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

by Charles Greville

1835.

January 1st, 1835

Parliament dissolved at last, and all speculation about the elections will soon be settled in certainty. It is remarkable what confidence is expressed by both sides. Three Tories stand for the City; but Ward told me they rather expected to run their opponents hard than to come in, but that such an exhibition of strength would be important, as it will. The Duke of Wellington is so well aware of the obstacle that he is to Stanley’s joining the Government that he wanted not to belong to it originally, and he is now meditating his retreat, in order to open the way for Stanley. It cannot be denied that he has acted very nobly throughout this business, and upon nothing but a sense of duty, without regard for himself. Some doubts have occurred to me of the vast utility of Stanley, and his being so entirely without a party proves that he is not held in very high estimation, and though I should be glad to see a better set of names in the various offices (which are for the most part miserably filled) I should not altogether like to see the Duke of Wellington retire out of deference to such men as the four who would succeed him, and those who would have to retire with him. I heard a ridiculous anecdote of the King the other day. He wrote to the Duke about something—no matter what, but I believe some appointment—and added á propos de bottes, ‘His Majesty begs to call the attention of the Duke to the theoretical state of Persia.’ The Duke replied that he was aware of the importance of Persia, but submitted that it was a matter which did not press for the moment.

Yesterday I dined with Robarts, and after dinner he gave me an account of the state of his borough (Maidstone), and as it is a tolerably fair sample probably of the real condition of the generality of boroughs, and of the principles and disposition of their constituencies, I will put it down. There are 1,200 voters; the Dissenters are very numerous and of every imaginable sect and persuasion. He has been member seventeen years; the place very corrupt. Formerly (before the Reform Bill), when the constituency was less numerous, the matter was easily and simply conducted; the price of votes was as regularly fixed as the price of bread—so much for a single vote and so much for a plumper, and this he had to pay. After the Reform Bill he resolved to pay no STATE OF THE CONSTITUENCIES. more money, as corruption was to cease. The consequence was that during his canvass none of the people who had formerly voted for him would promise him their votes. They all sulked and hesitated, and, in short, waited to see what would be offered them. I asked him what were the new constituencies. ‘If possible worse than the old.’ The people are generally alive to public affairs—look into the votes and speeches of members, give their opinions—but are universally corrupt. They have a sour feeling against what are nicknamed abuses, rail against sinnicures, as they call them, and descant upon the enormity of such things while they are forced to work all day long and their families have not enough to eat. But the one prevailing object among the whole community is to make money of their votes, and though he says there are some exceptions, they are very few indeed. Robarts too is a Reformer, and supports all Whig and reforming Governments; but he does so (like many others) from fear. What he most dreads is collision, and most desires is quiet, and he thinks non-resistance the best way. There is no reason to believe that other constituencies materially differ from this; what therefore is the result? Power has been transferred to a low class of persons; so low as to be dissatisfied and malignant, high enough to be half-instructed; so poor that money is an object to them, and without any principle which should deter them from getting it in any way they can: they may, on the whole, be considered as disaffected towards existing institutions, for when they contrast their own life of labour and privation with the wealth and splendour which they see around them, there is little difficulty in persuading them that they are grievously wronged, and that the wrong is in the nature of the institutions themselves. These general considerations make them therefore lean towards those who promise better things, and strive to introduce changes; but as their immediate wants are always uppermost, their votes are generally at the disposal of the highest bidder, whatever his politics may be.

January 3rd, 1835

They can find nobody to go to India. Lord Ellenborough (by Peel’s desire) wrote to the Duke and asked his advice, at the same time suggesting Sir James Graham. The Duke replied that he thought it better not to have anything to do with that party at present; that the best man he knew would be Lord Heytesbury, if he would go, or such a man as Lord Fitzroy Somerset, whom he mentioned, not because he had been long known to him, and had served under himself, but because he was a very able man, and the best man of business he was acquainted with. Kemp refused it; Ellenborough said that the more he looked into Indian affairs, the more clearly he saw the urgency of sending a Governor-General. Whether by this he means to imply that Lord William Bentinck has done ill, I know not; but he is always said to have done admirably well. In a letter which the Duke wrote to the King, not long ago, he told him that it was desirable to make as few changes in the foreign policy of the Government as possible. Notwithstanding the confidence of his underlings, and of the crowd of fools and females who follow the camp, it is clear that the Duke and Peel are both sensible of the danger of their situation.

January 4th, 1835

There is every prospect of a miserable defeat of the Conservatives in the City, which will be doubly disastrous, first as to the election, which is an important one, and secondly because it will go far to neutralise the effect of the famous address they got up. This is owing to mismanagement. The Committee has been bad and negligent; then they did a very foolish thing in ousting Pattison from Harwich to make room for Bonham; if they had left Pattison alone (which Harris had, I believe, pledged himself should be done), Lyall would have come in for the City, and perhaps Ward too; but when the electioneering affairs are left to William Peel, Ross, and Granville Somerset, no wonder there is not much dexterity and finesse displayed. I have published a pamphlet to help them; but as I never put my name to my pamphlets, of course nobody reads them.

January 5th, 1835

Sebastiani is coming here as Ambassador—that is, unless he changes his mind and pleads ill-health. The French Government notified to us his appointment ST. AULAIRE AND PRINCESS METTERNICH. without asking our consent, and when the Duke stated it to the Cabinet, objections were made; he accordingly wrote the same day to Bacourt, stating that the Cabinet thought the appointment objectionable, and that there would be difficulties in transacting business with him. The French Government expressed surprise, and rather insist upon their appointment, and as ours does not think it worth while to have a dispute about it, he is to come; but we think they have behaved very ill, for the Duke never proposed the Paris Embassy to Lord Cowley till he had communicated with France, and ascertained that the nomination would be agreeable to the King. It was expected that St. Aulaire or Latour-Maubourg would have come here. It is of Madame de St. Aulaire that Talleyrand said, ‘Elle cherche l’esprit que son mari trouve.’ (This anecdote I suspect not to be true, or not true of Madame de St. Aulaire, who is a very intelligent, agreeable woman, more lively and with more finesse d’esprit than her husband.)

St. Aulaire is Ambassador at Vienna, and, however clever, he either wants presence of mind or is touchy, as the following anecdote shows. Madame de Metternich is a fine handsome woman, ill brought up, impertinent, insouciante, and assez bourrue—au reste, quick and amusing. She went to a ball at St. Aulaire’s with a fine coronet of diamonds on, and when he came to receive her he said, ‘Mon dieu, madame, quelle belle couronne vous avez sur la tête!’ ‘Au moins,’ said she, ‘ce n’est par une couronne que j’ai volée.’ Instead of turning it into a joke, he made a serious affair of it, and went the next day to Metternich with a formal complaint; but Metternich said, ‘Mais mon cher, que voulez-vous? Vous voyez que j’ai épousé une femme sans éducation; je ne puis pas l’empêcher de dire de pareilles sottises, mais vous sentez bien que ce serait fort inconvénant pour moi de m’en mêler. Allons! il n’y faut plus penser,’ and so turned it off, and turned him out, by insisting on making a joke of the affair, as St. Aulaire had better have done at first.

