed it is wafted through the air it may, but I don’t think it will if it is only to be communicated by contact. All the evidence proves that goods cannot convey it; nevertheless we have placed merchandise under a discretionary quarantine, and though we have not promulgated any general regulations, we release no vessels that come from infected places, or that have got enumerated goods on board. Poulett Thomson, who is a trader as well as Privy Councillor, is very much disgusted in his former capacity at the measures he is obliged to concur in in his latter. This topic has now occupied for some days a good deal of the attention even of the fine fools of this town, and the Tories would even make it a matter of party accusation against the Government, only they don’t know exactly how. It is always safe to deal in generalities, so they say that ‘Government ought to be impeached if the disease comes here.’

There was a meeting of Peers to the amount of nearly seventy at Lord Mansfield’s the other day, which went off greatly to their satisfaction. They unanimously agreed to determine upon nothing in the way of amendment until they had seen the King’s Speech, to which, however, they will consider MEETING OF PEERS. themselves bound to move an amendment, provided it contains anything laudatory of the Reform Bill. The Duke of Wellington was not at the meeting, having been taken ill. I met him the day before at dinner, and had a good deal of conversation with him. He is in pretty good spirits, and thinks they may make a good fight of it yet; told me that Lyndhurst would certainly go thoroughly with them, praised him largely, said he was the best colleague that any man ever had, and that he should be very sorry ever to go into any Cabinet of which he was not a member. The King dined with the Duke yesterday, and was to give him a very fine sword. Aubin, who was to have acted in ‘Hernani’ before the Queen on Wednesday next, is suddenly gone off to Rome as attaché to Brook Taylor, who is there negotiating. Taylor happened to be in Italy, and they sent him there, some doubts existing whether they could by law send a diplomatic agent to negotiate with the Pope; but it was referred to Denman, who said there was no danger. He is not accredited, and bears no official character, but it is a regular mission. Lord Lansdowne told me that Leopold is inconceivably anxious to be King of Belgium, that short of going in direct opposition to the wishes and advice of all the Royal Family and of the Government he would do anything to be beking’d, and, what is equally absurd, that the others cannot bear that he should be thus elevated.

June 23rd, 1831

The King opened Parliament on Tuesday, with a greater crowd assembled to see him pass than was ever congregated before, and the House of Lords was so full of ladies that the Peers could not find places. The Speech was long, but good, and such as to preclude the possibility of an amendment. There was, however, a long discussion in each House, and the greatest bitterness and violence evinced in both—every promise of a stormy session. Lord Lansdowne said to the King, ‘I am afraid, sir, you won’t be able to see the Commons.’ ‘Never mind,’ said he; ‘they shall hear me, I promise you,’ and accordingly he thundered forth the Speech so that not a word was lost.

There has been a reconciliation between the Wellingtonians and the old Tories, and they are now firmly knit in opposition to the present Government. Winchilsea, who was the last Tory who stuck to Lord Grey, renounced him in a hot speech, which evidently annoyed Lord Grey very much, for he made a long one in reply to him. Winchilsea is a silly, blustering, but good-natured and well-meaning man. Last night ‘Hernani’ was acted at Bridgewater House before the Queen and all the Royal Family. Aubin, who had acted Don Ruy, was sent to Rome, so Francis Leveson took the part. I was disappointed, though all the company were or pretended to be in ecstasies. The rhyme does not do, the room is not good for hearing, and with the exception of Miss Kemble (who was not so effective as I expected) and Craven, the actors were execrable.

News came the day before yesterday that Marshal Diebitsch had died of the cholera. It was suspected that he had made away with himself, for he has failed so signally in his campaign against the Poles that his military reputation is tarnished; and it is known that his recall had been decreed, and that Count Paskiewitch was to succeed him. The alarm about the cholera still continues, but the Government are thrown into great perplexity by the danger on one hand of the cholera and the loss to trade on the other. A board of health has been formed, composed of certain members of the College of Physicians, Sir William Pym, Sir William Burnet, Sir Byam Martin, Sir James M‘Grigor, and Mr. Stewart; and they in their first sitting advised that all the precautions established by our Orders in Council against the plague should be adopted against the cholera. This opinion was given under the authority of Dr. Warren, who, it appears, exercises the same ascendency in this Board that he had previously done in the College of Physicians on the same subject. The fact is that he takes the safe side. They have nothing to do with trade and commerce, which must shift for themselves, and probably the other members will not take upon themselves the responsibility of opposing measures which, if the disease ever PREVENTION OF CHOLERA. appears here, and should they be relaxed, will expose the physicians to the odium and reproach of having been instrumental to its introduction. We, however (Auckland, Poulett Thomson, and I), are resolved to make the Cabinet take upon themselves the responsibility of framing the permanent rules which are to guide us during the continuance of the malady. It is remarkable that there never was more sickness than there is at present, without its being epidemic, but thousands of colds, sore throats, fevers, and such like; and a man at Blackwall has died of the English cholera, and another is ill of it, but their disorders seem to have nothing to do with the Indian cholera, though some of the symptoms are similar. These men cannot have got their cholera from Russia, but their cases spread alarm.

June 25th, 1831

John Russell brought his Bill in last night, in a good speech as his friends, and a dull one as his enemies, say. In the Lords Aberdeen attacked Lord Grey’s foreign policy in a poor speech, which just did to show his bitterness and as a peg for Grey to hang a very good reply upon. The Duke of Wellington spoke afterwards; not much of a speech, but gentlemanlike and anti-factious, and approving of all Lord Grey had done about Belgium. Lord Grey passed a very fine eulogium upon Lord Ponsonby. However, this was necessary, for he is going as Minister to Naples, not having a guinea. The Emperor Don Pedro is coming here, and Henry Webster is to be his conductor.

June 30th, 1831

At Court yesterday to swear in the Duke of Leinster, Mr. Justice Vaughan, and Sir E. Hyde East. Lord Ponsonby was there, just returned from Brussels. The first time of Stanley’s and John Russell’s being at a Council since they came into the Cabinet.

July 3rd, 1831

Went to Oatlands on Saturday, returned on Monday; nobody there but Emily Eden. Many revolutions that place has undergone in my time, from the days of the Duke of York and its gaieties (well remembered and much regretted) to its present quiet state. The Belgians have not yet made up their mind about Leopold, who does not know whether he is king or no king. The Reform Bill came on again last night, but it no longer excites so much interest. Nobody spoke well but Lord Porchester.

July 5th, 1831

The night before last Lord Harewood attacked Brougham in the House of Lords about the appointment of a magistrate without consulting him as Lord-Lieutenant. As usual his own party say he made out a good case, and the others that he made none. They say (and I believe with truth) that Brougham does not dislike such scrapes, and is so confident in his own ingenuity that he never doubts of getting out of them. Lyndhurst attacked him sharply. In the House of Commons last night the debate went on languidly, except a splendid speech from Macaulay and an answer (not bad, they say) from Murray. Lord Grey sent for me yesterday morning to talk over the coronation, for in consequence of what the Duke of Wellington said in the House the night before he thinks there must be one. The object is to make it shorter and cheaper than the last, which occupied the whole day and cost 240,000ℓ.

July 8th, 1831

The second reading of the Reform Bill was carried at five in the morning by 136 majority, somewhat greater than the Opposition had reckoned on. Peel made a powerful speech, but not so good as either of his others on Reform. Goulburn told me that the speech in answer to the Lord Advocate on the Irish Bill, when not 100 people were in the House, was his best. The coronation fixed for the 23rd. Breakfasted with Rogers; went afterwards to the Duchess of Bedford’s, where I met Lady Lyndhurst. I desired her to tell Lyndhurst all the Duke had said to me about him, for in these times it is as well they should draw together. He will be a match for Brougham in the House of Lords, for he can be concise, which the other cannot, and the Lords in the long run will prefer brevity to art, sarcasm, and anything else.

People are beginning to recover from their terror of the cholera, seeing that it does not come, and we are now beset with alarms of a different kind, which are those of the Scotch merchants for their cargoes. We have a most CONTEST IN POLAND. disagreeable business on our hands, very troublesome, odious, and expensive. The public requires that we should take care of its health, the mercantile world that we should not injure their trade. All evidence proves that goods are not capable of bringing in the disorder, but we have appointed a Board of Health, which is contagionist, and we can’t get them to subscribe to that opinion. We dare not act without its sanction, and so we are obliged to air goods. This airing requires more ships and lazarets than we have, and the result is a perpetual squabbling, disputing, and complaining between the Privy Council, the Admiralty, the Board of Health, and the merchants. We have gone on pretty well hitherto, but more ships arrive every day; the complaints will grow louder, and the disease rather spreads than diminishes on the Continent. This cholera has afforded strong proofs of the partiality of the Prussians in the contest between the Russians and the Poles. The quarantine restrictions are always dispensed with for officers passing through the Prussian territory to join the Russian army. Count Paskiewitch was allowed to pass without performing any quarantine at all, and stores and provisions are suffered to be conveyed to the army, with every facility afforded by the Prussian authorities and every relaxation of the sanitary laws. The Duke of Wellington says that the contest will very soon be over, that the Russian army could not act before June, and that between February and June the country is not practicable for military operations. They have now so many months before them that the weight of their numerical superiority will crush the Poles. Austria and Prussia, too, do their utmost by affording every sort of indirect assistance to the Russians and thwarting the Poles as much as they can.

July 10th, 1831

The last two or three days I have been settling everything for the coronation,[7] which is to be confined to the ceremony in the Abbey and cost as little money and as little trouble as possible; and yesterday I was the medium of great civilities from Lord Grey to the Duke. He desired me to go to the Duke and show him the course of proceeding we mean to adopt, and request him to make any suggestion that occurred to him, and to enquire if he would have any objection to attend the Council at which it is to be formally settled on Wednesday, to which Peel and Rosslyn are likewise invited. I spoke to the Duke and Peel, and they will both come. All this is mighty polite.

[7] [The arrangements for coronations are made by a Committee of the Privy Council, which sits as a Court of Claims.]

They have made a fine business of Cobbett’s trial; his insolence and violence were past endurance, but he made an able speech. The Chief Justice was very timid, and favoured and complimented him throughout; very unlike what Ellenborough would have done. The jury were shut up the whole night, and in the morning the Chief Justice, without consulting either party, discharged them, which was probably on the whole the best that could be done. Denman told me that he expected they would have acquitted him without leaving the box, and this principally on account of Brougham’s evidence, for Cobbett brought the Chancellor forward and made him prove that after these very writings, and while this prosecution was hanging over him, Brougham wrote to his son ‘Dear Sir,’ and requesting he would ask his father for some former publications of his, which he thought would be of great use on the present occasion in quieting the labourers. This made a great impression, and the Attorney-General never knew one word of the letter till he heard it in evidence, the Chancellor having flourished it off, as is his custom, and then quite forgotten it. The Attorney told me that Gurney overheard one juryman say to another, ‘Don’t you think we had better stop the case? It is useless to go on.’ The other, however, declared for hearing it out, so on the whole it ended as well as it might, just better than an acquittal, and that is all.

July 11th, 1831

Dined with Lord Grey yesterday. In the middle of dinner Talleyrand got a letter announcing that Leopold’s conditional acceptance of the Belgian throne had been agreed to by a great majority of the Chamber; and a Mr. Walker, who brought the news (and left Brussels at five WELLINGTON AND THE GOVERNMENT. o’clock the day before), came to Lord Grey and told him with what enthusiasm it had been received there. Lord Grey wrote to the Chancellor, with whom Leopold was dining, to tell him of the event.

This morning I got a note from the Duke of Wellington declining to attend the Council on Wednesday, and desiring I would impart the same to Lord Grey and the King. He says that it would give rise to misrepresentations, and so it would. He is right to decline. It is, however, Peel who has prevented him, I am certain. When I told Peel on Saturday, he looked very grave, did not seem to like it, and said he must confer with the Duke first, as he should be sorry to do otherwise than he did. Yesterday I know the Duke dined with Peel, who I have no doubt persuaded him to send this excuse. The Government are in exceeding delight at the Duke’s conduct ever since he has been in opposition, which certainly has been very noble, straightforward, gentlemanlike, and without an atom of faction or mischief about it. He has done himself great honour; he threw over Aberdeen completely on that business about foreign policy which he introduced soon after the meeting of Parliament, and now he is assisting the Government in their Lieutenancy Bill, and is in constant communication with Melbourne on the subject.

July 13th, 1831

I took the Duke’s note to Lord Grey, who seemed annoyed, and repeated that he had only intended the invitation as a mark of attention, and never thought of shifting any responsibility from his own shoulders; that as there was a deviation from the old ceremonial, he thought the Duke’s sanction would have satisfied those who might otherwise have disputed the propriety of such a change. ‘Does he then,’ he asked, ‘mean to attend the Committee?’ I did not then know; but yesterday in the House of Lords I asked the Duke, and he said ‘No, for the same reasons,’ that upon consideration he was sure he had better not go, that by so doing he might give umbrage to his own party, and he could only do good by exercising a powerful influence over them and restraining them, and that his means of doing good would be impaired by any appearance of approximating himself to Government, that when the general plan of the arrangements was settled, he should have no objection to lend a helping hand, if wanted, to the details with which he was very conversant. I wrote on a slip of paper that he would not come, and gave it to Lord Grey, who said nothing. Peel did not write to me, but he and Rosslyn do the same as the Duke.

The Belgian deputation came yesterday, and Lebeau and his colleagues were in the House of Lords. We had been promised a good day there between Londonderry and Brougham and Plunket, but the former made a tiresome, long speech; the latter spoke civilly and dully; and Brougham not at all, so it ended in smoke. In the other House on Monday the Ministers got a good majority (102) on the wine duties, to their great delight, but the Opposition were not only mortified at the defeat, but disgusted and enraged at the conduct of Peel (their leader, as they considered him), who came into the House, got up in the middle of Herries’ speech, walked out and was heard of no more that night; never voted, nor gave any notice of his intention not to vote. The moral effect of this upon his party is immense, and has served to destroy the very little confidence they had in him before. It is impossible to conceive by what motives he is actuated, because if they were purely selfish it would seem that he defeats his own object; for what can he gain by disgusting and alienating his party, when although they cannot do without him, it is equally true that he cannot do without them? I walked home with William Banks, who went largely into the whole question of Peel’s extraordinary disposition and conduct, and said how disheartening it was, and what a blow to those who looked to him as a leader in these troublous times. Henry Currey (no important person, but whose opinion is that of fifty other like him) told me that his conduct had been atrocious, and that he had himself voted in the minority against his opinion because he thought it right to sacrifice that opinion to the interests of his party. The fact is, if Peel had imparted his sentiments to his party he RESERVE OF MR. PEEL. might have prevented their dividing on this question with the greatest ease. There is nothing they are not ready to do at his bidding, but his coldness and reserve are so impenetrable that nobody can ascertain his sentiments or divine his intentions, and thus he leaves his party in the lurch without vouchsafing to give them any reason or explanation of his conduct. In the meantime the other party (as if each was destined to suffer more from the folly of its friends than the hostility of its foes) has been thrown into great confusion by Lord Milton’s notice to propose an alteration in the franchise, and a meeting was called of all the friends of Government at Althorp, when Milton made a speech just such as any opponent of the Bill might make in the House of Commons, going over the old ground of Fox, Pitt, Burke, and others having sat for rotten boroughs. They were annoyed to the last degree, and the more provoked when reflecting that it was for him Althorp had been led to spend an immense sum of money, and compromise his character besides in the Northamptonshire election. His obstinacy and impracticability are so extreme that nobody can move him, and Sefton told me that nothing could be more unsatisfactory than the termination of the meeting. I guess, however, that they will find some means or other of quieting him.

The Opposition divided last night 187 against 284 on the question of hearing counsel for the condemned boroughs—not so good a division for the minority as they expected, and after a very powerful speech of Attwood’s, to which nobody listened.