January 7th, 1835

Just as might have been expected, the Conservative candidates in the City are defeated by an enormous majority. Pattison, the Governor of the Bank, the Liberal candidate who came in second on the poll, having been proposed by Jones Loyd,[2] the richest banker in the City, and perhaps the richest man in Europe.[3] Such outward demonstrations as these unquestionably afford a very plausible answer to the opposite cry, and the victory on the Radical side is great and important. Ward told me they should at least run them hard, so that the disappointment must be grievous; still it is asserted that the greatest part of the wealth of the City will be found in the columns of the address—but then the votes are in the other scale. The elections, as far as they have gone, are rather against the Government, but not showing any material difference in numbers—sufficient, however, to prove that, in point of fact, Peel’s declarations have produced little or no effect, and that the various considerations that have been urged on the country and the appeals to its reason have been all alike thrown away.

[2] [Mr. Jones Loyd, afterwards created Lord Overstone.]

[3] [The four City members were: Matthew Wood, James Pattison, William Crawford, and George Grote.]

I saw a letter which Barnes wrote to Henry de Ros yesterday, in which he speaks with horror and alarm of the prevailing spirit. He says the people are deaf with passion, and in the abrupt dissolution of the late Government and the bad composition of this they will see a conspiracy against their liberties, and mad and preposterous as the idea is, there is no eradicating it from their brains. I am afraid this is too true, and though no alarmist generally, and rather sluggish of fear, I do begin to tremble; and while I cast my eyes about in all directions to see what resource is in store for us, I can find none that is anything like satisfactory; the violence of party-spirit seems to blind everybody concerned in politics to all contingent possibilities, and every feeling of decency and propriety is forgotten.

Last night I was at Lady Holland’s; there were Lord and Lady Holland, Mulgrave, Seaford, Allen and Burdett. I asked them if they had read Whittle Harvey’s speech at VIOLENCE OF PARTY SPIRIT. Southwark, which was a tissue of the grossest and most outrageous abuse and ridicule of the King and Queen. They said ‘No,’ so I read to them some of the most offensive passages. Not the slightest disgust did they express. Holland merely said to one allegation, ‘That is not true,’ and Mulgrave laughed, and said, ‘Whittle is an eccentric politician.’

January 8th, 1835

On the whole the returns yesterday presented a gain to Government of about 10 votes, many elections turning out contrary to expectation both ways, and some very severe contests. The City was a great defeat: the lowest Whig beat the highest Tory by above 1,400. It is remarkable that many who signed the address to the King voted for the Radical candidates.

At dinner yesterday at Lord Chesterfield’s I met the Chancellor, whom I have not seen for some time. After dinner we talked about the state of affairs. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘will it do? what do you think?’ I said, ‘I don’t know what to think, but on the whole I am disposed to think it will not do. I don’t see how you are to get on.’ ‘What do you think of Peel?’ said he; ‘is he a fit man for the purpose?’ ‘He is a very able man, and prudent.’ ‘Aye, but is he enough of a man of the world? does he know enough of what is going on in the world?’ To which I said, ‘You have just hit upon the point that I have been lamenting. He has not lived in the world, and he has not about him those who do, and who can give him that particular sort of information and advice of which he stands in need; and I think he has, in great measure owing to this, committed a great blunder in forming such a Government as he has done; he has not been able to throw off the old prejudices of keeping to his party, and thought it necessary to depend upon them, when he ought to have seen that the case was one out of ordinary rules, that the support of the Tories alone could not maintain him, and that, if they would not give it him for their own interest, and in furtherance of their own principles, without insisting upon being in office, though he might not be able to get on without it, he would still less be able to get on with their support alone. In his place I should have told them I could not take them in, that if they would confide in me, and let me help the country out of its difficulties in my own way, I would do the best I could for it and for them.’ Lyndhurst said that ‘he was not much consulted;’ that if he had had the formation of the Government he should have gone to work very differently; that he would have had a small Cabinet, eight or ten at most, composed of new men, leaving out Aberdeen, Goulburn, Herries, and the rest of that description, employing them if possible abroad, or if not, telling them that it was necessary to lay them on the shelf for a time, and that he would do what he could for them at a future period; that Ellenborough had told Peel he had much better not take him into the Government; that he was aware he was not popular, and though he might be of some use with regard to details of business, his support out of office would (he thought), on the whole, be more serviceable than his being in the Cabinet. Peel said that his willingness to sacrifice himself only made it more incumbent on him not to permit him to do so, and insisted upon having him. Lyndhurst said he had hoped that Sandon would have been taken, and he had suggested Lord Carnarvon, to which Peel replied that he was still so young that he thought he might be passed over for the present I said, ‘Why it is the present for which it is necessary to provide, and it is now that he might have been made available.’ (Carnarvon would not join on account of ill-health.) We then talked over what sort of a Cabinet might have been got together, of new names, moderate men, few in number. He admitted that a great mistake had been committed, and that, as it was irreparable, so it would very probably be fatal. He praised the Duke of Wellington. I said I would not have taken him in, or have got him to go to Ireland, for he was ready to do anything to advance the cause. He liked this idea very much. I reminded him that the first day we had talked over the matter he had admitted that it would never do to bolster up the old concern again, and that Hardinge had told me the Tories were all ready to THE MOVEMENT AT HOLLAND HOUSE. make any sacrifices or postpone their claims, so that such a course as we suggested need not have been difficult. I told him of Barnes’s letter, and of his fears, and what he said of the effect produced by the composition of the Government. He said the ‘Times’ had behaved admirably to them, and the Government were under great obligations to me for what I had done in that matter. I told him I was glad to hear they were on such good terms, as having been instrumental to the connection, which I had no doubt had entailed an immediate loss on the proprietors of the paper.

He asked me if I thought the Opposition meant to refuse the Supplies. I said I had no doubt they did. ‘Then we must go.’ But he still expects they will have 300 votes in the House of Commons, and with that he calculates that they may struggle on with one-half of the House of Commons, the House of Lords, the King, and a large proportion of the wealth and respectability of the country. It would be difficult, but he thought they might get on; but that the fact was, there was no going on after the transfer of power to another class, which the Reform Bill had effected. I said there was no doubt of that, and that the Reform Bill had produced virtually a complete revolution in this country. ‘Aye,’ said he, ‘much more than that of ’88.’

January 9th, 1835

Dined at Holland House; they are satisfied with the elections. Mulgrave said that, out of the present return, they had to add thirty to their list and to deduct thirteen of their original calculations, giving them seventeen more than they expected. There is a small gain to the Tories, but nothing like enough. It cannot do; all the moderate Whigs (for it is not a question of Tories) are beaten in the metropolitan districts. Spankie’s admirable addresses have ensured his defeat. Duncombe, immediately after an exposure of the most disgraceful kind, will be returned by a majority doubling that of any of the other candidates; and it is not a little remarkable that Duncombe is supported by all the Dissenters, even the Quakers, with whom austerity of morals and a decent behaviour are supposed to have weight—but the rabid spirit of disaffection to government and rule bears down every other consideration, and these ‘enlightened electors’ (as their flatterers always call them) are frantic with passion against everything belonging to what they call ‘the aristocracy’ of the country. But who can wonder at these people, when we see the great Whig Lords smiling complacently at their brutal violence and senseless rage? At Holland House they talk in the same strain; not that they utter any indecent language, but they are passionate for the success of the movement. One single object have they—to eject Peel and the Tory Government; they own they don’t know what is to follow; they do not deny that the movement must be accelerated, but they don’t care; they say the Duke is responsible, for he ought not to have accepted the King’s commission, and then Melbourne must have been sent for again the next day. Now they must take the consequences—that is, the King and the Tories. They said last night that by the old Government the movement might have been checked; by any that can be formed on the downfall of the new it cannot—or at least that it must go farther than it would have done. I asked, ‘Then is there anything you think worse than advancing the movement?’ ‘Yes,’ cried out Lord Holland, ‘making the movement stand still.’ ‘And do you mean that you believe there is any danger of that, and that the movement (the progress of improvement) ever can stand still?’ ‘Yes, I do believe it,’ &c.... Such a miserable apology for their insane violence puts argument and reasoning out of the question; they are resolved to fight for power, ‘to let slip the dogs of war,’ ignorant whither they will go, and careless what shall be their prey.