There is a fresh access of alarm on account of the cholera, which has broken out at St. Petersburg, and will probably spread over Germany. The cordon of troops which kept it off last year from St. Petersburg appears to have been withdrawn, which is no doubt the cause of its appearance there. We have constant reports of supposed cases of disease and death, but up to this period it does not appear to have shown itself here, though a case was transmitted to us from Glasgow exceedingly like it. The sick man had not come from any infected place. The Board of Health are, however, in great alarm, and the authorities generally think we shall have it. From all I can observe from the facts of the case I am convinced that the liability to contagion is greatly diminished by the influence of sea air, for which reason I doubt that it will be brought here across the water. If it does come it will pass through France first. The King of Prussia has at last insisted upon a rigid execution of the quarantine laws in his dominions. Marshal Paskiewitch was detained on his road to take the command of the army, and sent a courier to the King to request he might be released forthwith, urging the importance of the Emperor to have his report of the state of the army; but the King refused, and sent word that the Emperor himself had submitted to quarantine, and so his aide-de-camp might do the same.

July 14th, 1831

The effects of Peel’s leaving the party to shift for itself were exhibited the night before last. He went away (there was no reason why he should not, except that he should have stayed to manage the debate and keep his people in order), and the consequence was that they went on in a vexatious squabble of repeated adjournments till eight o’clock in the morning, when Government at last beat them. The Opposition gradually dwindled down to twenty-five people, headed by Stormont, Tullamore, and Brudenell, while the Government kept 180 together to the last; between parties so animated and so led there can be no doubt on which side will be the success. The Government were in high spirits at the result, and thought the fatigue well repaid by the display of devotion on the part of their friends and of factious obstinacy on that of their enemies. After these two nights it is impossible not to consider the Tory party as having ceased to exist for all the practical and legitimate ends of political association—that is, as far as the House of Commons is concerned, where after all the battle must be fought. There is still a rabble of Opposition, tossed about by every wind of folly and passion, and left to the vagaries and eccentricities of Wetherell, or Attwood, or Sadler, or the intemperate PREPARATIONS FOR THE CORONATION. zeal of such weak fanatics as the three Lords above mentioned; but for a grave, deliberative, efficient Opposition there seem to be no longer the elements, or they are so scattered and disunited that they never can come together, and the only man who might have collected, and formed, and directed them begs leave to be excused. It is a wretched state of things and can portend no good. If there had not been prognostications of ruin and destruction to the State in all times, proceeding from all parties, which the event has universally falsified, I should believe that the consummation of evil was really at hand; as it is I cannot feel that certainty of destruction that many do, though I think we are more seriously menaced than ever we were before, because the danger is of a very different description. But there is an elasticity in the institutions of this country, which may rise up for the purpose of checking these proceedings, and in the very uncertainty of what may be produced and engendered by such measures there is hope of salvation.

Yesterday a Council was held at St. James’s for the coronation; the Princes, Ministers, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Bishop of London were present. The King read an address to the Lords desiring that his coronation might be short, and that all the ceremonies might be dispensed with except those in the church. Lord Grey had composed a paper in which he had made the King say that these ceremonies were at variance with the genius of the age we live in, and suited to another period of society; but the Archbishop objected to these expressions, and thought it better to give the injunction without the comments; so Lord Grey wrote another and shorter paper, but he showed the first to Lord Lansdowne and me, and we both told him that we thought the Archbishop was right and that the second paper was the best. The Duke of Gloucester was very indignant at not having been summoned in a more respectful way than by a common circular, and complained to the Lord President.[8] I told him to throw it all on me. He had been grumbling to the Duke of Sussex before, who did not care. Leopold was too much of a king to attend, so he came to the levee (but en prince only) and not to the Council. Lieven told me it was true that the Grand Duke Constantine was dead, and that it was a very good thing.

[8] [It is customary to summon the Royal Dukes to a Council by a letter This formality seems to have been overlooked in this instance.]

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CHAPTER XV.

Preparations for the Coronation — Long Wellesley committed by the Chancellor for Contempt — Alderman Thompson and his Constituents — Prince Leopold goes to Belgium — Royal Tombs and Remains — The Lieutenancy of the Tower — The Cholera — The Belgian Fortresses — Secret Negotiations of Canning with the Whigs — Transactions before the Close of the Liverpool Administration — Duke of Wellington and Peel — The Dutch invade Belgium — Defeat of the Belgian Army — The French enter Belgium — Lord Grey’s Composure — Audience at Windsor — Danger of Reform — Ellen Tree — The French in Belgium — Goodwood — The Duke of Richmond — The Reform Bill in Difficulties — Duke of Wellington calls on Lord Grey — The King declines to be kissed by the Bishops — Talleyrand’s Conversation — State of Europe and France — Coronation Squabbles — The King divides the old Great Seal between Brougham and Lyndhurst — Relations of the Duchess of Kent to George IV. and William IV. — The Coronation — Irritation of the King — The Cholera — A Dinner at St. James’s — State of the Reform Bill — Sir Augustus d’Este — Madame Junot — State of France — Poland.

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July 15th, 1831

A Committee of Council sat yesterday at the Office about the coronation; present, the Cabinet, Dukes of Gloucester and Sussex, Archbishop and Bishop of London; much discussion and nothing done. Brougham raised every sort of objection about the services and the dispensing with them, and would have it the King could not dispense with them; finally, the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General were sent for to the House of Lords and desired to reconsider the Proclamation.

July 20th, 1831

I have been laid up with the gout these last few days, unable to move, but without violent pain. The Committee of Council met again on Friday last, when the Proclamation was settled. A Court of Claims is to sit, but to be prohibited from receiving any claims except those relating to the ceremonies in the Abbey. The Lords went to St. James’s and held the Council, at which the King made a little speech, to the effect that he would be crowned to satisfy the tender consciences of those who thought it necessary, but that he thought that it was his duty (as this country, in common with every other, was labouring under distress) to make it as economical as possible. A difficulty arose about the publication of the Proclamation, usually done by heralds with certain ceremonies. The first proclamation is not the one to be acted on; the second does not announce the coronation, but refers to the first. I asked Brougham what was to be done. He said both must be read. Lord Grey suggested neither, which was done.

The other day Long Wellesley carried off his daughter, a ward in Chancery, from her guardians, and secreted her. The matter was brought before the Chancellor, who sent for Wellesley. He came, and refused to give her up; so Brougham committed him to the Fleet Prison. The matter was brought the next day before the House of Commons, and referred to their Committee of Privileges; and in the meantime Brougham has been making a great splutter about his authority and his Court both on the judicial bench and from the Woolsack. The lawyers in the House of Commons were divided as to Wellesley’s right of privilege in such a case.[1]

[1] [Both the Chancellor and Mr. Wellesley wrote to the Speaker, and their letters were read to the House before the Committee of Privileges was appointed. Meanwhile Mr. Wellesley remained at his house in Dover Street in charge of two officers of the Court of Chancery. There is, I believe, no doubt that the committal was good, and that Mr. Wellesley’s privilege as a member of Parliament did not protect him, a contempt of the Court having been committed. A similar point has recently been raised in the Court of Queen’s Bench upon the committal of Mr. Whalley.]

There has been exhibited in the course of the last few days one of the most disgraceful scenes (produced by the Reform Bill) ever witnessed. On the question of the disfranchisement of Appleby a certain Alderman Thompson, member for the City, who stood deeply pledged to Reform, voted for hearing counsel in defence of the borough, on which there was a meeting of his ward, or of certain of his constituents, ALDERMAN THOMPSON AND HIS CONSTITUENTS. to consider his conduct. He was obliged to appear before them, and, after receiving a severe lecture, to confess that he had been guilty of inadvertence, to make many submissive apologies, and promise to vote no more but in obedience to the Minister. It is always an agreeable pastime to indulge one’s virtuous indignation, and wish to have been in the place of such an one for the sake of doing what he ought to have done but did not do, by which, without any of the risk of a very difficult and unpleasant situation, one has all the imaginary triumph of eloquence, independence, and all kinds of virtue; and so in this instance I feel that I should have liked to pour upon these wretches the phials of my wrath and contempt. If the alderman had had one spark of spirit he would have spurned the terrors of this plebeian inquisition, and told them that they had elected him, and that it was his intention, as long as he continued their representative, to vote as he thought proper, always redeeming the pledges he had given at his election; that he would not submit to be questioned for this or any other vote, and if they were not satisfied with his conduct when the Parliament should be over they might choose whom they would in his place. What makes the case the more absurd is, that this question of Appleby is monstrous, and it never ought (by their own principle) to have been put in Schedule A at all. There was a debate and a division on it last night, and a majority for the Ministers of seventy-five in a very full House; the worst division they have yet had. Every small victory in the House of Commons is probably equivalent to a great defeat in the House of Lords, unless they do what is now talked of—make as many Peers as may be necessary to carry the Bill, which I doubt their daring to do or the King consenting to do. The lapse of time and such difficulties and absurdities will probably obstruct the Bill, so as to prevent its passing. God knows what we shall have instead.

Prince Leopold started on Saturday, having put his pension into trustees’ hands (by the advice of Lambton), to keep up Claremont and pay his debts and pensions, and then hand over the residue to the Exchequer, the odds being that none of it ever gets there, and that he is back here before the debts are paid. It seems that, desirous as he had been to go, when the time drew near he got alarmed, and wanted to back out, but they brought him (though with difficulty) to the point. He has proposed to the Princess Louise, King Louis Philippe’s daughter.

Halford has been with me this morning gossiping (which he likes); he gave me an account of his discovery of the head of Charles I. in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, to which he was directed by Wood’s account in the ‘Athenæ Oxonienses.’ He says that they also found the coffin of Henry VIII., but that the air had penetrated and the body had been reduced to a skeleton. By his side was Jane Seymour’s coffin untouched, and he has no doubt her body is perfect. The late King intended to have it opened, and he says he will propose it to this King. By degrees we may visit the remains of the whole line of Tudor and Plantagenet too, and see if those famous old creatures were like their effigies. He says Charles’s head was exactly as Vandyke had painted him.

July 26th, 1831

At Oatlands on Saturday, and came back on Sunday night. Nobody there but my father, mother, Walpole, Sneyd, and Alava; very different from what I once remember it. There has been a great deal of talk about the Duke of Wellington giving Lord Munster the Lieutenancy of the Tower, the truth of which is as follows:—It is in the King’s gift, and he sent to the Duke and desired him to name somebody. The Duke would have liked to name one of three—Fitzroy Somerset, Colin Campbell, or Hardinge. The latter would not have been agreeable to Government, and therefore it would have occasioned the King an embarrassment; the second was provided for, and Lord Hill advised the first to remain as he is (though I don’t see why he could not have had both); so the Duke thought it would gratify the King if he was to name Munster. Munster wrote a very civil letter to the Duke, full of thanks and saying that he begged he would not think of him if he had anybody else to give it to, and that he would take upon himself to explain to the King his THE CHOLERA. not accepting it. The Duke persisted, and so he had it. I must say he might have found some one out of the number of his old officers to give it to rather than Munster.

The King of France’s Speech arrived yesterday, but nothing was said in the House of Lords, because Lord Grey was at Windsor. It will make a stir—the general tone of it, and the demolition of the fortresses which cost us seven millions. Not one of the papers made a remark upon it; nothing will do for them but Reform.

Fresh claims have been raised about cholera morbus. A man at Port Glasgow insists upon it, without much apparent reason, that it prevails there; so we have sent a medical man down, in order to quiet people’s minds and to set the question at rest. Lord Grey, who is credulous, believes the Glasgow man’s story, and spread the news in his own family, who immediately dispersed it over the rest of the town, and yesterday nobody could talk of anything else; not believing it very much, and not understanding it at all, for if they did they would not be so flippant. Lady Holland wrote to Lord Lansdowne to desire he would recommend her the best cholera doctor that he had heard of. I have just received a letter from Moore, saying he has ordered his publisher to send me a copy of ‘Lord Edward Fitzgerald,’ and that he only sends copies to the Duke of Leinster and me, but begs I will send him no opinion, for ‘opinions fidget him’—‘genus irritabile vatum.’

July 27th, 1831

Yesterday Aberdeen asked Lord Grey some questions in a very few words, accompanied as usual with a sneer, which is very unbecoming, and of course gave Lord Grey the advantage of repelling it with scorn. The Duke spoke, and pretty well, but laid some stress more on Portugal than upon Belgium, which is what I cannot understand, but Alava told me that when he came to town yesterday he had said to him that, as an Englishman, he had never felt so deeply affected for the honour of his country as in this transaction. I met him after the debate, and he said he thought he had done some good by what he said. The question of the Belgian fortresses is not without great difficulty, and the strong part of it for Government is that their demolition was agreed to by all the Powers interested (except Holland), and without the presence of the French Plenipotentiary at the meeting when it was decided. I am inclined to think that the manner in which it was blurted out in the King of France’s Speech, as a clap-trap for him, will have made the principal difficulty, though the policy may be very questionable.

July 28th, 1831

On Tuesday night they got through Schedule A, but in a very bungling manner, and the events of the night, its enemies say, damaged the Bill, not, however, that anything can hurt it in the House of Commons, though such things may tell in the House of Lords; but on the question of Saltash, which the Opposition did not consider as a very strong case, so little that they had not intended to divide on it, John Russell and the rest suddenly gave way, and without informing their friends moved that it ought to be in Schedule B. On a division all the Ministers voted with, the Opposition, so the borough was transferred to B. Their friends were furious, and not without reason, that they had not determined where it ought to be placed, and have transferred it themselves instead of leaving them in the dilemma they were in when the division arrived. A court and levee yesterday.

Oatlands, July 31st, 1831

The Arbuthnots and Mr. Loch here. I rode down after the Opera last night; walked for an hour and a half with Arbuthnot under the shade of one of the great trees, talking of various old matters and some new, principally about Canning and his disputes and differences with the Duke of Wellington. He says that the Duke’s principal objection to Canning was the knowledge of his having negotiated with the Whigs previously to Lord Liverpool’s illness, which was communicated to the Duke; he would not say by whom. The person who went between them was Sir Robert Wilson, deputed by Brougham, and those who afterwards joined Canning. Sir Robert spoke to Huskisson, and he to Canning. What they said was this: that finding his view so liberal, they were ready to support and join him, and CANNING’S NEGOTIATION WITH THE WHIGS. in the event of his becoming Minister (on Lord Liverpool’s death or resignation) that they would serve under him. Arbuthnot does not know what answer Canning sent to this, nor whether he did anything on it, but when on Lord Liverpool’s illness Canning went to the King at Windsor, he told him that if the Tories would not consent to his being named Minister ‘he was sure of the Whigs,’ but this he entreated the King not to mention. Immediately after Canning the Duke went to the King, and to him the King directly repeated what Canning had said. The Duke told the King that he was already aware of Canning’s intercourse with the Whigs, and with that knowledge that he could not consent to his being Prime Minister, as he could have no confidence in him. Shortly after this, and before the resignation of the Ministers, but after the difficulties had begun, Knighton came to Arbuthnot, and said he was afraid his Royal Master had done a great deal of mischief by repeating to the Duke what Canning had said, that he was very anxious to bring the Duke and Canning together again, and asked him (Arbuthnot) to go with him to Canning and see what could be done. Arbuthnot declined, but said if Canning wished to see him he would go. Canning sent for him, and they had a long conversation, in which he expressed his desire to go on with the Duke, and it was agreed the Duke should call on him and have a conversation and see what could be arranged. The Duke called on him, and they talked of a variety of matters, but not a word passed about the formation of a new Ministry. Arbuthnot went to the House, and told Canning how much he was surprised and disappointed that nothing had come of this conversation, to which he made no reply, but Arbuthnot found afterwards that between his leaving Canning and the Duke’s going to him Peel had been to him and proposed that the Duke should be Prime Minister. This so offended Canning, believing that it was a measure of the party and done with the Duke’s consent, that he resolved not to utter a word to the Duke on the subject, and so ended the hopes of their agreement.