January 10th, 1835

Nothing is more remarkable in these elections than the confidence of both parties in the result, and the difference of their statements as to actual numbers, Bonham, who is now, faute de mieux, the man-of-all-work of the Tories, told me last night that they had an actual majority on the returns of about twenty, whereas I went through the list, and after detecting some errors, made out that there is a majority of about thirty the other way. The Whig language CONTEST AT ROCHESTER. is still the same always, and everywhere—that they do not see what is to happen when this Government is out; that no daylight appears, but still that out it shall go. They own that they must (if they return to power) do a great deal more than they would otherwise have done, but that while they obey that necessity, they make it easy to their consciences, because it is the other party which has imposed it upon them.

January 11th, 1835

The Government people still declare their satisfaction at the result of the elections, and make out that the numbers are tolerably even. The contests are curious from their closeness. Charles Wellesley lost at Rochester by one, Lushington by four. There is a great number of similar cases; in that of Rochester it is more remarkable from the accident by which the election was lost. There were two ships in quarantine, one of which had one voter on board and the other two; they had both sailed the same day from the port they left, but one had been longer on the voyage. The ship with one voter had a right to be released on the 9th, the last day of the election, the other not till three days later. As the circumstances were the same. Sir J. Marshall, the Superintendent, suggested that both might be released together, but I did not dare relax the severity of the restriction.[4] Rosslyn was rather for doing it, but I persuaded him it would be dangerous, as, if the election should turn upon it, we should never hear the last of it, especially the Duke, to whose charge it would be laid; and the election actually turned on those two votes. The best chance that I see is, that when the hour of struggle arrives there may be more moderate men than the Whig leaders are aware of—more who, without supporting, still less joining, the new Government, will abstain from taking a violent part against them. This is my only hope, for as to a majority, I have not the slightest expectation of any such thing, and am at a loss to conceive on what they count.

[4] [The administration of the Quarantine Regulations is vested in the Privy Council, and exercised by the Clerk of the Council]

January 12th, 1835

Up to the latest returns the Tories make out that they have a majority, or at least an equality; the Whigs, that they have a majority of about seventy. The latter calculation is nearer to the truth, and it only remains to be seen how many of their people will refuse to support extreme measures. Last night at Holland House Mulgrave was perfectly furious with Charles Fox for saying he would not oppose Manners Sutton being put in the chair. It has been asserted all along by some of the opposite party that Peel’s measures have been influenced (especially in the composition of his Government) by a desire to keep the Tories together, and prepare a strong Opposition. I suspect there is some truth in this, for I can account in no other way for the strange appointments he makes, and the undiluted Toryism of his Government. He goes on the old aristocratic principle of taking high birth and connection as substitutes for other qualifications, and he never seems to consider the former avowed sentiments of any man in weighing his fitness for office. He has just made Sydney Herbert Secretary to the Board of Control, an office of great labour and involving considerable business in the House of Commons.[5] He is about twenty-two or twenty three years old, unpractised in business, and never spoke but once in the House of Commons, when he made one of those pretty first speeches which prove little or nothing, and that was in opposition to the Dissenters. He may be very fit for this place, but it remains to be proved, and I am surprised he did not make him begin with a Lordship of the Treasury or some such thing, and put Gladstone, who is a very clever man, in that post. Praed is First Secretary to the Board of Control, and will do the business.

[5] [The injustice of this remark has since become very obvious, for no man was better qualified to enter upon official life, or to run a great career in it, than Sydney Herbert. It must also be said of Sir Robert Peel that he was ever on the watch for the young and rising statesmen who, he said, were hereafter to govern the country; and a very large proportion of the men who have since played a most conspicuous and useful part were introduced by Sir Robert Peel to public life—Sydney Herbert, the Duke of Newcastle, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Cardwell, and others.]

I very much incline to believe that, although Peel says SIR JOHN HOBHOUSE’S VIEW OF AFFAIRS. he is satisfied with the returns, he does not expect the thing will last, and that upon this conviction he is determined to secure a retreat with such a force as shall make him formidable hereafter. Such as the appointments are at home, so are they abroad: Londonderry to St. Petersburg, Stuart to Vienna, and in all probability Strangford to Constantinople—the three men who are considered the great upholders of the Anti-Liberal system. (Stuart told everybody he had the offer, but it was not true.)

The Duke of Leuchtenberg arrived last night. The picture of the young Queen of Portugal (which is probably flattered) does not make her very tempting.

January 15th, 1835

The day before yesterday I fell in with Hobhouse, and we walked together for some time. He said he could not understand what the Government people meant by claiming a majority, as he heard they did; that on the Borough returns the Opposition had a majority of 100 more or less, but that the difference could only be accounted for by one party including all those who call themselves Whigs, and who supported the late Government, and by the other party counting those who, though not supporters, would be disposed to give them a trial. He wondered at and blamed the constitution of the Government, ridiculed the idea of Stanley succeeding Peel, acknowledged that he saw no possibility of any other Government being formed on the dissolution of this, and had no conception what would happen—that another dissolution would be indispensable. I said that I did not see any more than he did what they were to do when they had got Peel out; that their junction with the Radicals must end there, unless (which I could not believe) they meant to come into office on the principle of supporting and carrying all the measures they had opposed last year. He said, ‘I for one will go no farther than I did then; no, that is out of the question.’ He said the restoration of Melbourne’s Government was impossible after what had passed; they could not look the King in the face again, nor he them, after such a clear intimation on his part that he disliked them, and dreaded their principles. Soon after, however, he said that any other Government must be formed on a more popular principle, and especially must make the arrangement of the House of Lords a condition, for it was impossible to go on as things were, between the two houses; that it might have been discovered when the Reform Bill was proposed that this would be the inevitable consequence of passing that measure, but that all this he did not expect to be accomplished without a violent collision, which would very likely lead to a republic; that he should be sorry for the disturbance, but was prepared for it, and if a sacrifice was to be made, he could not hesitate in choosing the object of it.

Yesterday morning I met Duncannon, and talked it all over. I asked him if he saw any chance of forming a Government, and if he figured to himself what the King would do. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘he will send for Stanley.’ ‘What next?’ ‘He may send for Lord Grey.’ ‘Will Lord Grey propose such measures as you think indispensable?’ ‘If he will not return, or won’t go the length, he may send for Melbourne again; but it is clear he—the King—must be prepared for a more Radical Government.’ I said, ‘I don’t think he will ever consent to take such a one, or to agree to the measures they will propose to him.’ ‘Oh, but he must, he can’t help himself.’ ‘Well, but my belief is that, happen what may, he will not.’ ‘Why, you don’t think he will abdicate?’ ‘Yes, I do, rather than agree to certain things.’ ‘Well, but then he must abdicate.’ Such is the language of the leaders of the other party, and so calmly do they contemplate the possibility of such a consummation. The point on which all this turns is evidently the destruction of the House of Lords. The Whigs find it necessary to finish the work they began, and to destroy the last bulwark of Conservative power. Stanley’s speech at his election, which was very able and eloquent, has evidently disappointed them. They had cherished a hope that he would unite with them at last, which they now find he will not do. There has been a great debate in their camp whether they shall attack the Speaker or not, but it seems fixed that THE COUNTY ELECTIONS. they shall, and probably they will be beaten. I am glad they do this.

Theodore Hook, whom I met at dinner the other day, and who is an âme damnée of the Speaker’s, said that he was ready to give up the chair if it was thought imprudent to fight for it; he also said (which I don’t believe) that the Home Office had been offered him, and that he had declined it because he could not quit the chair without a peerage, and that he should be of more use in it than in the House of Lords.

Theodore Hook improvised in a wonderful way that evening; he sang a song, the burthen of which was ‘Good Night,’ inimitably good, and which might have been written down. I heard two good things at dinner yesterday, one of Spankie’s. In his canvass he met with a refusal from some tradesman, who told him he should vote for Duncombe and Wakley. Spankie said, ‘Well, my friend, I am sorry you won’t vote for me, and I can only say that I hope you may have Tom Duncombe for your customer, and Wakley for your tenant.’[6] The other is attributed to Alvanley. Some reformer was clamouring for the expulsion of the Bishops from the House of Lords, but said he would not have them all go; he would leave two: ‘To keep up the breed, I suppose,’ said the other.

[6] [The one was celebrated for non-payment of his bills, and the other was suspected of setting fire to his house. Wakley’s house was burnt, and he brought an action against the Insurance Office, which declined to pay his policy. I forget what was the result of the trial, but that of the evidence was a conviction of his own instrumentality.]

January 17th, 1835

The Middlesex election terminated in the return of Hume by about 400 votes—Wood got a majority of about 250 at first, but could not sustain it. It would have been a capital thing to turn out Hume, but I never expected it.

January 20th, 1835

Sir George Murray is beaten at Perth; James Wortley at Forfar—blows to the Government. On the other hand, Palmerston is beaten in Hants, at which everybody rejoices, for he is marvellously unpopular; they would have liked to illuminate the Foreign Office. Lord Harrowby called on me yesterday; he told me my pamphlet had been attributed to Croker in some company where he had been. Jonathan Peel told me yesterday morning that Lady Alice Kennedy had sent word to his wife that the Queen is with child; if it be true, and a queer thing if it is, it will hardly come to anything at her age, and with her health; but what a difference it would make!

January 23rd, 1834

Within the last few days the county elections have given a considerable turn to the state of affairs. The Conservatives have been everywhere triumphant. Norfolk, Derbyshire, Hants, Lancashire—two Whigs turned out and two Conservatives returned; Ingilby in Lincolnshire; one in Surrey, one in Kent: and if these affairs had not been infamously managed, they would have returned two in Surrey, two in Kent, and (if they had put up a better man) one in the other division of Norfolk. The great and most important victory, however, is Francis Egerton in Lancashire, who is nearly 1,000 above his opponents, and has been received with astonishing enthusiasm, and was the popular candidate, even at Manchester and with the mob. These elections have damped the spirits of the Radicals, and proportionally raised those of the Government. The ‘Morning Chronicle’ was yesterday quite silent on the subject, and at Holland House, where I dined, they were evidently in no small disgust. I told Lord Holland that I considered the Lancashire election as the most important event that had occurred, and one calculated to have a great moral effect in favour of the Government, which he owned was true, and they did not deny that the Government had cause for elation.

In the morning we had a meeting at the Council Office to consider of the removal of assizes, when Lyndhurst in his off-hand way said to me, ‘Well, I think we are safe now; I have no fears.’ ‘Haven’t you,’ I said, ‘but I have.’ ‘Oh no, we are on a rock—adamant.’ I don’t think they are yet in a condition to begin triumphing, but I certainly see daylight, which I did not before. Nobody can possibly deny that there is a great reaction in the country; and though the CHURCH REFORM BILL. weight of the towns, and the power of the ten-pounders thrown into the other scale, make it preponderate, there is a strong counteracting force which will enable the better cause to maintain a respectable fight. I expect that Francis Egerton’s election will produce indirectly very important consequences, and will be the means of proving to moderate, doubting, timorous politicians that they need not shrink from avowing whatever Conservative sentiments they really do entertain. Much remains to be done, many difficulties to be surmounted, before anything like security can be felt, but undoubtedly the political horizon looks much brighter than it did.

January 25th, 1835

A ridiculous thing happened the other day. The Speaker came to the Council Office in a great stew about the attacks on him, and wanted to look at the register of the names of those who had attended at the different Councils. Though I think he is a pauvre sire, he has a very tolerable case here, and I wrote a letter to the ‘Times’ in his defence, and signed it ‘Onslow,’ happening to think of Speaker Onslow. The next day appeared a letter from Lord Onslow, declaring that he was not the author of a letter which had appeared in his name. The ‘Times’ published it, adding they thought he could hardly be serious. Munster told me the day before yesterday that he was told of the Queen’s being with child on the day of the Lord Mayor’s dinner; that she is now between two and three months gone. Of course there will be plenty of scandal. Alvanley proposes that the psalm ‘Lord, how wonderful are thy works’ should be sung. It so happens, however, that Howe has not been with the Court for a considerable time.

January 27th, 1835

There is a Committee sitting at my office to arrange the Church Bill—Rosslyn, Wharncliffe, Ellenborough, and Herries. It is generally believed they mean to bring forward some very extensive measures. Allen says, ‘The honest Whigs cannot oppose it with honour, nor the Tories support it without infamy,’ that all the honest Whigs would support it, the honest Tories oppose it, the dishonest Tories would support, and the dishonest Whigs oppose it. He told me an anecdote at the same time which shows what the supineness and sense of security of the Church were twenty years ago. An architect built a chapel on Lord Holland’s land, near Holland House, and wished it to be appropriated to the service of the Church of England, and served by a curate. The rector objected and refused his consent. There was no remedy against him, and all that could be done was to make it a Methodist meeting-house, or a Roman Catholic chapel, either of which by taking out a licence, the builder could do. However, he got Lord Holland to speak to the Archbishop of Canterbury (Sutton), to tell him the difficulty, and request his interference with the rector to suffer this chapel to be opened to an Orthodox congregation. After some delay the Archbishop told Holland that he had better advise his friend to take out a licence, and make it a Catholic or Dissenting chapel, as he thought best. The builder could not afford to lose the capital he had expended, and acted upon the advice of the Primate. The chapel is a meeting-house to this day. I shall be very glad if this reform of the Church is well done and gives satisfaction, and I do not know that any of the present Ministers are pledged against a measure which improves the discipline without diminishing the revenues of the Church, but certainly reforms, and especially ecclesiastical reforms, do come with a bad grace from them. It is ludicrous to see the ‘Standard’ writing Church reform articles; and the other day I looked back at Knatchbull’s speech at the Kentish meeting, a week after the dissolution of the late Government, in which he expressed an earnest hope that he might leave this country ‘without any change in Church or State.’ He has been Anti-everything during his whole life, and now he is come into office to carry into effect ‘safe and necessary reforms,’ which he never could perceive the slightest occasion for while he was out. All these things are disgusting; they disgust one with political life, they lower the characters of public men. One strains one’s eyes in vain to catch a sight of sincerity, straightforwardness, disinterestedness, consistency; each party we have constantly acting with a view to its own INSECURITY OF THE TORIES. interests as a party, and always disregarding consequences with miserable shortsightedness.