It does not appear, however, as if anything could have been done, for Canning was bent upon being Prime Minister; and I asked Arbuthnot to what the Duke would have consented, and he said, ‘Not to that,’ that after the transaction with the Whigs he could not have felt sufficient confidence in Canning to agree to his being Prime Minister. (If he distrusted Canning he ought to have refused to act with him at all, not merely objected to his being Prime Minister, but the ground of his objection was shifted.) Originally the King could not bear Canning, and he was only persuaded by the Duke to take him into the Cabinet. Afterwards he was so offended at the influence he acquired there, and particularly with that which he had got over the mind of Lord Liverpool, that he one day sent for Arbuthnot and desired him to tell Lord Liverpool that he could not endure to see Canning make a puppet of him, and he would rather he was Prime Minister at once than have all the power without the name by governing him (Lord Liverpool) as he pleased, and that unless he could shake off this influence he was determined not to let him continue at the head of the Government, and, moreover, he must find some means of getting rid of Canning altogether. This Arbuthnot wrote to Lord Liverpool, who wrote an answer couched in terms of indignation, saying he by no means coveted his situation, that he was sure his colleagues would resent any indignity offered to him, and that the King had better take care what he was about, and not, by producing disunion in the Government, incur the risk of making the end of his reign as disastrous as the beginning of it had been prosperous.

Not very long after Canning got into favour, and in this way:—Harriet Wilson at the time of her connexion with Lord Ponsonby got hold of some of Lady Conyingham’s letters to him, and she wrote to Ponsonby, threatening, unless he gave her a large sum, to come to England and publish everything she could. This produced dismay among all the parties, and they wanted to get Ponsonby away and to silence the woman. In this dilemma Knighton advised the King to have recourse to Canning, who saw CANNING AND THE LIVERPOOL ADMINISTRATION. the opening to favour, jumped at it, and instantly offered to provide for Ponsonby and do anything which could relieve the King from trouble. Ponsonby was sent to Buenos Ayres forthwith, and the letters were bought up. From this time Canning grew in favour, which he took every means to improve, and shortly gained complete ascendancy over the King.

Arbuthnot said that Canning and Castlereagh had always gone on well together after their reconciliation, but that Lord Liverpool’s subjection to him arose more from fear than affection. Liverpool told Arbuthnot that he earnestly desired to resign his office, that his health was broken, and he was only retained by the consideration that his retirement might be the means of breaking up a Government which he had (through the kindness of his colleagues to him) been enabled to hold together; that Canning worked with a twenty-horse power; that his sensitiveness was such that he [Canning] felt every paragraph in a newspaper that reflected on him, and that the most trifling causes produced an irritation on his mind, which was always vented upon him (Lord Liverpool), and that every time the door was opened he dreaded the arrival of a packet from Canning. Arbuthnot had been in great favour with the King, who talked to him and consulted him, but he nearly cut him after the disunion consequent on Canning’s appointment. Knighton came to Arbuthnot and desired him to try and prevail on the Duke to consent to Canning’s being Prime Minister, which he told him was useless, and from that time the King was just civil to the Duke and that was all. The Duke had always suspected that Canning wanted all along to be Prime Minister, and that when he sent him to Russia to congratulate Nicholas it was to get him out of the way, and he was the more convinced because Canning proposed to him to go on to Moscow for the coronation, which he positively refused, having promised his friends to be back in April, which he accordingly was. Canning never had a great opinion of Huskisson, nor really liked him, though he thought him very useful from being conversant with the subjects on which he was himself most ignorant—trade and finance; but he did not contemplate his being in the Cabinet, and had no confidence in his judgment or his discretion; and this tallies with what Lady Canning told me, though certainly he did not do Huskisson justice in any way, which Arbuthnot admitted. Knighton behaved exceedingly well during the King’s illness, and by the vigilant watch he kept over the property of various kinds prevented the pillage which Lady Conyngham would otherwise have made. She knew everything, but did not much trouble herself about affairs, being chiefly intent upon amassing money and collecting jewels.

He talked a great deal of Peel, of the difficulty of going on with him, of his coldness, incommunicativeness; that at the time of the opening the Liverpool Railroad he had invited the Duke, Aberdeen, and some more to meet at Drayton to consider of strengthening themselves; that they had left the place just as they had gone to it, nothing settled and nothing elicited from Peel; that on the late occasion of the wine duties they had gone to Peel and asked him whether they should fight out and divide on it; that he had referred them to Goulburn, who had decided in the affirmative, on which he had agreed to their friends being mustered, but that he took offence at something that was said in debate, and marched off sans mot dire; that somebody was sent after him to represent the bad effect of his departure, and entreat him to return, but he was gone to bed. This is by no means the first time Arbuthnot has spoken to me about Peel in this strain and with such feelings. How are the Duke and he to make a Government again, especially after what Lyndhurst said of the Duke? Necessity may bring them together, but though common interest and common danger may unite them, there the seeds of disunion always must be. I have scribbled down all I can recollect of a very loose conversation, and perhaps something else may occur to me by-and-by.

In the meantime to return to the events of the present day. Althorp raised a terrible storm on Friday by proposing that the House should sit on Saturday. They spent six hours debating the question, which might have been occupied LONG WELLESLEY AND BROUGHAM. in the business; so that, though they did not sit yesterday, they gained nothing and made bad blood. Yesterday morning Murray made a conciliatory speech, which Burdett complimented, and all went on harmoniously. John Russell is ill, nearly done up with fatigue and exertion and the bad atmosphere he breathes for several hours every night.

Long Wellesley has given up his daughter and has been discharged from arrest. I met the Solicitor-General yesterday, who told me this, and said that Brougham had been in the midst of his blustering terribly nervous about it. This was clear, for both he and Wellesley were waiting for the report of the Committee of the House of Commons, though Brougham affected to hold it cheap, and talked very big of what he should do and should have done had it been unfavourable to his authority. The fact is that Long Wellesley was contumacious, but after a short confinement he knocked under and yielded to the Chancellor on all points, and was released from durance.

We had a meeting on the Coronation business yesterday morning, and took into consideration the estimates. That from the Chamberlain’s Office was 70,000ℓ. and upwards, which was referred to a sub-committee to dissect and report upon.

August 5th, 1831

Yesterday morning arrived the news of Casimir Périer’s resignation in consequence of the division in the Chamber of Deputies on the election of President. He had very unnecessarily committed himself by declaring he would resign if Lafitte was elected, and though the other candidate (M. Girod de l’Ain) was chosen, as it was, only by a majority of five, he considered this tantamount to a defeat, and accordingly went out of office.[2] It was supposed, but not quite certain, that Molé would be First Minister, but without much chance of being able to keep that post.

[2] [M. Casimir Périer did not retire from office on this occasion, though he had momentarily resigned it. He remained in power till his death which took place from cholera in the following year.]

At the same time comes intelligence that the King of Holland has marched into Belgium at three points with three corps under the Prince of Orange, Prince Frederick, and the Prince of Nassau. This, however, was premature, for it turns out that the Prince of Orange in a proclamation to his army declares that the armistice was to end last night at half-past nine, and that he marches ‘to secure equitable terms of separation,’ not therefore for the purpose of reconquest. I saw Lord Grey in the morning in a state of great consternation, the more particularly as he told me a Dutch Plenipotentiary had arrived the day before with full powers to treat, and that he had not in his intercourse with him and with Palmerston uttered one word of the King of Holland’s intentions. In the evening I had a long conversation with Matuscewitz. He says that it is impossible to foresee the end of all this, but that the most probable event is a general war. Coming at the moment of a change in the French Ministry, nobody can guess what the French may do, and the Conferences are useless, because any resolution they may make may probably be totally inapplicable to the state of things produced by events hastening on elsewhere. The King of Holland has all along very justly complained of the proceedings of the Allies towards him, which they justify by necessity (‘the tyrant’s plea’) and to which he has been obliged sulkily to submit, though always protesting and never acquiescing, except in an armistice to which he agreed. Meantime the Allies went on negotiating, but without making much progress, and the Dutchman borrowed money and put his army on a respectable footing. It is remarkable that as long as he held out that he sought the reunion he could get no money at all, but no sooner did he renounce the idea of reunion, and propose to make war for objects more immediately national to the Dutch, than he got a loan filled (in two days) to the amount of about a million sterling. When the proposition was made to Leopold, though no arrangement was actually agreed upon, there was a general understanding that the King of Holland would consent to the separation of the two States, and that the Belgians should resign their claims to Limbourg and Luxembourg, and after Lord Ponsonby’s letter which made so much noise, Falck’s HOLLAND AND BELGIUM. protestation, and Ponsonby’s recall this seemed to be clearly established. When Leopold received the offer of the Crown, he only consented to take it upon an understanding that the Belgians would agree to the terms prescribed by the Allies; but before the whole thing was settled he took fright and began to repent, and it was with some difficulty he was at last persuaded to go by the Belgian deputies with assurances that these terms would be complied with. Go, however, he did, and that unaccompanied by any person of weight or consequence from this country. Matuscewitz told me that he went on his knees to Palmerston to send somebody with him who would prevent his getting into scrapes, and that Talleyrand and Falck, by far the best heads among them, had both predicted that Leopold would speedily commit some folly the consequences of which might be irreparable.[3] Our Government, however, paid no attention to these remonstrances, and he was suffered to go alone. Accordingly he had no sooner arrived than, intoxicated with the applause he received, he forgot all that had occurred here and all the resolutions of the Allies, and flourished off speeches in direct contradiction to them, and announced his determination to comprehend the disputed provinces in his new kingdom. It is no wonder that this excited the indignation of the King of Holland, but it is unfortunate that he could not be patient a little longer. Notwithstanding his march, however, his Plenipotentiary here has full power to treat of all the disputed points, and is authorised to put a stop to hostilities at any moment when he can see the prospect of satisfaction; it is, however, believed here (though at present not on any sufficient grounds) that Prussia secretly supports the King of Holland. The danger is that France may without any further communication with her Allies consider the aggression of the Dutch as a justification of a corresponding movement on her part, and should this happen the Prussians would no longer deem themselves bound by the common obligations which united all the conferring and mediating Powers, and a general war would infallibly ensue. Nor is it unlikely that the French Ministry, beset as they are with difficulties, and holding their offices de die in diem, may think a war the best expedient for occupying the nation and bringing all the restless spirits and unquiet humours into one focus. I have long been of opinion that such mighty armaments and such a nervous state of things cannot end without a good deal of blood-letting. [The Prussians did not support the Dutch, the French did march, and war did not ensue.—August 28th.]

[3] [This account of Leopold’s arrival in Belgium is hardly fair, and forms an amusing contrast to Baron Stockmar’s narrative of the same occurrence in his ‘Memoirs,’ p. 180. Unquestionably Leopold showed far more foresight, judgment, and resolution than Mr. Greville gave him credit for. He was not accompanied by ‘any person of weight or consequence’ from this country, because that would have given him the air of a puppet and a British nominee. But Stockmar was with him. The King entered Brussels on the 21st of July, and was well received. On the 4th of August the Dutch broke the truce and invaded Belgium. It was impossible to provide against so sudden a movement, and the Army of the Scheldt was beaten at Louvain on the 12th of August. The King then claimed the intervention of France and England in defence of the neutrality and independence of Belgium, which had been guaranteed to him by the treaty of the eighteen articles under which he had accepted the Crown. But the passage in the text is curious, because it shows how little confidence was felt at that time in a prince who turned out to be one of the ablest rulers and politicians of his time.]

At night.—Lord Grey was attacked by Aberdeen to-night on his foreign policy, and particularly about Portugal, and he is said to have made a splendid speech. Sir Henry Seton arrived from Liverpool to announce what is going on, and he is bent on fighting at present. Abercromby, who is come likewise, reports that he has 50,000 or 60,000 men.

August 9th, 1831

On Saturday morning we were saluted with intelligence that on the French King’s hearing of the Dutch invasion he ordered Marshal Gérard, with 50,000 men, to march into Belgium; and great was the alarm here: the funds fell and everybody was prepared for immediate war. In the afternoon I called upon Lord Grey at East Sheen (in my way to Monk’s Grove, where I was going) to say something to him about the coronation, and found him with a more cheerful countenance than I expected. He did not appear alarmed at what the French had done, THE QUEEN’S CROWN. and very well satisfied with the manner of their doing it, marching only in virtue of their guarantee and proclaiming their own neutrality and the Belgian independence, and the King had previously received the Belgian Minister. I told him I thought Leopold’s folly had been the cause of it, and that his speeches about Luxembourg had given the Dutch King a pretext. He said, not at all, and that the King of Holland would have done this under any circumstances, which I took leave to doubt, though I did not think it necessary to say so.[4]

[4] [Lord Grey’s composure was mainly due to the entire confidence he felt in the honour of the Duc de Broglie, then French Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had given positive assurances to the British Cabinet that the intervention of France would be confined to the immediate object in view. This confidence was equally honourable to both statesmen, and these assurances were faithfully fulfilled.]

On Sunday, overtaken by the most dreadful storm I ever saw—flashes of lightning, crashes of thunder, and the rain descending like a waterspout—I rode to Windsor, to settle with the Queen what sort of crown she would have to be crowned in. I was ushered into the King’s presence, who was sitting at a red table in the sitting-room of George IV., looking over the flower garden. A picture of Adolphus Fitzclarence was behind him (a full-length), and one of the parson, Rev. Augustus Fitzclarence, in a Greek dress, opposite. He sent for the Queen, who came with the Landgravine and one of the King’s daughters, Lady Augusta Erskine, the widow of Lord Cassilis’s son. She looked at the drawings, meant apparently to be civil to me in her ungracious way, and said she would have none of our crowns, that she did not like to wear a hired crown, and asked me if I thought it was right that she should. I said, ‘Madam, I can only say that the late King wore one at his coronation.’ However she said, ‘I do not like it, and I have got jewels enough, so I will have them made up myself.’ The King said to me, ‘Very well; then you will have to pay for the setting.’ ‘Oh, no,’ she said; ‘I shall pay for it all myself.’ The King looked well, but seemed infirm. I talked to Taylor afterwards, who said he had very little doubt this storm in Belgium would blow over, and agreed that Leopold’s folly had been in great measure the cause of it. There have been discussions in both Houses, which have in some measure quieted people’s apprehensions. To-day that ass Lord Londonderry (who has never yet had his windows mended from the time they were broken by the mob at the Reform illumination) brings on a motion about Belgium.

August 11th, 1831

Nothing new these last two days. Londonderry’s motion produced an angry debate, but no division. Brougham is said to have been very good. The Government wanted to divide, but the Opposition know that it is not their interest to provoke a trial of strength. The Ministers, if beaten, would not go out, and they are anxious to see what their opponents’ strength is. At Court yesterday, when Van de Weyer, the new Belgian Minister, made his appearance. I said to Esterhazy, ‘You will blow this business over, sha’n’t you?’ He said, ‘Yes, I think we shall this time.’

Nothing remarkable in the House of Commons but Lord John Russell’s declaration that ‘this Bill would not be final if it was not found to work as well as the people desired,’ which is sufficiently impudent considering that hitherto they have always pretended that it was to be final, and that it was made so comprehensive only that it might be so; this has been one of their grand arguments, and now we are never to sit down and rest, but go on changing till we get a good fit, and that for a country which will have been made so fidgety that it won’t stand still to be measured. Hardinge, whom I found at dinner at the Athenæum yesterday, told me he was convinced that a revolution in this country was inevitable; and such is the opinion of others who support this Bill, not because they think concession will avert it, but will let it come more gradually and with less violence. I have always been convinced that the country was in no danger of revolutiorobberies n, and still believe that if one does come it will be from the passing of this Bill, which will introduce the principle of change and whet the appetites of those who never will be satisfied with any existing order of things; or if it follows on the rejection of this Bill, which ELLEN TREE. I doubt, it will be owing to the concentration of all the forces that are opposed to our present institutions, and the divisions, jealousies, rivalships, and consequent weakness of all those who ought to defend them. God only knows how it will all end. There has been but one man for many years past able to arrest this torrent, and that was Canning; and him the Tories—idiots that they were, and never discovering that he was their best friend—hunted to death with their besotted and ignorant hostility.

I went to the play last night at a very shabby little house called the City Theatre—a long way beyond the Post Office—to see Ellen Tree act in a translation of ‘Une Faute,’ one of the best pieces of acting I ever saw. This girl will turn out very good if she remains on the stage. She has never been brought forward at Covent Garden, and I heard last night the reason why. Charles Kemble took a great fancy for her (she is excessively pretty), and made her splendid offers of putting her into the best parts, and advancing her in all ways, if she would be propitious to his flame, but which she indignantly refused; so he revenged himself (to his own detriment) by keeping her back and promoting inferior actresses instead. If ever she acquires fame, which is very probable, for she has as much nature, and feeling, and passion as I ever saw, this will be a curious anecdote. [She married Charles Kean, lost her good looks, and became a tiresome, second-rate actress.]