February 2nd, 1835

The elections are over, and still each side claims a majority. It will turn out probably that the Government have about 270 thick and thin men. Since the Lancashire election, the Whigs have certainly not been so elated, though they still expect to succeed. They begin with the Speakership, and put up Abercromby, who is probably the best candidate they could select; he is a dull, grave man, sensible and hard-headed I fancy, but it has always been matter of astonishment to me that they should make so much of him as they do. The Duke of Wellington is constantly regretting that he did not abstain from taking office, as he wished to do, and I hear that Peel now thinks it would have been better: but he thinks so because he fancies that Stanley would have joined if the Duke had not been there, which is after all very doubtful. Stanley has preserved the strictest neutrality through the late contest, and been very guarded and cautious in his language—so much so, that the Whigs think he will vote for Abercromby against Manners Sutton, which I don’t believe. The Church Reform is in active preparation; I know nothing of its details.

Pozzo di Borgo is coming here, and the Emperor sends him partly to save time and, Madame de Lieven writes me word, ‘to prove his goodwill, by sending his ablest and most confidential diplomatist.’ Old Talleyrand would very likely have been glad enough to come back too (while the Duke is in office), but he is gone to Richecote. A great mystery is still made about the Queen’s grossesse; the medical men believe it, though they think it no certainty.

February 8th, 1834

On Monday last we had the Sheriffs’ dinner at Lord Rosslyn’s,[7] where I met for the first time all the new men. Murray did not come, for since his defeat in Perthshire he no longer considers himself of the Cabinet. Before dinner Peel told me he had offered the vacant Lordship of the Treasury to Charles Canning,[8] in a letter to Lady Canning, saying it would give him great pleasure to introduce her son into public life, and that he should be glad to treat him with confidence, and do all that lay in him to promote his success. Lady Canning wrote a very gracious answer, saying that she preferred his being in Parliament some time before he took office, but neither he nor she was indisposed to support him and his Government. At this dinner the Duke talked to me about Spain, and said that the affair at the Post Office at Madrid, in which Canterac was killed, was the most lamentable thing that had happened, and the most discreditable to the Government; that if the Carlists did not rise upon it all over Spain, it was clear there were none; that it was a most extraordinary war, in which the Carlists had the superiority in the field, but possessed no fortified and even no open town; and that, notwithstanding all the plunder and devastation incidental to such a state of things, all the farmers in the disturbed provinces regularly paid their rents.

[7] [The Lord President’s annual dinner to the Cabinet, at which the Sheriffs for the ensuing year are selected, to be appointed by the King at the next Council.]

[8] [Afterwards Viscount Canning and Governor-General of India in 1856.]

Sandon is to move the address in the House of Commons, Lord Carnarvon refused to move it in the House of Lords. I think the Church Reform Commission, which was gazetted a few days ago, has done good, especially as it is backed up by Peel’s refusing to fill up the vacant Prebendary of Westminster, and placing it at the disposal of the Commissioners.

I went to Oatlands on Wednesday for two nights, and met the Duchess, Countess, the Granvilles, and Pahlen. It was agreeable enough. Lord Granville told us a curious story of an atrocity very recently committed in France. The governor of a military academy had objected to one of the officers, a professor, bringing a woman who lived with him into the establishment. The man persisted, and he finally ordered her to be ejected. Resolving to be revenged, the officer took these means; he bribed a servant of the governor’s, who let him into the house at night; when he got into the bedroom of his daughter, ravished her, and THE KING’S WHIMS. then wounded her severely with some sharp instrument, but not mortally. The girl is still alive, but in a state of frenzy; the case is coming before the French tribunals. [This was the famous case of La Roncière, very inaccurately stated above. There is now little doubt that La Roncière was innocent, and that the story was got up by the girl to revenge herself on him for some slight.]

My brothers tell me that the Duke is bored to death with the King, who thinks it necessary to be giving advice and opinions upon different matters, always to the last degree ridiculous and absurd. He is just now mightily indignant at Lord Napier’s affair at Canton, and wants to go to war with China. He writes in this strain to the Duke, who is obliged to write long answers, very respectfully telling him what an old fool he is. Another crotchet of his is to buy the Island of St. Bartholomew (which belongs to Denmark, and which the Danes want to sell) for fear the Russians should buy it, as he is very jealous of Russia. The Duke told him that it would cost 70,000ℓ. or 80,000ℓ., for which they must go to Parliament; and he did not think any House of Commons we were likely to have would vote such a sum for such a purpose. Then he does not at all like Pozzo di Borgo’s coming here, and wrote to say that since he was to come, it was well that he would have the vigilant eye of the Duke to watch him, for he never could look upon him in any other light than as the servile tool of advancing the ambitious objects of an aggrandising and unprincipled Power, or words to that effect. He thinks his present Ministers do not treat him well, inasmuch as they do not tell him enough. The last, it seems, constantly fed him with scraps of information which he twaddled over, and probably talked nonsense about; but it is difficult to imagine anything more irksome for a Government beset with difficulties like this than to have to discuss the various details of their measures with a silly bustling old fellow, who can by no possibility comprehend the scope and bearing of anything.

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CHAPTER XXVII.

The Speakership — Temporary Houses of Parliament — Church Reform — Dissenters’ Marriage Bill — Peel’s False Position — Burke — Palmerston’s Talents as a Man of Business and Unpopularity — Sympathy of Continental Courts with the Tories — Abercromby elected Speaker — Defeat of the Government — Tactics of the Opposition — The Speaker does not dine with Peel — Meeting of Stanley’s Friends — Debate on the Address — Lord John Russell leads the Opposition — The Stanley Party — Second Defeat of the Government — Peel’s Ability — The Lichfield House Meeting — Debate on Lord Londonderry’s Appointment — His Speech in the Lords and Resignation — Sir E. Sugden resigns the Great Seal of Ireland — Lady Canterbury — Brougham in the House of Lords — Peel’s Readiness and Courage — Lord Canterbury and Stratford Canning proposed for Canada — Approaching Fall of the Peel Government — Meetings of the Opposition — Further Defeat — Sir Robert Peel’s own View of the State of Affairs — He resigns.

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February 14th, 1835

There has been a wonderful lull for some time past, and though we are said to be, and I believe we in fact are, on the eve of a crisis of great importance, perfect tranquillity prevails universally (except, of course, in Ireland), and men go about their daily occupations without any signs of apprehension. The state of this country is a curious political paradox; however, speculation will soon be lost in certainty, so it is of no use thinking more of the matter. The newspapers have been filled usque ad nauseam with the debates about the Speakership, and both parties are equally confident, but the bets are in favour of Sutton. The argument on his side has been triumphant, and the Abercrombians have not urged the best that they might. Tom Duncombe, who at first said he would vote for Sutton, and now votes the other way, puts it on the true ground, ‘that it is a good factious vote.’ I have little doubt that Peel will come down OPENING OF THE SESSION. in Parliament with a fair and reasonable case, but I have no hope that he will propose or agree to anything satisfactorily about the Irish Church; and if anything overturns his Government, it will be that unhappy question of appropriation. From George Dawson’s language, whom I fell in with the other morning, I see they are resolved to stand like rocks in defending ‘the Church,’ as they call it. All this week and the last I have been at my office the whole day with our Judicial Committee, which works very well. We have Shadwell, Parke, Bosanquet and Erskine continually; and Vaughan, Nicholl and Jenner occasionally. Alava talked to me about the Duke of Wellington, of whom he said everybody was afraid, even his nearest relations, and that he found him, ‘très changé pour lui.’

February 15th, 1835

Dined at Miss Berry’s, and Lord John Russell came after; told me he had 320 people to vote with him on the Speakership (of whom perhaps 20 will not come), so his party make sure of it. Nobody talks of anything else, and what has been written on the subject in pamphlets and newspapers would fill volumes. Though it is become inconceivably tiresome, I cannot help writing and talking about it myself, so impossible is it to avoid the contagion. I went yesterday to see the two Houses of Parliament;[1] the old House of Lords (now House of Commons) is very spacious and convenient; but the present House of Lords is a wretched dog-hole. The Lords will be very sulky in such a place, and in a great hurry to get back to their own House, or to have another. For the first time there is a gallery in the House of Commons reserved for reporters, which is quite inconsistent with their standing orders, and the prohibition which still in form exists against publishing the debates. It is a sort of public and avowed homage to opinion, and a recognition of the right of the people to know through the medium of the press all that passes within those walls.

[1] [The old Houses of Parliament were burnt down on October 16, 1834, during Mr. Greville’s absence from town in the autumn. The Houses here spoken of were the temporary buildings used during the erection of the new Houses.]

Lord John said to me, ‘Do you remember last year, when we were talking, I told you I thought the House of Lords would throw out some measure or other—that there would be a change of Government, a dissolution; and then we should have a Parliament returned with which nobody could govern the country? You see we have reached that point.’ According to their several calculations, both the opposite parties continue to claim a majority, or rather on the Tory side an equality; and as these are made by men experienced in the composition of the House, and as almost everybody is pledged and committed in some way or other, it is a perfect enigma to me how one or the other can be so deceived. The Whigs, having discovered that Abercromby must be proposed ‘upon a great principle’ (which is great as omne ignotum is magnificum—for they have never given a hint of what the principle is), have now found out that the English Church Reform which is in agitation is a very bad move on the part of the Government, as the people do not care about Church Reform here—do not want any such thing. This is, very possibly, in great measure true; for the people, who are urged and excited by the Radical leaders, will be sure to grow indifferent about such reforms as they can obtain by legitimate means, and with the concurrence of legitimate authority, and be invited to agitate for those which may be more difficult or slow of accomplishment. Sydney Smith said last night that he hears from those who know that it will be very sweeping; but he thinks it will not touch the great livings, nor meddle with advowsons. He concludes that at the same time the Dissenters will be relieved from Church rates, that tithes will be extinguished, and the question of Dissenters’ marriages settled. This has been an enormous scandal, and its continuance has been owing to the pride, obstinacy, and avarice of the Church; they would not give up the fees they received from this source, and they were satisfied to celebrate these rites in church while the parties were from the beginning to the end of the service protesting against all and every part of it, often making a most indecent noise and interruption. All these grievous abuses must be done away CHURCH REFORM. with; and deeply responsible are those who never would hear of their being done away with before. These guilty parties are the clergy and the Tories, both of whom, now that it is almost too late, have consented to drop their arrogant pretensions, and to submit to those necessary and reasonable reforms against which they have so bitterly inveighed, and so resolutely fought. We are disgusted and shocked at reading Croly’s account of the scandalous conduct of the Catholic clergy in Ireland, with regard to the emoluments they extort from their miserable flocks, and at the systematic desecration of holy things which they countenance and practise; but when the difference is considered between their spiritual condition and their moral composition as a class, the conduct of the clergy here appears just as revolting. The Irish clergy are generally sprung from the lowest class, and have received a bad education at Maynooth; they depend for subsistence upon the voluntary liberality or devotion of their people, they have few motives or principles of restraint, and every incentive to follow the shameful course which they do; but the English clergy are generally respectably born, well educated, and amply endowed, and yet they are content to be the ministers of a scandalous system, which, if it were not a source of profit to themselves, they would not tolerate for an instant. Instead of compelling the Dissenters to be married in church, if they had been really penetrated with any devotional feelings, or by any considerations of delicacy and charity, they would long ago have complained of this necessity as a grievance, and besieged the Legislature with entreaties to relieve the Church from the scandal, and themselves from so painful and odious a duty. But it was a badge of inferiority and dependence forced upon the Dissenters, and a source of profit to themselves; and therefore they defended and maintained it, and this is what they call defending the Church; and when the Dissenters themselves pray to be relieved from the tax and the humiliation, and liberal men support their prayer, a cry is got up that the Church is in danger. When the Dissenters, having prayed in vain, grow louder and bolder in their demands, and the cries of the Churchmen gradually sink into a whine, which is at last silenced in submission, the Church really is in danger; and then, when it no longer can be refused, it becomes perilous to grant the boon which justice and wisdom have so long required. So it is, and has been with all obstinate and senseless denials, followed by reluctant and tardy concessions—with Catholic emancipation, the Test and Corporation Acts, Parliamentary Reform, and with everything else; and thus, one of the great difficulties which beset Peel and his Government is, that they stand in an utterly false position. As a statesman, it must be mortifying to him to reflect that all the great measures which his political life has been spent in opposing have been carried in spite of him, and that whatever danger may have resulted from this cause is in great measure owing to the opposition he was enabled, by his great talents and his influence, or rather the influence of the party which he led, to give to those measures. He contrived totally to fail in preventing the success of the measures themselves, but so to mar and delay them as to obviate the good that might have been produced by timely and voluntary concessions; and now, coming forward as he says, ‘to resist the pressure from without,’ he finds himself compelled to yield to that pressure; for what, after all, is the language which he now holds, what are his addresses, his speeches, his promises, his Church Commission, but a surrender to the spirit and the principle of Reform, and to the demands of the people—the people, as contra-distinguished from those great interests on whose support he has depended, and whose wishes or prejudices he has consulted? For assuredly, neither the King, nor the Church, nor the aristocracy, seriously and sincerely desire these or any other reforms, and only agree to them from necessity. Peel is, I think, right; he has no other alternative. Such is the force and power of public opinion, that no Government can resist it; and if Peel can succeed in restraining and directing it, if he can convert it from a destructive into a conservative element, he will render such a great service as will cancel all the former mischief he has done; but he FALSE POSITION OF SIR R. PEEL. enters with disadvantage upon a course which implies at the outset the surrender of much of the governing principle of his political life, and in which neither friend nor foe can doubt that the conduct he adopts, however justifiable, necessary, indispensable, is compulsory and unpalatable. A man who is called to the head of affairs must undoubtedly act, not according to any impracticable obstinate theories of his own, but according to the state in which he finds affairs, no matter how produced or by whom; but it is a very different thing to adopt a system reluctantly and under necessity, because somebody else by his incapacity or his misfortune has rendered it indispensable, and to do so after you yourself have brought about this state of things: and such is the false position of Peel with all his Tory associates. This, however, is begging the question in dispute between the two great antagonistic parties. Peel would say that the imprudent concessions and reckless changes of the Whigs have made the difficulty; the Whigs would say that the resistance of the Tories to all moderate and gradual reforms produced the sweeping measure of ’31, and the excitement that was partly its cause and partly its consequence.