August 12th, 1831

Yesterday a Committee of Council met to settle the order of the coronation and submit the estimates, which we have brought under 30,000ℓ. instead of 240,000ℓ., which they were last time.

The question now is whether our Ministry shall go along with France, or whether France shall be pulled up; and it is brought to this point by Leopold’s having sent to the French to thank them for their aid, but to say that he can do without them, and to beg they will retire, which they have refused to do. It was known yesterday that they are at Mons, and strongly suspected they will not so easily be got out of it; but the French Government will not venture to quarrel with us if we take a peremptory tone. It is not, however, clear that the French Government can control the French army; and I have heard it said that if they had not ordered the troops to march, the troops would have marched without orders. L. is all for curbing France; so a very short time must bring matters to a crisis, and it will be seen if the Government has authority to check the war party there. In the meantime the French have taken the Portuguese ships without any intention of giving them back; and this our Ministers know, and do not remonstrate. J. asked L. if it was true, and he said, ‘Oh, yes,’ for that having been compelled to force the Tagus, they were placed in a state of war, and the ships became lawful prizes. If it was not for Reform I doubt that this Government could stand a moment, but that will bring them up. In the country it is too clear that there are no symptoms of a reaction, and if a state of indifference can be produced it is all that can be hoped and more than should be expected. I do not think the Government by any means responsible for the embroiled state of Europe, but they certainly appear to have no fixed plan or enlightened view of foreign policy, and if they have not been to blame hitherto (which in acting with all the Allies, and endeavouring to keep things quiet, they have not been), they are evidently in great danger of floundering now.

Goodwood, August 20th, 1831

Here I have been a week to-day for the races, and here I should not be now—for everybody else is gone—if it were not for the gout, which has laid me fast by the foot, owing to a blow. While on these racing expeditions I never know anything of politics, and, though I just read the newspapers, have no anecdotes to record of Reform or foreign affairs. I never come here without fresh admiration of the beauty and delightfulness of the place, combining everything that is enjoyable in life—large and comfortable house, spacious and beautiful park, extensive views, dry soil, sea air, woods, and rides over downs, and all the facilities of occupation and amusement. The Duke, who has so strangely become a Cabinet Minister in a Whig Government, and who is a very good sort of man and my REFORM BILL IN DIFFICULTIES. excellent friend, appears here to advantage, exercising a magnificent hospitality, and as a sportsman, a farmer, a magistrate, and good, simple, unaffected country gentleman, with great personal influence. This is what he is fit for, to be,

With safer pride content,
The wisest justice on the banks of Trent,

and not to assist in settling Europe and making new constitutions.

I find on arriving in town that there is nothing new, but the Bill, which drags its slow length along, is in a bad way; not that it will not pass the Commons, but now everybody attacks it, and the press is all against what remains of it. Lord Chandos’s motion and the defeat of Government by so large a majority have given them a great blow. Still they go doggedly on, and are determined to cram it down anyhow, quite indifferent how it is to work and quite ignorant. As to foreign affairs, the Ministers trust to blunder through them, hoping, like Sir Abel Handy in the play, that the fire ‘will go out of itself.’ Sefton has just been here, who talks blusteringly of the Peers that are to be made, no matter at what cost of character to the House of Lords, anything rather than be beaten; but I am not sure that he knows anything. In such matters as these he is (however sharp) no better than a fool—no knowledge, no information, no reflection or combination; prejudices, partialities, and sneers are what his political wisdom consists of; but he is Lord Grey’s âme damnée.

Stoke, August 28th, 1831

My gout is still hanging on me. Very strange disorder, affecting different people so differently; with me very little pain, much swelling, heat, and inconvenience, more like bruised muscles and tendons and inflamed joints; it disables me, but never prevents my sleeping at night. Henry de Ros called on me yesterday; nothing new, and he knows everything from L., who sits there picking up politics and gossip, to make money by the one and derive amusement from the other. L. is odd enough, and very malin with what he knows. He is against Reform, but not against the Government; for the Duke of Wellington and not for the Opposition—in short, just as interest, fancy, caprice, and particular partialities sway him. It was he who told me the fact of the French having carried away the Portuguese ships, and he said that I might tell the Duke that he might make what use he pleased of it; but soon after, wishing if it did come out that it should fall harmless, he bethought him of the following expedient:—Seeing that Valletort (who is a good-natured blockhead) is always spluttering in the House of Commons, he thought in his hands it would do no harm, so he told him the fact with some flattering observations about his activity and energy in the House, which Valley swallowed and with many thanks proceeded to put questions to Palmerston, which sure enough were so confused and unintelligible that nobody understood him, and the matter fell very flat. I don’t see that Government is saved by this ruse, if the case against them is a good one; but it is curious as indicative of the artifice of the person, and of his odd sort of political disposition. As I don’t write history I omit to note such facts as are recorded in the newspapers, and merely mention the odd things I pick up, which are not generally known, and which may hereafter throw some light on those which are.

The Belgian business is subsiding into quiet again. The Dutch have gained some credit, and the Prince of Orange has (what was of importance to him) removed the load of odium under which he had been labouring in Holland, and acquired great popularity. Leopold has cut a ridiculous figure enough; not exhibiting any want of personal courage, but after all the flourishes at the time of his accession finding himself at the head of a nation of blustering cowards who would do nothing but run away. The arrival of the French army soon put an end to hostilities, and now the greater part of it has been recalled; but Leopold has desired that 10,000 men may be left for his protection, whether against the Dutch or against the Belgians does not appear. This excites considerable jealousies here, for as yet it is not known why he asked for such aid, nor on what terms it is to be granted.

L. told me an odd thing connected with these troops. TALLEYRAND’S CONVERSATION. Easthope received a commission from a secretary of Soult to sell largely in our funds, coupled with an assurance that the troops would not retire. I don’t know the fate of the commission.

There are various reports of dissensions in the Cabinet, which are not true. The Duke of Wellington was sent for by Lord Grey the other day, to give his opinion about the demolition of the Belgian fortresses; so the ex-Prime Minister went to visit his successor in the apartment which was so lately his own. No man would mind such a thing less than the Duke; he is sensitive, but has no nonsense about him. He is very well and, however disgusted with the state of everything at home and abroad (which after all is greatly imputable to himself), in high spirits.

The King did a droll thing the other day. The ceremonial of the coronation was taken down to him for approval. The homage is first done by the spiritual Peers, with the Archbishop at their head. The first of each class (the Archbishop for the spiritual) says the words, and then they all kiss his cheek in succession. He said he would not be kissed by the bishops, and ordered that part to be struck out. As I expected, the prelates would not stand it; the Archbishop remonstrated, the King knocked under, and so he must undergo the salute of the spiritual as well as of the temporal Lords.

August 30th, 1831

Left Stoke yesterday morning; a large party—Talleyrand, De Ros, Fitzroy Somersets, Motteux, John Russell, Alava, Byng. In the evening Talleyrand discoursed, but I did not hear much of him. I was gouty and could not stand, and all the places near him were taken. I have never heard him narrate comfortably, and he is difficult to understand. He talked of Franklin. I asked him if he was remarkable in conversation; he said he was from his great simplicity and the evident strength of his mind. He spoke of the coronation of the Emperor Alexander. Somebody wrote him a letter at the time from Moscow with this expression: ‘L’Empereur marchait, précédé des assassins de son grand-père, entouré de ceux de son père, et suivi par les siens.’ He said of the Count de Saint-Germain (whom he never saw) that there is an account of him in Craufurd’s book; nobody knew whence he came nor whither he went; he appeared at Paris suddenly, and disappeared in the same way, lived in an hôtel garni, had always plenty of money, and paid for everything regularly; he talked of events and persons connected with history, both ancient and modern, with entire familiarity and a correctness which never was at fault, and always of the people as if he had lived with them and known them; as Talleyrand exemplified it, he would say, ‘Un jour que je dînais chez César.’[5] He was supposed to be the Wandering Jew, a story which has always appeared to me a very sublime fiction, telling of

That settled ceaseless gloom
The fabled Hebrew wanderer bore,
Which will not look beyond the tomb,
Which cannot hope for rest before.

Then he related Mallet’s conspiracy and the strange way in which he heard it. Early in the morning his tailor came to his house and insisted on seeing him. He was in bed, but on his valet de chambre’s telling him how pressing the tailor was he ordered him to be let in. The man said, ‘Have you not heard the news? There is a revolution in Paris.’ It had come to the tailor’s knowledge by Mallet’s going to him the very first thing to order a new uniform! Talleyrand said the conspirators ought to have put to death Cambacérès and the King of STATE OF EUROPE AND FRANCE. Rome. I asked him if they had done so whether he thought it possible the thing might have succeeded. He said, ‘C’est possible.’ To my question whether the Emperor would not have blown away the whole conspiracy in a moment he replied, ‘Ce n’est pas sûr, c’est possible que cela aurait réussi.’

[5] [This mysterious adventurer died in the arms of Prince Charles of Hesse, in 1784; and some account of him is to be found in the ‘Memoirs’ of that personage, quoted in the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ vol. cxxiii. p. 521. The Count de Saint-Germain was a man of science, especially versed in chemistry botany, and metallurgy. He is supposed to have derived his money from an invention in the art of dyeing. According to his own account of himself he was a son of Prince Ragozky of Transylvania and his first wife, a Tekely, and he was Protestant and educated by the last of the Medicis. He was supposed to be ninety-two or ninety-three when he died. His knowledge of the arcana of science and his mysterious manner of life had given him something of the reputation of a wizard and a conjuror, but he was an honourable and benevolent man, not to be confounded with such charlatans as Mesmer and Cagliostro.]

He afterwards talked of Madame de Staël and Monti. They met at Madame de Marescalchi’s villa near Bologna, and were profuse of compliments and admiration for each other. Each brought a copy of their respective works beautifully bound to present to the other. After a day passed in an interchange of literary flatteries, and the most ardent expressions of delight, they separated, but each forgot to carry away the present of the other, and the books remain in Madame de Marescalchi’s library to this day.

August 31st, 1831

Dined at Osterley yesterday; Lady Sandwich, Esterhazy and the Bathursts, Brooke Greville and George Villiers. Esterhazy told me he had no doubt that there would be a war, that General Baudron was arrived from Brussels, and Leopold had sent word by him that the French troops were absolutely necessary to his safety, to protect him from the turbulence of his own subjects. He considered that the Polish business was over, at which he greatly rejoiced. He said that nobody was prepared for war, and the great object was to gain time, but a few weeks must now bring matters to a crisis; the only difficulty appears to be what to go to war about, and who the belligerents should be, for at the eleventh hour, and with the probability of a general war, it is a toss-up whether we and the French are to be the closest allies or the deadliest enemies. He told me that Casimir Périer would probably be unable to keep his ground, that the modified law about the House of Peers did not give satisfaction. If he is beaten on this he goes out, and if he does, with him will probably vanish all hopes of peace. It is pretty evident that France is rapidly advancing to a republic. Her institutions have long been republican, and, though very compatible with a despotic empire, incompatible with a constitutional and limited monarchy. This Buonaparte knew.

Another Coronation Committee yesterday, and, I am happy to say, the last, for this business is the greatest of all bores. There is a furious squabble between the Grand Chamberlain and the Earl Marshal (who is absent and has squabbled by deputy) about the box of the former in Westminster Abbey. At the last coronation King George IV. gave Lord Gwydir his box in addition to his own, and now Lord Cholmondeley claims a similar box.[6] This is resisted. The present King disposes of his own box (and will probably fill it with every sort of canaille); the Lords won’t interfere, and the Grand Chamberlain protests, and says he has been shamefully used, and there the matter stands. The Grand Chamberlain is in the wrong.

[6] [Lord Gwydir and Lord Cholmondeley filled the office of Lord High Chamberlain for alternative lives as the representatives of the joint claimants of the office.]

September 3rd, 1831

On Wednesday a Council was held. Very few of the Ministers stay for the Councils; small blame to them, as the Irish say, for we are kept about three times as long by this regular, punctual King as by the capricious, irregular Monarch who last ruled over us. This King is a queer fellow. Our Council was principally for a new Great Seal and to deface the old Seal. The Chancellor claims the old one as his perquisite. I had forgotten the hammer, so the King said, ‘My Lord, the best thing I can do is to give you the Seal, and tell you to take it and do what you please with it.’ The Chancellor said, ‘Sir, I believe there is some doubt whether Lord Lyndhurst ought not to have half of it, as he was Chancellor at the time of your Majesty’s accession.’ ‘Well,’ said the King, ‘then I will judge between you like Solomon; here (turning the Seal round and round), now do you cry heads or tails?’ We all laughed, and the Chancellor said, ‘Sir, I take the bottom part.’ The King opened the two compartments of the Seal and said, ‘Now, then, I employ you as ministers of taste. You will send for Bridge, my silversmith, and desire him to convert the two halves each into a salver, with my arms on one side and yours on the other, and Lord Lyndhurst’s the same, and you will take one and give him the other, and both keep them as presents from me.’ The Duchess of Kent ANECDOTES OF GEORGE IV. will not attend the coronation, and there is a report that the King is unwilling to make all the Peers that are required; this is the current talk of the day.

September 5th, 1831

At Gorhambury since Saturday; the Harrowbys, Bathursts, Frankland Lewes’s, Lady Jersey, Mahon, Lushington, Wortleys; rather agreeable and lively; all anti-Reformers, so no quarrelling about that, though Lord Harrowby is ready to squabble with anybody either way, but furiously against the Bill.

September 8th, 1831

Dined with the Duke of Wellington yesterday; thirty-one people, very handsome, and the Styrian Minstrels playing and singing all dinner time, a thing I never saw before. I sat next to Esterhazy and talked to him (a very little) about Belgian affairs. He said Talleyrand had given positive assurances that the French troops should be withdrawn whenever the Dutch retired, that the other Powers were aware of Périer’s difficulties, and were ready to concede much to keep him in power, but that if he had not sufficient influence to repress the violent war faction there was no use in endeavouring to support him. Our Government had behaved very well and had been very strong in their remonstrances.

After dinner I had much talk with the Duke, who told me a good deal about the late King and the Duchess of Kent; talked of his extravagance and love of spending, provided that it was not his own money that he spent; he told an old story he had heard of Mrs. Fitzherbert’s being obliged to borrow money for his post-horses to take him to Newmarket, that not a guinea was forthcoming to make stakes for some match, and when on George Leigh’s[7] entreaty he allowed some box to be searched that 3,000ℓ. was found in it. He always had money. When he died they found 10,000ℓ. in his boxes, and money scattered about everywhere, a great deal of gold. There were about 500 pocket-books, of different dates, and in every one money—guineas, one pound notes, one, two, or three in each. There never was anything like the quantity of trinkets and trash that they found. He had never given away or parted with anything. There was a prodigious quantity of hair—women’s hair—of all colours and lengths, some locks with the powder and pomatum still sticking to them, heaps of women’s gloves, gages d’amour which he had got at balls, and with the perspiration still marked on the fingers, notes and letters in abundance, but not much that was of any political consequence, and the whole was destroyed. Of his will he said that it was made in 1823 by Lord Eldon, very well drawn, that he desired his executors might take all he had to pay his debts and such legacies as he might bequeath in any codicils he should make. He made no codicils and left no debts, so the King got all as heir-at-law. Knighton had managed his affairs very well, and got him out of debt. A good deal of money was disbursed in charity, a good deal through the medium of two or three old women. The Duke, talking of his love of ordering and expense, said that when he was to ride at the last coronation the King said, ‘You must have a very fine saddle.’ ‘What sort of saddle does your Majesty wish me to have?’ ‘Send Cuffe to me.’ Accordingly Cuffe went to him, and the Duke had to pay some hundreds for his saddle. (While I am writing the King and Queen with their cortége are passing down to Westminster Abbey to the coronation, a grand procession, a fine day, an immense crowd, and great acclamations.)

[7] [Colonel George Leigh, who managed his race-horses; he was married to Lord Byron’s half-sister.]