February 17th, 1835

Yesterday I read Burke’s appeal from the new to the old Whigs, which contains astonishing coincidences with the present times. His definition of the people is somewhat tumid and obscure, and involved in a splendid confusion of generalities and abstruse doctrine; but it is a wonderful monument of his genius, and exhibits that extent of knowledge and accuracy of insight into the nature of parties and the workings of political ambition which make him an authority for all times, and show him to be in the political what Shakespeare was in the moral world. But his writings, however as objects of study they may influence the opinions or form the judgment of young men, would have no more power than a piece of musty parchment to arrest the tide of present violence, and superinduce reflection and calmness. A speech of Tom Duncombe’s would produce far greater effect than the perusal of a discourse of Burke’s. Wisdom never operates directly on masses; it may work upon them through secondary and by indirect means, but it cannot face the noise of actual contest, where passion and not reason is always uppermost. Nobody but Burke could have described so well the Dukes of Devonshire and Bedford of the present day, who appear to have lost their senses, and to be ready to peril all their great possessions to gratify the passions of the moment. He says:—‘But riches do not in all cases secure even an inert and passive resistance; there are always in that description men whose fortunes, when their minds are once vitiated by passion or evil principle, are by no means a security from their actually taking their part against the public tranquillity. We see to what low and despicable passion of all kinds many men in that class are ready to sacrifice the patrimonial estates which might be perpetuated in their families with splendour, and with the fame of hereditary benefactors to mankind, from generation to generation. Do we not see how lightly people treat their fortunes when they are under the passion of gaming? The game of resentment or ambition will be played by many of the great and rich as desperately and with as much blindness to the consequences as any other game. Passion blinds them to the consequences as far as they concern themselves, and as to the consequences with regard to others, they are no part of their consideration.’

The other night I met some clerks in the Foreign Office to whom the very name of Palmerston is hateful, but I was surprised to hear them (Mellish particularly, who can judge both from capacity and opportunity), give ample testimony to his abilities. They said that he wrote admirably, and could express himself perfectly in French, very sufficiently in Italian, and understood German; that his diligence and attention were unwearied—he read everything and wrote an immense quantity; that the foreign Ministers (who detest him) did him justice as an excellent man of business. His great fault is want of punctuality, and never caring for an engagement if it did not suit him, keeping everybody waiting for hours on his pleasure or caprice. This testimony is beyond suspicion, and it is confirmed by the opinions of his LORD PALMERSTON AS A MAN OF BUSINESS. colleagues; but it is certain that he cut a very poor figure in Parliament all the time he was in office before.

At the Travellers’ yesterday I fell in with Bülow, who is just come back from Berlin to resume his mission. He told me that he was on such terms with Palmerston that it was impossible for him to stay here, and that for some time past he had given up communicating with him except upon the most indispensable matters and in the most formal way. He then gave me an account of the reception of the news of the change of our Government at Berlin, where the Emperor of Russia happened to be at the time. The Empress had come there on a visit to her father, and the Emperor (who is supposed to have preserved his conjugal fidelity immaculate) had rushed from Moscow without any notice to see her, and was still there when news of this great event arrived. There is something very characteristic in the first impression which the intelligence produced, at once manifesting the secret wishes of the party and their ignorance and apparent incapacity of comprehending the nature of our Constitution, and the limited extent of the power of the King of England. The Emperor immediately conceived that the whole system of the late Government would be reversed at home and abroad, that Leopold would be driven from Belgium, the Dutch dominion restored, and the Quadruple Alliance dissolved. Bülow, who has been in England long enough to know better the real state of things, endeavoured to undeceive him, and succeeded, though not without great difficulty; but when he proceeded to explain to him that the new Government would very likely not be able to keep their places, and that at any rate they would be compelled to conduct the Government upon the principle of Reform which the late Government had established, the Emperor could not by any means comprehend it, nor why or how there could be any difficulty in keeping their places if the King was resolved to support them, and had appointed them at his own pleasure. It would seem as if they had never read the last two or three years of our history, or, having read it, as if the habits of unbounded power in which they are born, educated, and expect to die, had rendered their understandings utterly impervious to the apparent paradox of a crowned head destitute of power to choose his own Ministers. The Duke of Cumberland, who was likewise there, began by talking the same nonsense, and was full of the destruction of the Reform Bill; but Billy Holmes, who, whatever else he may be, is a very sharp fellow, succeeded in muzzling him. This account which Bülow gave me is, however, more than amusing; it is instructive, because it shows which way the real wishes of the absolute sovereigns point, and makes it highly probable that they look upon the present settlement of Europe as one only ad interim, and to be remodelled whenever an opportunity shall present itself. They are satisfied at present with damming and dyking out the waters of Liberalism, but they hope to drain the lands in which they are collected, and to place themselves for ever out of the danger of an inundation. The war of opinions is in fact declared; it may languish, there may be truces, but there will be no peace in our time.

February 19th, 1835

The important day is arrived, and it dawns in sunshine and south wind. In a few hours the question of the Speakership will be decided, and there will at least be the gain (wherever the loss may fall) of getting rid of a subject which has become intolerably tiresome. For the last three weeks every newspaper has been literally filled with the controversy, every club engaged in betting on the event; in every room, at the corner of every street, nobody talked of anything else. It was the first enquiry of every man you met, ‘Well, what do you hear to-day? they say Sutton will win by 30.’ The next man (a Whig) would say, ‘It is safe; Abercromby will have 317 votes sure’—each party unboundedly confident, and both securing a retreat by declaring that defeat will not signify. Half the Opposition think it a false move to try it, and the more sober of the Government are conscious that a defeat will be very injurious.

We had a Council yesterday, and a levee more than usually brilliant; all the new Ministers and all the old, the ELECTION OF SPEAKER ABERCROMBY. whole Corps Diplomatique, with a host of others, mixed up in the first entrée room, and all very civil and good-humoured. The King received the ex-Ministers very graciously, and talked to them all, at least to all I saw pass by. Brougham alone was absent, and Lord Spencer, who was hardly to be considered as one of them, and is not in town, though, by-the-bye, I think I am wrong in this, because there were others whom I did not see—Duncannon, Spring Rice, and Hobhouse.

February 20th, 1835

The great battle is over and the Government defeated, 316 to 306. Such a division never was known before in the House of Commons, and the accuracy of the calculations is really surprising. Mulgrave told me three days ago they had 317 people, which with the Teller makes the exact number. Holmes went over the other list, and made it 307—also correct. In the House so justly had they reckoned, that when the numbers first counted (306) were told to Duncannon in the lobby he said, ‘Then we shall win by 10.’ Burdett and Cobbett went away, which with Tellers makes a total of 626 members in the House. All the Irish members voted but 4, all the Scotch but 3, all the English but 25. The Irish and Scotch, in fact, made the majority.