We then talked of the Duchess of Kent, and I asked him why she set herself in such opposition to the Court. He said that Sir John Conroy was her adviser, that he was sure of it. What he then told me throws some light upon her ill-humour and displays her wrong-headedness. In the first place the late King disliked her; the Duke of Cumberland too was her enemy, and George IV., who was as great a despot as ever lived, was always talking of taking her child from her, which he inevitably would have done but for the Duke, who, wishing to prevent quarrels, did all in his power to deter the King, not by opposing him when he talked of it, which he often did, but by putting the thing off as well THE DUCHESS OF KENT. as he could. However, when the Duchess of Cumberland came over, and there was a question how the Royal Family would receive her, he thought he might reconcile the Cumberlands to the Duchess of Kent by engaging her to be civil to the Duchess of Cumberland, so he desired Leopold to advise his sister (who was in the country) from him very strongly to write to the Duchess of Cumberland and express her regret at being absent on her arrival, and so prevented from calling on her. The Duchess sent Leopold back to the Duke to ask why he gave her this advice? The Duke replied that he should not say why, that he knew more of what was going on than she possibly could, that he gave her this advice for her own benefit, and again repeated that she had better act on it. The Duchess said she was ready to give him credit for the goodness of his counsel, though he would not say what his reasons were, and she did as he suggested. This succeeded, and the Duke of Cumberland ceased to blow the coals. Matters went on quietly till the King died. As soon as he was dead the Duchess of Kent wrote to the Duke, and desired that she might be treated as a Dowager Princess of Wales, with a suitable income for herself and her daughter, who she also desired might be treated as Heiress Apparent, and that she should have the sole control over the allowance to be made for both. The Duke replied that her proposition was altogether inadmissible, and that he could not possibly think of proposing anything for her till the matters regarding the King’s Civil List were settled, but that she might rely upon it that no measure which affected her in any way should be considered without being imparted to her and the fullest information given her. At this it appears she took great offence, for she did not speak to him for a long time after.

When the Regency Bill was framed the Duke desired the King’s leave to wait upon the Duchess of Kent and show it to her, to which his Majesty assented, and accordingly he wrote to her to say he would call upon her the next day with the draft of the Bill. She was at Claremont, and sent word that she was out of town, but desired he would send it to her in the country. He said she ought to have sent Sir John Conroy to him, or have desired him to go to her at Claremont, which he would have done, but he wrote her word that he could not explain by letter so fully what he had to say as he could have done in a personal interview, but he would do so as well as he could. In the meantime, Lord Lyndhurst brought on the measure in the House of Lords, and she sent Conroy up to hear him. He returned to Claremont just after the Duchess had received the Duke’s letter. Since that he has dined with her.

[I must say the King is punctual; the cannon are now firing to announce his arrival at the Abbey, and my clock is at the same moment striking eleven; at eleven it was announced that he would be there.]

His Majesty, I hear, was in great ill-humour at the levee yesterday; contrary to his usual custom he sent for nobody, and gave no audiences, but at ten minutes after one flounced into the levee room; not one Minister was come but the Duke of Richmond. Talleyrand and Esterhazy alone of the Corps Diplomatique were in the next room. He attacked the officer of the Guards for not having his cap on his head, and sent for the officer on guard, who was not arrived, at which he expressed great ire. It is supposed that the peerages have put him out of temper. His Majesty did a very strange thing about them. Though their patents are not made out, and the new Peers are no more Peers than I am, he desired them to appear as such in Westminster Abbey and do homage. Colonel Berkeley asked me what he should do, and said what the King had desired of him. I told him he should do no such thing, and he said he would go to the Chancellor and ask him. I don’t know how it ended. Howe told me yesterday morning in Westminster Abbey that Lord Cleveland is to be a duke, though it is not yet acknowledged if it be so. There has been a battle about that; they say that he got his boroughs to be made a marquis, and got rid of them to be made a duke.[8]

[8] [The Earl of Darlington had been made Marquis of Cleveland in 1827, and was raised to the dukedom in January 1833.]

September 17th, 1831

A DINNER AT ST. JAMES’S. The coronation went off well, and whereas nobody was satisfied before it everybody was after it. No events of consequence. The cholera has got to Berlin, and Warsaw is taken by the Russians, who appear to have behaved with moderation. Since the deposition of Skrznecki, and the reign of clubs and mobs and the perpetration of massacres at Warsaw, the public sympathy for the Poles has a good deal fallen off. The cholera, which is travelling south, is less violent than it was in the north. It is remarkable that the common people at Berlin are impressed with the same strange belief that possessed those of St. Petersburg that they have been poisoned, and Chad writes to-day that they believe there is no such disease, and that the deaths ascribed to that malady are produced by poison administered by the doctors, who are bribed for that purpose; that the rich finding the poor becoming too numerous to be conveniently governed have adopted this mode of thinning the population, which was employed with success by the English in India; that the foreign doctors are the delegates of a central committee, which is formed in London and directs the proceedings, and similar nonsense.

The talk of the town has been about the King and a toast he gave at a great dinner at St. James’s the other day. He had ninety guests—all his Ministers, all the great people, and all the foreign Ambassadors. After dinner he made a long, rambling speech in French, and ended by giving as ‘a sentiment,’ as he called it, ‘The land we live in.’ This was before the ladies left the room. After they were gone he made another speech in French, in the course of which he travelled over every variety of topic that suggested itself to his excursive mind, and ended with a very coarse toast and the words ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense.’ Sefton, who told it me said he never felt so ashamed; Lord Grey was ready to sink into the earth; everybody laughed of course, and Sefton, who sat next to Talleyrand, said to him, ‘Eh bien, que pensez-vous de cela?’ With his unmoved, immovable face he answered only, ‘C’est bien remarquable.’

In the meantime Reform, which has subsided into a calm for some time past, is approaching its termination in the House of Commons, and as it gets near the period of a fresh campaign, and a more arduous though a shorter one, agitation is a little reviving. The ‘Times’ and other violent newspapers are moving heaven and earth to stir up the country and intimidate the Peers, many of whom are frightened enough already. The general opinion at present is that the Peers created at the coronation will not be enough to carry the Bill (they are a set of horrid rubbish most of them), but that no more will be made at present; that the Opposition, if united, will be strong enough to throw out the Bill, but that they are so divided in opinion whether to oppose the Bill on the second reading or in Committee that this dissension will very likely enable it to pass. Up to this time there has been no meeting, and nothing has been agreed upon, but there would have been one convened by the Duke of Wellington but for Lady Mornington’s death, and this week they will arrange their plan of operations. From what Sefton says (who knows and thinks only as Brougham and Grey direct him) I conclude that the Government are resolved the Bill shall pass, that if it is thrown out they will do what the Tories recommended, and make as many Peers as may be sufficient, for he said the other day he would rather it was thrown out on the second reading than pass by a small majority. With this resolution (which after having gone so far is not unwise) and the feeling out of doors, pass it must, and so sure are Government of it that they have begun to divide the counties, and have set up an office with clerks, maps, &c., in the Council Office, and there the Committee sit every day.

Stoke, September 18th, 1831

I came here yesterday with the Chancellor, Creevey, Luttrell, my father and mother, Esterhazy, Neumann. Brougham was tired, never spoke, and went to bed early. This morning I got a letter from the Lord President enclosing an order from the King for a copy of the proceedings in Council on the marriage of the Duke of Sussex and Lady Augusta Murray. The Chancellor told me that the young man Sir Augustus d’Este had behaved very ill, having filed a bill in Chancery, into which he had put all STATE OF FRANCE. his father’s love letters, written thirty years ago, to perpetuate evidence; that it was all done without the Duke of Sussex’s consent, but that D’Este had got Lushington’s opinion that the marriage was valid on the ground that the Marriage Act only applied to marriages contracted here, whereas this was contracted at Rome. He said Lushington was a great authority, but that he had no doubt he was wrong. The King is exceedingly annoyed at it.

September 19th, 1831

Came to town. Talleyrand, Madame de Dino, and Alava came to Stoke yesterday. Talleyrand had a circle, but the Chancellor talked too much, and they rather spoilt one another. He said one neat thing. They were talking of Madame d’Abrantès’s ‘Memoirs,’ and of her mother, Madame Pernon. My father said, ‘M. de Marbœuf était un peu l’amant de Madame Pernon, n’est-ce pas?’ He said, ‘Oui, mais je ne sais pas dans quelles proportions.’

September 20th, 1831

News arrived of great riots at Paris, on account of the Polish business and the fall of Warsaw. Madame de Dino (who, by-the-bye, Talleyrand says is the cleverest man or woman he ever knew) said last night that she despaired of the state of things in France, that this was no mere popular tumult, but part of an organised system of disaffection, and that the Carlists had joined the ultra-Republicans, that the National Guard was not to be depended upon, that ‘leur esprit était fatigué.’ Talleyrand himself was very low, and has got no intelligence from his Government. This morning I met Lord Grey, and walked with him. I told him what Madame de Dino had said. He said he knew it all, and how bad things were, and that they would be much worse if the Reform Bill was thrown out here. I asked him how they would be affected by that. He said that a change of Ministry here would have a very bad effect there, from which it may be inferred that if beaten they mean to resign. He said the French Ministry had been very imprudent about Poland. I said, ‘How? for what could they have done? They could only get at Poland through Prussia.’ He said they might have sent a fleet to the Baltic with our concurrence, though we could not urge them to do so. I asked him what he thought would be the result of the dissolution of Périer’s Government; I said that there appeared to me two alternatives, a general bouleversement or the war faction in power under the existing system. He replied he did not think there would now be a bouleversement, but a Ministry of Lafayette, Lamarque, and all that party who were impatient to plunge France into war. I said I did not think France could look to a successful war, for the old alliance would be re-formed against her. He rejoined that Russia was powerless, crippled by this contest, and under the necessity of maintaining a great army in Poland; Austria and Prussia were both combustible, half the provinces of the former nearly in a state of insurrection; that the latter had enough to do to preserve quiet, and the French would rouse all the disaffected spirit which existed in both. I said ‘then we were on the eve of that state of things which was predicted by Canning in his famous speech.’ Here we met Ellis, and I left them.

I afterwards saw George Villiers, who told me that he knew from a member of the Cabinet that there had been a division in it on the question of going out if the Reform Bill should be rejected, and that it had been carried by a majority that they should. He told me also a curious thing about Stanley’s Arms Bill: that it had never been imparted to Lord Anglesey, nor to the Cabinet here, and that Lord Grey had been obliged to write an apology to Lord Anglesey, and to tell him he (Lord Grey) had himself seen the Bill for the first time in the newspapers. This he had from Lord C., who is a great friend of Lord Anglesey’s, and who had seen Lord Grey’s letter before he left Ireland; but the story appears to me quite incredible, and is probably untrue.

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CHAPTER XVI.

Whig and Tory Meetings on Reform — Resolution to carry the Bill — Holland — Radical Jones — Reform Bill thrown out by the Lords — Dorsetshire Election — Division among the Tories — Bishop Phillpotts — Prospects of Reform — Its Dangers — Riots at Bristol — The Cholera at Sunderland — An Attempt at a Compromise on Reform — Lord Wharncliffe negotiates with the Ministers — Negotiation with Mr. Barnes — Proclamation against the Unions — Barbarism of Sunderland — Disappointment of Lord Wharncliffe — Bristol and Lyons — Commercial Negotiations with France — Poulett Thomson — Lord Wharncliffe’s Proposal to Lord Grey — Disapproved by the Duke of Wellington — Moderation of Lord John Russell — The Appeal of Drax v. Grosvenor — The Second Reform Bill — Violence of Lord Durham — More Body-snatchers — Duke of Richmond and Sir Henry Parnell — Panshanger — Creation of Peers — Division of Opinion — Negotiation to avoid the Creation of Peers — Lord Wharncliffe’s Interview with the King — Opposition of the Duke of Wellington — The Waverers resolve to separate from the Duke.

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September 22nd, 1831

The night before last Croker and Macaulay made two fine speeches on Reform; the former spoke for two hours and a half, and in a way he had never done before. Macaulay was very brilliant. There was a meeting at Lord Ebrington’s yesterday, called by him, Lyttelton Lawley, and of members of the House of Commons only, and they (without coming to any resolution) were all agreed to prevail on the Government not to resign in the event of the Reform Bill being rejected in the House of Lords. I have no doubt, therefore, in spite of what Lord Grey said, and the other circumstances I have mentioned above, that they will not resign, and I doubt whether there will be any occasion for it.

There was a dinner at Apsley House yesterday; the Cabinet of Opposition, to discuss matters before having a general meeting. At this dinner there were sixteen or seventeen present, all the leading anti-Reformers of the Peers. They agreed to oppose the second reading. Dudley, who was there, told me it was tragedy first and farce afterwards; for Eldon and Kenyon, who had dined with the Duke of Cumberland, came in after dinner. Chairs were placed for them on each side of the Duke, and after he had explained to them what they had been discussing, and what had been agreed upon, Kenyon made a long speech on the first reading of the Bill, in which it was soon apparent that he was very drunk, for he talked exceeding nonsense, wandered from one topic to another, and repeated the same things over and over again. When he had done Eldon made a speech on the second reading, and appeared to be equally drunk, only, Lord Bathurst told me, Kenyon in his drunkenness talked nonsense, but Eldon sense. Dudley said it was not that they were as drunk as lords and gentlemen sometimes are, but they were drunk like porters. Lyndhurst was not there, though invited. He dined at Holland House. It is pretty clear, however, that he will vote for the second reading, for his wife is determined he shall. I saw her yesterday, and she is full of pique and resentment against the Opposition and the Duke, half real and half pretended, and chatters away about Lyndhurst’s not being their cat’s paw, and that if they choose to abandon him, they must not expect him to sacrifice himself for them. The pretexts she takes are, that they would not go to the House of Lords on Tuesday and support him against Brougham on the Bankruptcy Bill, and that the Duke of Wellington wrote to her and desired her to influence her husband in the matter of Reform. The first is a joke, the second there might be a little in, for vanity is always uppermost, but they have both some motive of interest, which they will pursue in whatever way they best can. The excuse they make is that they want to conceal their strength from the Government, and accordingly the Duke of Wellington has not yet entered any of his proxies. The truth is that I am by no means sure now that it is safe or prudent to oppose the second reading; PROSPECTS OF THE REFORM BILL. and though I think it very doubtful if any practicable alteration will be made in Committee, it will be better to take that chance, and the chance of an accommodation and compromise between the two parties and the two Houses, than to attack it in front. It is clear that Government are resolved to carry the Bill, and equally clear that no means they can adopt would be unpopular. They are averse to making more Peers if they can help it, and would rather go quietly on, without any fresh changes, and I believe they are conscientiously persuaded that this Bill is the least democratical Bill it is possible to get the country to accept, and that if offered in time this one will be accepted. I had heard before that the country is not enamoured of this Bill, but I fear that it is true that they are only indifferent to the Conservative clauses of it (if I may so term them), and for that reason it may be doubtful whether there would not be such a clamour raised in the event of the rejection of this Bill as would compel the Ministers to make a new one, more objectionable than the old. If its passing clearly appears to be inevitable, why, the sooner it is done the better, for at least one immense object will be gained in putting an end to agitation, and restoring the country to good-humour, and it is desirable that the House of Lords should stand as well with the people as it can. It is better, as Burke says, ‘to do early, and from foresight, that which we may be obliged to do from necessity at last.’ I am not more delighted with Reform than I have ever been, but it is the part of prudence to take into consideration the present and the future, and not to harp upon the past. It matters not how the country has been worked up to its present state, if a calm observation convinces us that the spirit that has been raised cannot be allayed, and that is very clear to me.

September 24th, 1831

Peel closed the debate on Thursday night with a very fine speech, the best (one of his opponents told me, and it is no use asking the opinions of friends if a candid opponent is to be found) he had ever made, not only on that subject, but on any other; he cut Macaulay to ribands. Macaulay is very brilliant, but his speeches are harangues and never replies; whereas Peel’s long experience and real talent for debate give him a great advantage in the power of reply, which he very eminently possesses. Macaulay, however, will probably be a very distinguished man. These debates have elicited a vast deal of talent, and have served as touchstones to try real merit and power. As a proof of what practice and a pretty good understanding can do, there is Althorp, who now appears to be an excellent leader, and contrives to speak decently upon all subjects, quite as much as a leader need do; for I have always thought that it should not be his business to furnish rhetoric and flowers of eloquence, but good-humour, judgment, firmness, discretion, business-like talents, and gentlemanlike virtues.

Dined at Richmond on Friday with the Lyndhursts; the mari talks against the Bill, the women for it. They are like the old divisions of families in the Civil Wars.

My brother-in-law and sister are just returned from a tour of three weeks in Holland; curious spectacle, considering the state of the rest of Europe, nothing but loyalty and enthusiasm, adoration of the Orange family; 2,000,000 of people, and an army of 110,000 men; everybody satisfied with the Government, and no desire for Reform.

Paris, on the point of exploding, is again tranquil, but nobody can tell for how long. They bet two to one here that the Reform Bill is thrown out on the second reading; and what then? The meeting at Ebrington’s was flat, nothing agreed on. Hume wanted to pass some violent resolution, but was overruled. Milton made a foolish speech, with prospective menaces and present nothingness in it, and they separated without having done good or harm.

Newmarket, October 1st, 1831

Came here last night, to my great joy, to get holidays, and leave Reform and cholera and politics for racing and its amusements. Just before I came away I met Lord Wharncliffe, and asked him about his interview with Radical Jones. This blackguard considers himself a sort of chief of a faction, and one of the heads of the sans-culottins of the present day. He wrote to Lord Wharncliffe and said he wished to confer with him, that if he would grant him an PROSPECTS OF THE REFORM BILL. interview he might bring any person he pleased to witness what passed between them. Lord Wharncliffe replied that he would call on him, and should be satisfied to have no witness. Accordingly he did so, when the other in very civil terms told him that he wished to try and impress upon his mind (as he was one of the heads of anti-Reform in the House of Lords) how dangerous it would be to reject this Bill, that all sorts of excesses would follow its rejection, that their persons and properties would be perilled, and resistance would be unavailing, for that they (the Reformers) were resolved to carry their point. Lord Wharncliffe asked whether if this was conceded they would be satisfied. Jones replied, ‘Certainly not;’ that they must go a great deal further, that an hereditary peerage was not to be defended on any reasonable theory. Still, he was not for doing away with it, that he wished the changes that were inevitable to take place quietly, and without violence or confusion. After some more discourse in this strain they separated, but very civilly, and without any intemperance of expression on the part of the Reformer.

On Monday the battle begins in the House of Lords, and up to this time nobody knows how it will go, each party being confident, but opinion generally in favour of the Bill being thrown out. There is nothing more curious in this question than the fact that it is almost impossible to find anybody who is satisfied with the part he himself takes upon it, and that it is generally looked upon as a choice of evils, in which the only thing to do is to choose the least. The Reformers say, You had better pass the Bill or you will have a worse. The moderate anti-Reformers would be glad to suffer the second reading to pass and alter it in Committee, but they do not dare do so, because the sulky, stupid, obstinate High Tories declare that they will throw the whole thing up, and not attempt to alter the Bill if it passes the second reading. Every man seems tossed about by opposite considerations and the necessity of accommodating his own conduct to the caprices, passions, and follies of others.

Riddlesworth, October 10th, 1831

At Newmarket all last week; all the Peers absent; here since Friday. Yesterday morning the newspapers (all in black[1]) announced the defeat of the Reform Bill by a majority of forty-one, at seven o’clock on Saturday morning, after five nights’ debating. By all accounts the debate was a magnificent display, and incomparably superior to that in the House of Commons, but the reports convey no idea of it. The great speakers on either side were:—Lords Grey, Lansdowne, Goderich, Plunket, and the Chancellor, for the Bill; against it, Lords Wharncliffe (who moved the amendment), Harrowby, Carnarvon, Dudley, Wynford, and Lyndhurst. The Duke of Wellington’s speech was exceedingly bad; he is in fact, and has proved it in repeated instances, unequal to argue a great constitutional question. He has neither the command of language, the power of reasoning, nor the knowledge requisite for such an effort. Lord Harrowby’s speech was amazingly fine, and delivered with great effect; and the last night the Chancellor is said to have surpassed all his former exploits, Lyndhurst to have been nearly as good, and Lord Grey very great in reply. There was no excitement in London the following day, and nothing particular happened but the Chancellor being drawn from Downing Street to Berkeley Square in his carriage by a very poor mob. The majority was much greater than anybody expected, and it is to be hoped may be productive of good by showing the necessity of a compromise; for no Minister can make sixty Peers, which Lord Grey must do to carry this Bill; it would be to create another House of Lords. Nobody knows what the Ministers would do, but it was thought they would not resign. A meeting of members of the House of Commons was held under the auspices of Ebrington to agree upon a resolution of confidence in the Government this day. The majority and the magnificent display of eloquence and ability in the House of Lords must exalt the character and dignity of that House, and I hope increase its efficacy for good purposes and for resistance to this Bill. It may be hoped, too, that the apathy of the capital may have some DORSETSHIRE ELECTION. effect in the country, though the unions, which are so well disciplined and under the control of their orators, will make a stir. On the whole I rejoice at this result, though I had taken fright before, and thought it better the Bill should be read a second time than be thrown out by a very small majority.

[1] [Not all of them; neither the ‘Times’ nor the ‘Morning Herald.’]

While the debates have been going on there have been two elections, one of the Lord Mayor in the City, which the Reformers have carried after a sharp contest, and the contest for Dorsetshire between Ponsonby and Ashley, which is not yet over. Ponsonby had a week’s start of his opponent, notwithstanding which it is so severe that they have been for some days within ten or fifteen of each other, and (what is remarkable) the anti-Reformer is the popular candidate, and has got all the mob with him. This certainly is indicative of some change, though not of a reaction, in public opinion. There is no longer the same vehemence of desire for this Bill, and I doubt whether all the efforts of the press will be able to stimulate the people again to the same pitch of excitement.

Buckenham, October 11th, 1831

Came here yesterday; nobody of note, not lively, letters every day with an account of what is passing. The Radical press is moving heaven and earth to produce excitement, but without much effect. There was something of a mob which marched about the parks, but no mischief done. Londonderry and some others were hooted near the House of Lords. Never was a party so crestfallen as I hear they are; they had not a notion of such a division. There seems to be a very general desire to bring about a fair compromise, and to have a Bill introduced next session which may be so framed as to secure the concurrence of the majority of both Houses. The finest speeches by all accounts were Harrowby’s, Lyndhurst’s, and Grey’s reply; but Henry de Ros, who is a very good judge, writes me word that Lyndhurst’s was the most to his taste.

October 12th, 1831

The Reformers appear to have rallied their spirits. Lord Grey went to Windsor, was graciously received by the King, and obtained the dismissal of Lord Howe, which will serve to show the King’s entire good-will to his present Ministers. Ebrington’s resolution of confidence was carried by a great majority in the House of Commons after some violent speeches from Macaulay, Sheil, and O’Connell, and very moderate ones and in a low tone on the other side. Macaulay’s speech was as usual very eloquent, but as inflammatory as possible. Such men as these three can care nothing into what state of confusion the country is thrown, for all they want is a market to which they may bring their talents;[2] but how the Miltons, Tavistocks, Althorps, and all who have a great stake in the country can run the same course is more than I can conceive or comprehend. Party is indeed, as Swift says, ‘the madness of many,’ when carried to its present pitch. In the meantime the Conservative party are as usual committing blunders, which will be fatal to them. Lord Harrowby was to have moved yesterday or the day before, in the House of Lords, a resolution pledging the House to take into consideration early in the next session the acknowledged defects in the representation, with a view to make such ameliorations in it as might be consistent with the Constitution, or something to this effect. This has not been done because the Duke of Wellington objects. He will not concur because he thinks the proposition should come from Government; as if this was a time to stand upon such punctilios, and that it was not of paramount importance to show the country that the Peers are not obstinately bent upon opposing all Reform. I had hoped that he had profited by experience, and that at least his past errors in politics might have taught him a little modesty, and that he would not have thwarted measures which were proposed by the wisest and most disinterested of his own party. I can conceive no greater misfortune at this moment than such a disunion of that party, and to have its deliberations ruled by the obstinacy and prejudices of the Duke. He is a great man in little things, but a little man in great matters—I mean in civil affairs; in those mighty questions which LORD GREY AND BISHOP PHILLPOTTS. embrace enormous and various interests and considerations, and to comprehend which great knowledge of human nature, great sagacity, coolness, and impartiality are required, he is not fit to govern and direct. His mind has not been sufficiently disciplined, nor saturated with knowledge and matured by reflection and communication with other minds, to enable him to be a safe and efficient leader in such times as these.

[2] This was very unjust to Macaulay, and not true as to Sheil; to O’Connell alone applicable.

[In reading over these remarks upon the Duke of Wellington, and comparing them with the opinions I now entertain of his present conduct, and of the nature and quality of his mind, I am compelled to ask myself whether I did not then do him injustice. On the whole I think not. He is not, nor ever was, a little man in anything, great or small; but I am satisfied that he has made great political blunders, though with the best and most patriotic intentions, and that his conduct throughout the Reform contest was one of the greatest and most unfortunate of them.—July 1838.]

October 14th, 1831

The town continues quite quiet; the country nearly so. The press strain every nerve to produce excitement, and the ‘Times’ has begun an assault on the bishops, whom it has marked out for vengeance and defamation for having voted against the Bill. Althorp and Lord John Russell have written grateful letters to Attwood as Chairman of the Birmingham Union, thus indirectly acknowledging that puissant body. There was a desperate strife in the House of Lords between Phillpotts and Lord Grey, in which the former got a most tremendous dressing. Times must be mightily changed when my sympathies go with this bishop, and even now, though full of disgust with the other faction, I have a pleasure in seeing him trounced. The shade of Canning may rejoice at the sight of Grey smiting Phillpotts. Even on such a question Phillpotts was essentially in the right; but he lost his temper, floundered, and got punished. It was most indecent and disgusting to hear Brougham from the Woolsack, in a strain of the bitterest irony and sarcasm, but so broad as to be without the semblance of disguise, attack the bench of bishops. I am of opinion that it would have been far better never to have let them back into the House of Lords, but now that they are there I would not thrust them out, especially at this moment. Lord Grey in this debate gave no handle certainly, for he interposed in their favour, and rebuked Lord Suffield, who attacked them first, and told him he was out of order, and then Phillpotts very foolishly attacked him.

October 15th, 1831

A furious attack in the House of Commons upon Althorp’s and John Russell’s letters to Attwood by Hardinge and Vyvyan. Peel not there, having hopped off to Staffordshire, to the great disgust of his party, whom he never scruples to leave in the lurch. They made wretched excuses for these letters, and could only have recourse to the pretence of indignation at being thought capable of fomenting disorders, which is all very well; but they do foment discord and discontent by every means in their power. With a yelling majority in the House, and a desperate press out of it, they go on in their reckless course without fear or shame. Lord Harrowby made a speech in the House of Lords, and declared his conviction that the time was come for effecting a Reform, and that he would support one to a certain extent, which he specified. In the House he was coolly received, and the ‘Times’ hardly deigned to notice what he said. Parliament is to be up on Thursday next, and will probably not meet till January, when of course the first thing done will be to bring in the Bill again. What, then, is gained? For as Ministers take every opportunity of declaring that they will accept nothing less efficient (as they call it) than the present Bill, no compromise can be looked for. Lord Harrowby is the only man who has said what he will do, and probably he goes further than the bulk of his party would approve of; and yet he is far behind the Ministerial plan. So that there seems little prospect of getting off for less than the old Bill, for the Opposition will hardly venture to stop the next in limine as they did this. I do not see why they should hope to amend the next Bill in Committee any more than the last, and the division which they dreaded the other day is not less likely, and would not DANGERS OF REFORM. be less fatal upon another occasion. If, then, it is to pass at last, it comes back to what I thought before, that it might as well have passed at first as at last, and the excitement consequent on its rejection have been spared, as well as the odium which has accrued to the Peers, which will not be forgotten or laid aside.

The Dorsetshire election promises to end in favour of Ashley, and there will be a contest for Cambridgeshire, which may also end in favour of the anti-Reform candidate. These victories I really believe to be unfortunate, for they are taken (I am arguing as if they were won, though, with regard to the first, it is the same thing by contrast with the last election) by the Tories and anti-Reform champions as undoubted proofs of the reaction of public opinion, and they are thereby encouraged to persevere in opposition under the false notion that this supposed reaction will every day gain ground. I wish it were so with all my soul, but believe it is no such thing, and that although there may be fewer friends to the Bill than there were, particularly among the agriculturists, Reform is not a whit less popular with the mass of the people in the manufacturing districts, throughout the unions, and generally amongst all classes and in all parts of the country. When I see men, and those in very great numbers, of the highest birth, of immense fortunes, of undoubted integrity and acknowledged talents, zealously and conscientiously supporting this measure, I own I am lost in astonishment, and even doubt; for I can’t help asking myself whether it is possible that such men would be the advocates of measures fraught with all the peril we ascribe to these, whether we are not in reality mistaken, and labouring under groundless alarm generated by habitual prejudices and erroneous calculations. But often as this doubt comes across my mind, it is always dispelled by a reference to and comparison of the arguments on both sides, and by the lessons which all that I have ever read and all the conclusions I have been able to draw from the study of history have impressed on my mind. I believe these measures full of danger, but that the manner in which they have been introduced, discussed, defended, and supported is more dangerous still. The total unsettlement of men’s minds, the bringing into contempt all the institutions which have been hitherto venerated, the aggrandisement of the power of the people, the embodying and recognition of popular authority, the use and abuse of the King’s name, the truckling to the press, are things so subversive of government, so prejudicial to order and tranquillity, so encouraging to sedition and disaffection, that I do not see the possibility of the country settling down into that calm and undisturbed state in which it was before this question was mooted, and without which there can be no happiness or security to the community. A thousand mushroom orators and politicians have sprung up all over the country, each big with his own ephemeral importance, and every one of whom fancies himself fit to govern the nation. Amongst them are some men of active and powerful minds, and nothing is less probable than that these spirits of mischief and misrule will be content to subside into their original nothingness, and retire after the victory has been gained into the obscurity from which they emerged.

Newmarket, October 23rd, 1831

Nothing but racing all this week; Parliament has been prorogued and all is quiet. The world seems tired, and requires rest. How soon it will all begin again God knows, but it will not be suffered to sleep long.

London, November 11th, 1831

Nothing written for a long time; I went after the second October meeting to Euston, and from thence to Horsham, returned to Newmarket, was going to Felbrigg, but came to town on Tuesday last (the 8th) on account of the cholera, which has broken out at Sunderland. The country was beginning to slumber after the fatigues of Reform, when it was rattled up by the business of Bristol,[3] which for brutal ferocity and wanton, unprovoked violence may vie with some of the worst scenes of the RIOTS AT BRISTOL. French Revolution, and may act as a damper to our national pride. The spirit which produced these atrocities was generated by Reform, but no pretext was afforded for their actual commission; it was a premature outbreaking of the thirst for plunder, and longing after havoc and destruction, which is the essence of Reform in the mind of the mob. The details are ample, and to be met with everywhere; nothing could exceed the ferocity of the populace, the imbecility of the magistracy, or the good conduct of the troops. More punishment was inflicted by them than has been generally known, and some hundreds were killed or severely wounded by the sabre. One body of dragoons pursued a rabble of colliers into the country, and covered the fields and roads with the bodies of wounded wretches, making a severe example of them. In London there would probably have been a great uproar and riot, but fortunately Melbourne, who was frightened to death at the Bristol affair, gave Lord Hill and Fitzroy Somerset carte blanche, and they made such a provision of military force in addition to the civil power that the malcontents were paralysed. The Bristol business has done some good, inasmuch as it has opened people’s eyes (at least so it is said), but if we are to go on as we do with a mob-ridden Government and a foolish King, who renders himself subservient to all the wickedness and folly of his Ministers, where is the advantage of having people’s eyes open, when seeing they will not perceive, and hearing they will not understand? Nothing was wanting to complete our situation but the addition of physical evil to our moral plague, and that is come in the shape of the cholera, which broke out at Sunderland a few days ago. To meet the exigency Government has formed another Board of Health, but without dissolving the first, though the second is intended to swallow up the first and leave it a mere nullity. Lord Lansdowne, who is President of the Council, an office which for once promises not to be a sinecure, has taken the opportunity to go to Bowood, and having come up (sent for express) on account of the cholera the day it was officially declared really to be that disease, he has trotted back to his house in the country.

[3] [Riots broke out with great violence at Bristol on the 29th of October, the pretext being the entry of Sir Charles Wetherell into that city (of which he was Recorder), who was notorious for his violent opposition to the Reform Bill. Much property was destroyed, and many lives lost.]

November 14th, 1831

For the last two or three days the reports from Sunderland about the cholera have been of a doubtful character. The disease makes so little progress that the doctors begin again to doubt whether it is the Indian cholera, and the merchants, shipowners, and inhabitants, who suffer from the restraints imposed upon an infected place, are loudly complaining of the measures which have been adopted, and strenuously insisting that their town is in a more healthy state than usual, and that the disease is no more than what it always is visited with every year at this season. In the meantime all preparations are going on in London, just as if the disorder was actually on its way to the metropolis. We have a Board at the Council Office, between which and the Board at the College some civilities have passed, and the latter is now ready to yield up its functions to the former, which, however, will not be regularly constituted without much difficulty and many jealousies, all owing to official carelessness and mismanagement. The Board has been diligently employed in drawing up suggestions and instructions to local boards and parochial authorities, and great activity has prevailed here in establishing committees for the purpose of visiting the different districts of the metropolis, and making such arrangements as may be necessary in the event of sickness breaking out. There is no lack of money or labour for this end, and one great good will be accomplished let what will happen, for much of the filth and misery of the town will be brought to light, and the condition of the poorer and more wretched of the inhabitants can hardly fail to be ameliorated. The reports from Sunderland exhibit a state of human misery, and necessarily of moral degradation, such as I hardly ever heard of, and it is no wonder, when a great part of the community is plunged into such a condition (and we may fairly suppose that there is a gradually mounting scale, with every degree of wretchedness up to the wealth and splendour which glitter on the surface of society), that there should be so many who are ripe for any desperate scheme of revolution. At Sunderland they say there are houses with 150 inmates, who are huddled five and six in OVERTURES FOR A COMPROMISE. a bed. They are in the lowest state of poverty. The sick in these receptacles are attended by an apothecary’s boy, who brings them (or I suppose tosses them) medicines without distinction or enquiry.

I saw Lord Wharncliffe last night, just returned from Yorkshire; he gives a bad account of the state of the public mind; he thinks that there is a strong revolutionary spirit abroad; told me that the Duke of Wellington had written to the King a memorial upon the danger of the associations that were on foot.

Roehampton, November 19th, 1831

On Tuesday last I went with the Duke of Richmond to pass a day at Shirley Lodge, a house that has been lent him by Mr. Maberly, and there we had a great deal of conversation about Reform and general politics, in the course of which I was struck by his apparent candour and moderation, and when I told him that nothing would do but a compromise between the parties he acceded to that opinion, and said that he should like to go to Lord Wharncliffe, and talk the matter over with him. This was on Wednesday. Yesterday morning I called on Lord Wharncliffe, and told him what Richmond had said. He was sitting before a heap of papers, and when I told him this he laughed and said that Richmond was behindhand, that matters had gone a great deal further than this, and then proceeded to give me the following account of what had passed. A short time ago Palmerston spoke to his son, John Wortley, and expressed a desire that some compromise could be effected between the Government and the Opposition leaders, which John imparted to Lord Harrowby and his father. The overture was so well received by them that Stanley went to Sandon, Lord Harrowby’s place in Staffordshire, in his way to Ireland, with Lord Grey’s consent, to talk it over with Lord Sandon. After this Lord Wharncliffe went to Sandon, and the two fathers and two sons discussed the matter, and came to a sort of general resolution as to the basis on which they would treat, which they drew up, and which Wharncliffe read to me. It was moderate, temperate, embraced ample concessions, and asserted the necessity of each party refraining from demanding of the other what either was so pledged to as to be unable to concede without dishonour. On Wharncliffe’s return to town he again saw Palmerston, and communicated to him Harrowby’s concurrence in an equitable adjustment of the Reform question, and then suggested that if Government really desired this, it would be better that he (Wharncliffe) should see Lord Grey himself on the subject. Palmerston told Lord Grey, who assented, and gave Wharncliffe a rendezvous at East Sheen on Wednesday last. There they had a long conversation, which by his account was conducted in a very fair and amicable spirit on both sides, and they seem to have come to a good understanding as to the principle on which they should treat. On parting, Grey shook hands with him twice, and told him he had not felt so much relieved for a long time. The next day Lord Grey made a minute of their conversation, which he submitted to the Cabinet; they approved of it, and he sent it to Wharncliffe to peruse, who returned it to Lord Grey. In this state the matter stood yesterday morning, apparently with every prospect of being arranged. Wharncliffe had already spoken to Dudley, Lyndhurst, and De Ros, the only Peers of his party he had seen, and to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who were all delighted at what had passed. He had written to the Duke of Wellington and Peel, and he is busying himself in consulting and communicating with all the Peers and influential Commoners of the party whom he can find in town. The terms are not settled, but the general basis agreed upon seems to be this: the concession of Schedule A, of representatives to the great towns, and a great extension of the county representation on one side; the abandonment, or nearly so, of Schedule B, such an arrangement with regard to the 10ℓ. qualification as shall have the practical effect of a higher rate, and an understanding that the manufacturing interest is not to have a preponderating influence in the county representation; a great deal to be left open to discussion, especially on all the subordinate points.

NEGOTIATION WITH THE WAVERERS. Such is the history of this curious transaction, which affords a triumphant justification of the course which the Opposition adopted; indeed, Palmerston admitted to Wharncliffe that their tactics had been entirely judicious. It is likewise a great homage rendered to character, for Wharncliffe has neither wealth, influence, nor superior abilities, nor even popularity with his own party. He is a spirited, sensible, zealous, honourable, consistent country gentleman; their knowledge of his moderation and integrity induced Ministers to commit themselves to him, and he will thus be in all probability enabled to render an essential service to his country, and be a principal instrument in the settlement of a question the continued agitation of which would have been perilous in the extreme. Besides the prospect of a less objectionable Bill, an immense object is gained in the complete separation of the Ministry from the subversive party, for their old allies the Radicals will never forgive them for this compromise with the anti-Reformers, and they have now no alternative but to unite with those who call themselves the Conservative party against the rebels, republicans, associators, and all the disaffected in the country. After all their declarations and their unbending insolence, to have brought down their pride to these terms, and to the humiliation of making overtures to a party whose voice was only the other day designated by John Russell as ‘the whisper of a faction,’ shows plainly how deeply alarmed they are at the general state of the country, and how the conflagration of Bristol has suddenly illuminated their minds. That incident, the language of the associations, the domiciliary visits to Lord Grey at midnight of Place and his rabble, and the licentiousness of the press, have opened their eyes, and convinced them that if existing institutions are to be preserved at all there is no time to be lost in making such an arrangement as may enable all who have anything to lose to coalesce for their mutual safety and protection. Whatever may be the amount of their concessions, the Radicals will never pardon Lord Grey for negotiating with the Tories at all, and nothing will prevent his being henceforward the object of their suspicion and aversion, and marked out for their vengeance. By what process Althorp and John Russell were induced to concur, and how they are to set about swallowing their own words, I do not guess.

As a proof of the disposition which exists, and the good understanding between Wharncliffe and the Government, he told me that some time ago Ward and Palmer went to him, and said that in the City the majority of men of weight and property were favourable to Reform, but not to the late Bill, and that they were desirous of having a declaration drawn up for signature, expressive of their adherence to Reform, but of their hope that the next measure might be such as would give satisfaction to all parties. Wharncliffe drew this up (there was likewise an acknowledgment of the right of the House of Lords to exercise their privileges as they had done) and gave it to them. It is gone to be signed, having been previously submitted to Grey and Althorp, who approved of it.

November 21st, 1831

Came to town from Roehampton yesterday morning, saw Henry de Ros, who had seen Barnes[4] the evening before, and opened to him the pending negotiation. His rage and fury exceeded all bounds. He swore Brougham and Grey (particularly the former) were the greatest of villains. After a long discussion he agreed to try and persuade his colleagues to adopt a moderate tone, and not to begin at once to jeter feu et flamme. Henry’s object was to persuade him, if possible, that the interest of the paper will be in the long run better consulted by leaning towards the side of order and quiet than by continuing to exasperate and inflame. He seemed to a certain degree moved by this argument, though he is evidently a desperate Radical. Henry went to Melbourne afterwards, who is most anxious for the happy consummation of this affair, but expressed some alarm lest they should be unable to agree upon the details. There is an article in the ‘Times’ this morning of half-menacing import, sulkily and gloomily written, but not ferocious, and PROCLAMATION AGAINST THE UNIONS. leaving it open to them to take what line they think fit. In the afternoon I met Melbourne, who told me they were going to put forth a proclamation against ‘Attwood and the Birmingham fellows,’ which was grateful to my ears.

[4] [Then editor of the ‘Times’ newspaper.]

November 22nd, 1831

The King came to town yesterday for a Council, at which the meeting of Parliament on the 6th of December was settled. The proclamation against the unions (which was not ready, and the King signed a blank) and some orders about cholera were despatched. Lord Grey told me that the union had already determined to dissolve itself.

My satisfaction was yesterday considerably damped by what I heard of the pending negotiation concerning Reform. Agar Ellis at Roehampton talked with great doubt of its being successful, which I attributed to his ignorance of what had passed, but I fear it is from his knowledge that the Government mean, in fact, to give up nothing of importance. George Bentinck came to me in the morning, and told me he had discovered from the Duke of Richmond that the concessions were not only to be all one way, but that the altered Bill would be, in fact, more objectionable than the last, inasmuch as it is more democratic in its tendency, so much so that Richmond is exceedingly dissatisfied himself, for he has always been the advocate of the aristocratic interest in the Cabinet, and has battled to make the Bill less adverse to it. Now he says he can contend no longer, for he is met by the unanswerable argument that their opponents are ready to concede more. I own I was alarmed, and my mind misgave me when I heard of the extreme satisfaction of Althorp and Co.; and I always dreaded that Wharncliffe, however honest and well-meaning, had not calibre enough to conduct such a negotiation, and might be misled by his vanity. He bustles about the town, chatting away to all the people he meets, and I fear is both ignorant himself of what he is about and involuntarily deceiving others too; he is in a fool’s paradise. I spoke to Henry de Ros about this last night, who seemed by no means aware of it, and it is difficult to believe that Lyndhurst and Harrowby should not be perfectly alive to all the consequences of Wharncliffe’s proceedings, or that they would sanction them if they had really the tendency that George Bentinck gives me to understand.

The cholera, which is going on (but without greatly extending itself) at Sunderland, has excited an unusual alarm, but it is now beginning to subside. People seeing that it does not appear elsewhere take courage, but the preparations are not relaxed, and they are constantly enforced by the Central Board of Health (as it is called), which is established at the Council Office, and labours very assiduously in the cause. Undoubtedly a great deal of good will be done in the way of purification. As to the disorder, if it had not the name of cholera nobody would be alarmed, for many an epidemic has prevailed at different times far more fatal than this. On Friday last we despatched Dr. Barry down to Sunderland with very ample powers, and to procure information, which it is very difficult to get. Nothing can be more disgraceful than the state of that town, exhibiting a lamentable proof of the practical inutility of that diffusion of knowledge and education which we boast of, and which we fancy renders us so morally and intellectually superior to the rest of the world. When Dr. Russell was in Russia, he was disgusted with the violence and prejudices he found there on the part of both medical men and the people, and he says he finds just as much here. The conduct of the people of Sunderland on this occasion is more suitable to the barbarism of the interior of Africa than to a town in a civilised country. The medical men and the higher classes are split into parties, quarrelling about the nature of the disease, and perverting and concealing facts which militate against their respective theories. The people are taught to believe that there is really no cholera at all, and that those who say so intend to plunder and murder them. The consequence is prodigious irritation and excitement, an invincible repugnance on the part of the lower orders to avail themselves of any of the preparations which are made for curing them, and a proneness to believe any reports, however monstrous and exaggerated. In a very curious letter which was received yesterday from Dr. Daur, he says (after complaining of the DISAPPOINTMENT. medical men, who would send him no returns of the cases of sickness) it was believed that bodies had been dissected before the life was out of them, and one woman, was said to have been cut up while she was begging to be spared. The consequence of this is that we have put forward a strong order to compel medical men to give information, and another for the compulsory removal of nuisances. It is, however, rather amusing that everybody who has got in their vicinity anything disagreeable, or that they would like to be rid of, thinks that now is their time, and the table of the Board of Health is covered with applications of this nature, from every variety of person and of place.

November 23rd, 1831

Dr. Barry’s first letter from Sunderland came yesterday, in which he declares the identity of the disease with the cholera he had seen in Russia. He describes some cases he had visited, exhibiting scenes of misery and poverty far exceeding what one could have believed it possible to find in this country; but we who float on the surface of society know but little of the privations and sufferings which pervade the mass. I wrote to the Bishop of Durham, to the chief magistrates, and sent down 200ℓ. to Colonel Creagh (which Althorp immediately advanced) to relieve the immediate and pressing cases of distress.

Saw George Bentinck in the afternoon, who confirmed my apprehension that Wharncliffe had been cajoled into a negotiation which Government intended should end by getting all they want. Richmond, Grey, and Palmerston were in a minority of three in the Cabinet for putting off the meeting of Parliament. One of the most Radical of the Cabinet is Goderich. Such a thing it is to be of feeble intellect and character, and yet he is a smart speaker, and an agreeable man. The moderate party are Richmond, who cannot have much weight, Stanley, who is in Ireland, Lansdowne, who is always ‘gone to Bowood,’ Palmerston, and Melbourne. Yet I am led to think that if Wharncliffe had insisted on better conditions, and held out, he would have got them, and that the Cabinet were really disposed to make all the concessions they could without compromising themselves. The meeting in the City yesterday was a total failure. Henry Drummond, who is mad, but very clever, and a Reformer, though for saving the rotten boroughs, spoke against the declaration, some others followed him, and after a couple of hours wasted in vain endeavours to procure unanimity the meeting broke up, and nothing was done. I saw Wharncliffe last night, who was exceedingly disappointed.

November 28th, 1831

The negotiation with Wharncliffe goes on languidly; he wrote to Lord Grey the other day, and suggested some heads as the basis of an accommodation, consisting of some extension of Schedule B, excluding town voters from county voting, and one or two other points; to which Lord Grey replied that some of the things he mentioned might be feasible, but that there would be great difficulty about others, that he feared nothing might come of their communications, as he would not hear of any other Peers who were disposed to go along with him. It is not a bad thing that they should each be impressed with a salutary apprehension, the one that he will have the same difficulties to encounter in the House of Lords, the other that nobody will follow him, for it will render an arrangement more probable than if they both thought they had only to agree together, and that the rest must follow as a matter of course. The Duke of Wellington has written again to Wharncliffe, declining altogether to be a party to any negotiation. De Ros told me that he never saw such a letter as Peel’s—so stiff, dry, and reserved, just like the man in whom great talents are so counteracted, and almost made mischievous, by the effects of his cold, selfish, calculating character. In the meantime the state of the country is certainly better, the proclamation putting down the unions has been generally obeyed, the press has suspended its fury, and the approach of the meeting of Parliament seems to have calmed the country to a great degree. The event most to be desired is that the Government may carry their Bill quietly through the House of Commons, amendments be carried in the Committee of the House of Lords, and upon these there may be POULETT THOMSON. a compromise, though after all it is impossible not to have a secret misgiving that the alterations which appear desirable may prove to be mischievous, for it is the great evil of the measure that being certainly new no human being can guess how it will work, or how its different parts will act upon one another, and what result they will produce.

There seems to be a constant sort of electrical reciprocity of effort between us and France just now. The three days produced much of our political excitement, and our Bristol business has been acted with great similarity of circumstance at Lyons, and is still going on. Talleyrand produced the ‘Moniteur’ last night with the account, lamented that the Duc d’Orléans had been sent with Marshal Soult to Lyons, which he said was unnecessary and absurd, that Soult was the best man for the purpose of putting it down. It was begun by the workpeople, who were very numerous, not political in its objects, but the cries denoted a mixture of everything, as they shouted ‘Henri V., Napoléon II, La République, and Bristol.’ He was at Lady Holland’s, looking very cadaverous, and not very talkative, talked of Madame du Barri, that she had been very handsome, and had some remains of beauty up to the period of her death; of Luckner, who was guillotined, and as the car passed on the people cried (as they used), ‘À la guillotine! à la guillotine!’ Luckner turned round and said, ‘On y va, canaille.’

We have just sent a commission to Paris to treat with the French Government about a commercial treaty on the principles of free trade. Poulett Thomson, who has been at Paris some time, has originated it, and Althorp selected George Villiers for the purpose, but has added to him as a colleague Dr. Bowring, who has in fact been selected by Thomson, a theorist, and a jobber, deeply implicated in the ‘Greek Fire,’ and a Benthamite. He was the subject of a cutting satire of Moore’s, beginning,

The ghost of Miltiades came by night,
And stood by the bed of the Benthamite;

but he has been at Paris some time, understanding the subject, and has wound himself into some intimacy with the French King and his Ministers. It is, however, Poulett Thomson who has persuaded Althorp to appoint him, in order to have a creature of his own there.

I have never been able to understand the enormous unpopularity of this man, who appears civil, well-bred, intelligent, and agreeable (only rather a coxcomb), and has made a certain figure in the House of Commons, but it has been explained to me by a person who knows him well. He was originally a merchant, and had a quantity of counting-house knowledge. He became member of a club of political economists, and a scholar of M‘Culloch’s. In this club there were some obscure but very able men, and by them he got crammed with the principles of commerce and political economy, and from his mercantile connections he got facts. He possessed great industry and sufficient ability to work up the materials he thus acquired into a very plausible exhibition of knowledge upon these subjects, and having opportunities of preparing himself for every particular question, and the advantage of addressing an audience the greater part of which is profoundly ignorant, he passed for a young gentleman of extraordinary ability and profound knowledge, and amongst the greatest of his admirers was Althorp, who, when the Whigs came in, promoted him to his present situation. Since he has been there he has not had the same opportunities of learning his lesson from others behind the curtain, and the envy which always attends success has delighted to pull down his reputation, so that he now appears something like the jackdaw stripped of the peacock’s feathers.

November 30th, 1831

Went to breakfast at the Tower, which I had never seen. Dined with Lady Holland, first time for seven years, finished the quarrel, and the last of that batch; they should not last for ever. In the morning Wharncliffe came to me from Lord Grey’s, with whom he had had a final interview. He showed me the paper he gave Grey containing his proposals, which were nearly to this effect: conceding what the Government required, with these exceptions and WHARNCLIFFE’S PROPOSAL. counter-concessions, an alteration in Schedule B with a view to preserve in many cases the two members; that voters for the great manufacturing towns should have votes for the counties; that London districts should not have so many representatives; that when the franchise was given to great manufacturing towns, their county should not have more representatives; that corporate rights should be saved, though with an infusion of 10ℓ. voters where required; that Cheltenham and Brighton (particularly) should have no members. These were the principal heads, proposed in a paper of moderate length and civil expression. Grey said the terms were inadmissible, that some parts of his proposal might be feasible, but the points on which Wharncliffe most insisted (London, and town and county voting) he could not agree to. So with many expressions of civility and mutual esteem they parted. He is disappointed, but not dejected, and I tried to persuade him that an arrangement on this basis is not less probable than it was.

The fact is it would have been nearly impossible for Government to introduce a Bill so different from the first as these changes would have made it, as the result of a negotiation. They would have been exposed to great obloquy, and have had innumerable difficulties to encounter, but if the Bill goes into a Committee of the Lords, and the other clauses pass without opposition, the Government may not think themselves obliged to contest these alterations. I think the Government would accept them, and probably they feel that in no other way could they do so. It seems to me that the success of these amendments depends now very much upon the Opposition themselves, upon their firmness, their union, and above all their reasonableness. Saw Talleyrand last night, who said they had better news from Lyons, that there was nothing political in it. News came yesterday morning that the cholera had broken out at Marseilles.

December 3rd, 1831

Wharncliffe showed me his correspondence with the Duke of Wellington on this negotiation. They differed greatly, but amicably enough, though I take it he was not very well pleased with Wharncliffe’s last letter, in which he distinctly told the Duke that his speech on the Address, and declaration against any Reform, was what overthrew his Government. This he never will admit, and, passing over the proximate cause, always refers his fall to (what was certainly the remote cause) the Catholic question—that is, to the breaking up of the Tory party which followed it, and the union of the old Tories with the Whigs and Radicals on purpose to turn him out. In this correspondence Wharncliffe has much the best of it, and I was surprised to find with what tenacity the Duke clings to his cherished prejudices, and how he shuts his eyes to the signs of the times and the real state of the country. With the point at issue he never would grapple. Wharncliffe argued for concession, because they have not the means of resistance, and that they are in fact at the mercy of their opponents. The Duke admitted the force against them, but thought it would be possible to govern the country without Reform ‘if the King was not against them’—an important increment of his conditions; there is no doubt that ‘the King’s name is a tower of strength, which they upon the adverse faction want’—and he continued through all his letters arguing the question on its abstract merits, and repeating the topic that had been over and over again urged, but without reference to the actual state of things and the means of resistance. It seems, however, pretty clear that he will oppose this Bill just as he did the last, and he will probably have a great many followers; but the party is broken up, for Wharncliffe and Harrowby will vote for the second reading; the bishops will generally go with them, and probably a sufficient number of Peers. If Lord Grey can see a reasonable chance of carrying the Bill without making Peers, there can be very little doubt he will put off that resource till the last moment.

December 4th, 1831

Dined with Talleyrand yesterday. He complained to me of Durham’s return, and of ‘sa funeste influence sur Lord Grey:’ that because he had been at Brussels and at Paris, he fancied nobody but himself knew anything of foreign affairs; he praised Palmerston highly. In the evening to Lady Harrowby, who told me John AN APPEAL FROM LORD CHANCELLOR BROUGHAM. Russell had been with her, all moderation and candour, and evidently for the purpose of keeping alive the amicable relations which had been begun by Wharncliffe’s negotiation. When Lady Harrowby said it was over, he replied, ‘For the present,’ said how glad he should be of a compromise, hinted that Sandon might be instrumental, that he might move an amendment in the House of Commons; abused Macaulay’s violent speech—in short, was all mild and doucereux—all which proves that they do wish to compromise if they could manage it conveniently. Lord John Russell told her that there was no going on with Durham, that he never left Lord Grey, tormented his heart out, and made him so ill and irritable that he could not sleep. Durham wanted to be Minister for Foreign Affairs.

December 7th, 1831

Parliament opened yesterday; not a bad speech, though wordy and ill-written. There was an oversight in the Address, which was corrected in both Houses by Peel and Lord Harrowby, but not taken as an amendment. Lord Grey begged it might be inserted in Lord Camperdown’s address, which was done. It was about the King of Holland and the treaty. The Address says that they rejoice at the treaty, whereas there is none at present. Lord Lyttelton made a very foolish speech, and was very well cut up by Lord Harrowby, and Peel spoke well in the other House.

December 8th, 1831

At Court yesterday to swear in Erskine,[5] Brougham’s new Chief Judge in Bankruptcy and Privy Councillor. The Chancellor is in a great rage with me. There is an appeal to the Privy Council from a judgment of his (in which he was wrong), the first appeal of the kind for above a hundred years;[6] I told him it was ready to be heard, and begged to know if he had any wish as to who should be summoned to hear it. He said very tartly, ‘Of course I shall have somebody to hear it with me.’ I said, ‘Do you mean to hear it yourself, then?’ ‘And pray why not? don’t I hear appeals from myself every day in the House of Lords? didn’t you see that I could not hear a case the other day because Lord Lyndhurst was not there? I have a right to hear it. I sit there as a Privy Councillor.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘you have certainly a right if you choose it.’ ‘You may rely upon it I shall do nothing unusual in the Privy Council,’ and then he flounced off in high dudgeon. I told Lord Lansdowne afterwards, who said he should not allow it to be heard by him, and should make a point of summoning all the great law authorities of the Privy Council. This was the case of Drax v. Grosvenor, which excited great interest, in which Brougham tried to play all sorts of tricks to prevent his judgment being reversed, which tricks I managed to defeat, and the judgment was reversed, as is described farther on. I never had the advantage of seeing the Chancellor before in his sulks, though he is by no means unfrequently in them, very particularly so this time last year, when he was revolving in his mind whether he should take the Great Seal, and when he thought he was ill-used, so Auckland told me.

[5] [Right Hon. Thomas Erskine, a son of Lord Chancellor Erskine, Chief Judge in Bankruptcy, and afterwards a Justice of the Court of Common Pleas.]

[6] [It was an Appeal in Lunacy. No other appeals save in Lunacy lie from the Court of Chancery to the King in Council, and these are very rare. Drax v. Grosvenor is reported in Knapp’s ‘Privy Council Reports.’]

The cholera is on the decline at Sunderland, but in the meantime our trade will have been put under such restrictions that the greatest embarrassments are inevitable. Intelligence is already come that the Manchester people have curtailed their orders, and many workmen will be out of work. Yesterday a deputation from Coventry came to Auckland, and desired a categorical answer as to whether Government meant to resume the prohibitory system, because if they would not the glove trade at Coventry would discharge their workmen.

December 11th, 1831

Yesterday Harrowby had an interview with Lord Grey, the result of which I do not know; walked with Stuart (de Rothesay) in the morning, who had seen the Duke of Wellington the day before. I said I was afraid he was very obstinate. He said ‘No, he thought not, but that the Duke fancied Wharncliffe had gone too far.’

THE SECOND REFORM BILL. To-morrow the Reform Bill comes on. Some say that it will be as hotly disputed as ever, and that Peel’s speeches indicate a bitterness undiminished, but this will not happen. It is clear that the general tone and temper of parties is softened, and though a great deal of management and discretion is necessary to accomplish anything like a decent compromise, the majority of both parties are earnestly desirous of bringing the business to an end by any means. What has already taken place between the Government and Wharncliffe and Harrowby has certainly smoothed the way, and removed much of that feeling of asperity which before existed. The press, too, is less violent, the ‘Morning Herald’ openly preaching a compromise, and the ‘Times’ taking that sort of sweep which, if it does not indicate a change, shows a disposition to take such a position as may enable it to adopt any course.

In the evening.—Called on Lord Bathurst in the morning; met him going out, and stopped to talk to him. He knew of the meeting in Downing Street; that Lords Harrowby, Wharncliffe, and Chandos were to meet the Chancellor and Lords Althorp and Grey; that Chandos had gone to Brighton, ostensibly to talk to the King about the West Indies, but had taken the opportunity to throw in something on the topic of Reform; that the King desired him to speak to Palmerston, and allowed him to say that he did so by his orders. (The King, it seems, knows nothing of what is going on, for he reads no newspapers and the Household tell him nothing.) Accordingly Chandos did speak to Palmerston, and the result was a note to him, begging these three would meet the three Ministers above mentioned. Lady Harrowby told me that they went. Brougham did not arrive till the conference was nearly over. There was an abundant interchange of civilities, but nothing concluded, the Ministers declining every proposition that Lord Harrowby made to them, though Lord Grey owned that they did not ask for anything which involved an abandonment of the principle of the Bill. They are, then, not a bit nearer an accommodation than they were before.

George Bentinck told me this evening of a scene which had been related to him by the Duke of Richmond, that lately took place at a Cabinet dinner; it was very soon after Durham’s return from abroad. He was furious at the negotiations and question of compromise. Lord Grey is always the object of his rage and impertinence, because he is the only person whom he dares attack. After dinner he made a violent sortie on Lord Grey (it was at Althorp’s), said he would be eternally disgraced if he suffered any alterations to be made in this Bill, that he was a betrayer of the cause, and, amongst other things, reproached him with having kept him in town on account of this Bill in the summer, ‘and thereby having been the cause of the death of his son.’ Richmond said in his life he never witnessed so painful a scene, or one which excited such disgust and indignation in every member of the Cabinet. Lord Grey was ready to burst into tears, said he would much rather work in the coal-mines than be subject to such attacks, on which the other muttered, ‘and you might do worse,’ or some such words. After this Durham got up and left the room. Lord Grey very soon retired too, when the other Ministers discussed this extraordinary scene, and considered what steps they ought to take. They thought at first that they should require Durham to make a public apology (i.e. before all of them) to Lord Grey for his impertinence, which they deemed due to them as he was their head, and to Althorp as having occurred in his house, but as they thought it was quite certain that Durham would resign the next morning, and that Lord Grey might be pained at another scene, they forbore to exact this. However, Durham did not resign; he absented himself for some days from the Cabinet, at last returned as if nothing had happened, and there he goes on as usual. But they are so thoroughly disgusted, and resolved to oppose him, that his influence is greatly impaired. Still, his power of mischief and annoyance is considerable. Lord Grey succumbs to him, and they say in spite of his behaviour is very much attached to him, though so incessantly worried that his health visibly suffers by his presence. There is nothing in which he does not CONFESSION OF A BODY-SNATCHER. meddle. The Reform Bill he had a principal hand in concocting, and he fancies himself the only man competent to manage our foreign relations. Melbourne, who was present at this scene, said, ‘If I had been Lord Grey, I would have knocked him down.’

December 13th, 1831

Lord John Russell brought on his Bill last night in a very feeble speech. A great change is apparent since the last Bill; the House was less full, and a softened and subdued state of temper and feeling was evinced. Peel made an able and a bitter speech, though perhaps not a very judicious one. There are various alterations in the Bill; enough to prove that it was at least wise to throw out the last. Althorp, who answered Peel, acknowledged that if the old Bill had been opposed in its earliest stage it never could have been brought forward again, or made an avowal to that effect. In fact, Peel is now aware (as everybody else is) of the enormous fault that was committed in not throwing it out at once, before the press had time to operate, and rouse the country to the pitch of madness it did. On what trifles turn the destinies of nations! William Bankes told me last night that Peel owned this to him; said that he had earnestly desired to do so, but had been turned from his purpose by Granville Somerset! And why? Because he (in the expectation of a dissolution) must have voted against him, he said, in order to save his popularity in his own county.

Met Melbourne at Lord Holland’s; they were talking of a reported confession to a great extent of murders, which is said to have been begun and not finished, by the Burkers, or by one of them. Melbourne said it was true, that he began the confession about the murder of a black man to a Dissenting clergyman, but was interrupted by the ordinary. Two of a trade could not agree, and the man of the Established Church preferred that the criminal should die unconfessed, and the public uninformed, rather than the Dissenter should extract the truth. Since writing this I see Hunt put a question to George Lamb on this point, and he replied that he knew nothing of any other confession, which is not true. I have heard, but on no authority, that some surgeons are so disagreeably implicated that they choose to conceal these horrors.

December 14th, 1831

People generally are mightily satisfied at the tone of the discussion the other night, and, what is of vast importance, the press has adopted a moderate and conciliatory tone, even the ‘Times,’ which, is now all for compromise. It is clear as daylight that the Government will consent to anything which leaves untouched the great principles of the Bill, and the country desires to see the question settled, and, if possible, rest from this eternal excitement.

December 20th, 1831

The second reading of the Reform Bill was carried at one o’clock on Saturday night by a majority of two to one, and ended very triumphantly for Ministers, who are proportionately elated, and their opponents equally depressed. Croker had made a very clever speech on Friday, with quotations from Hume, and much reasoning upon them. Hobhouse detected several inaccuracies, and gave his discovery to Stanley, who worked it up in a crushing attack upon Croker. It is by far the best speech Stanley ever made, and so good as to raise him immeasurably in the House. Lord Grey said it placed him at the very top of the House of Commons, without a rival, which perhaps is jumping to rather too hasty a conclusion. He shone the more from Peel’s making a very poor exhibition. He had been so nettled by Macaulay’s sarcasms the night before on his tergiversation, that he went into the whole history of the Catholic question and his conduct on that occasion, which, besides savouring of that egotism with which he is so much and justly reproached, was uncalled for and out of place. The rest of his speech was not so good as usual, and he did not attempt to answer Stanley.

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