The elation on one side and the depression on the other were naturally considerable, and there was not time last night to adjust scattered thoughts. Much money was won and lost; everybody betted. I won 55ℓ., for on the whole I thought (though quite a toss-up) that the chances were rather in favour of Abercromby. I had a better opinion of the cleverness of the managers on his side, and their amazing confidence staggered me, so that after at first believing Sutton to be sure, I finished by leaning the other way. The debate seems to have been dull—Sutton was dull, Peel was dull; Stanley clever, strong against the Opposition, but thought to have been indiscreet. A Tory told me it was a second edition of the thimblerig speech, which, if so, will not do him good. He carried apparently very few people with him, but made one convert—Angerstein—who changed his vote because Stanley made out that Abercromby was for the Ballot. This seems an excellent reason why he should be opposed as a Minister or a candidate, but none why he should not sit in the chair of the House. Lord John Russell is said to have spoken remarkably well, which is important to them as a party, being his first appearance as their leader. Peel and the Duke dined at Lord Salisbury’s, and all the Tories were invited there in the evening, with the intention probably of celebrating their anticipated victory; and, if so, their merry meeting must have been changed to dismal alarms, for there is no denying or concealing that it is a very serious disaster. The moral effect of beginning with a defeat is bad; it discourages the wavering and timid, who might have felt half disposed to support the Government and the constitution. The trial of strength leads to very uncomfortable reflections, for every man of these 317 is prepared to go all lengths; and though there are probably none among the majority who will support Government, there are some among the minority who will oppose them—Dudley Stuart, Angerstein, and Burdett, who went away.

The majority of the world naturally look at this event with the eye of party, and as a triumph one way and a mortification the other; but I, who have no party prejudices and predilections, and care nothing who is in the chair, and not much who is in office, provided ‘the thing,’ as Cobbett calls it, is kept going, look at this division with sorrow and alarm, as affording undoubted evidence that no prospect appears of the possibility of this or any other Government being able to accomplish the purposes for which a Government is intended. We seem to be arrived at what is vulgarly termed a dead lock. Nothing can be more clear than that the present Ministers are in a minority, and that all the other parties in the House united can beat them when they will. It is equally clear that they can beat any section of their opponents whenever these are disunited. The political attraction which binds together the mass cannot last long, and there are too many elements of repulsion in esse or in posse not to insure the speedy disjunction of the several PARTIES BALANCED. atoms; but in the meantime, if they can be held together, what is to happen? Peel will take a beating or two, but he may be so beaten as to be compelled to resign or again dissolve. Suppose he dissolves. The Tories think the reaction is on the increase, and that the Conservative interest would gain largely by another dissolution; still there is scarcely a hope of their gaining enough to enable Peel to carry on the Government with such constant and dependible majorities as can alone render it efficacious and secure. On the other hand, if Peel resigns, the Opposition, should they return to power, must dissolve; for what can they do against 300 Tories? and what Ministry can by possibility be formed that can have a certain majority of its own out of the heterogeneous mixture of Whigs, Radicals, Repealers, and men of every shade and gradation of opinion? Their situation, notwithstanding their victory, seems worse than that of their antagonists with reference to their power as a party; and if they do storm Downing Street and St. James’s, and go again to the country, as far as appearances go, what chance have they of materially bettering their condition, and getting another House of Commons more manageable and better adapted to their purpose than this? This victory, therefore, will not enable the old Government to triumph over the new, or materially affect the positions of the two parties, and, as somebody said last night, they will be very much puzzled what to do with their majority now they have got it.

The first impression of great events is generally one of alarm, which upon this occasion subsequent reflection has diminished as far as relates to the immediate peril of the present Government. Speculation already began last night as to the Address, on which some pretend no amendment will be moved, others that one will, which as certainly will be carried. No question can, however, be more embarrassing to the Whig leaders, for they would be disposed in prudence to abstain from any very violent measure, but will find great difficulty in dealing with their associates. If they resolve upon pushing their victory and amending the Address, they run the risk of exciting terror by their violence; if they avoid this, probably some of the Radicals will do it, and then they must support Government on the Address against a Radical section of the House, or join with the Radicals in one of two ways, either by supporting their amendment or persuading them to withdraw it; in either case drawing closer the bonds of that connexion which they are ashamed and afraid to avow, and which will, I strongly incline to believe, be in the end fatal to the Whig party. The only thing that can truly be predicted is, that all is confusion, uncertainty, embarrassment, a state of things full of difficulty and peril, but not totally without hope.

February 21st, 1835

The Government were grievously annoyed at the event of Thursday, and the Duke rejected all the commonplaces of consolation, ‘that it would turn out a good thing.’ At Lord Salisbury’s dinner (to which Peel did not go) they were all very dejected, and the Duke said at once it was as bad as could be; and the thing appeared the worse because they had been led to feel so very secure. He desired his private secretary to have everything ready to quit the Foreign Office at a moment’s notice. However, at dinner yesterday at Peel’s (a great dinner to all the Ambassadors and twenty-six people) he said to me, ‘It is very bad, but I consider the country on its legs again.’ ‘Do you ?’ I said, ‘I am glad you think so.’ ‘Oh, yes, I think that, however this may end; I think the country is on its legs again.’

The Whigs are resolved to push their victory with all their energies, and they appear to have no doubt of ousting the Government, and as they are determined to proceed by any and every means in their career, and the others are equally resolved to fight the battle while any means of resistance remain, the strife must be deadly, and such as to extinguish any hope of a coalition between moderate men of both sides for the simple reason that moderation has ascended to Heaven, and such men will no longer be found.

February 23rd, 1835

The Opposition mean to move an amendment to the Address, which they expect to carry by a larger FIERCE OPPOSITION TO GOVERNMENT. majority than the last. Their tactics are completely arranged, and their understanding with O’Connell and all the Radicals so good that they think there is no danger of any indiscreet ebullition in any quarter. Discarding every prospective consideration, and prepared to encounter all consequences, they concentrate all their energies upon the single object of turning out the Government, in which they have no doubt of succeeding. It is the first time (as far as I know) that any great party ever proceeded upon, and avowed, such a principle as that which binds these people together and puts them in action; namely, to destroy the King’s Ministry, without any reference to the measures that Ministry may propose, and without waiting to see how they may intend to carry on the Government. Not only do they throw out of their consideration the conduct of the Administration, but they are resolved to accomplish its destruction, without being prepared to substitute any stronger Government in its room, and with a perfect knowledge that its dissolution must necessarily produce a state of extraordinary embarrassment, from which they do not pretend to have the power of extricating the country. All that they ever condescend to say, in answer to any such remonstrances, is this: ‘The King exercised his prerogative in a most extraordinary and unjustifiable manner. We have the same right to reject his Government, that he had to turn out ours; if there is embarrassment, it is none of our creating, the King and the Tories must be responsible for it. We care not what are the principles now avowed by them. If they are not Reformers, they cannot govern this country, and are not to be tolerated at the head of affairs. If they are, it is not to be endured that they should usurp our places, and then in defiance of all their principles, and in opposition to all their previous conduct, carry into effect the measures which we should, with perfect consistency, have brought forward. We will listen therefore to nothing. Out they shall go, and till we have got them out, we will never rest, nor desist from our attacks.’ ‘Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quærere,’ such is the manner of their reasoning. Their intention seems to be to avoid doing anything very desperate, but to keep beating the Government, constantly exhibiting their own power and the helpless state of their adversaries to the world. Some of them affect to deny their union with O’Connell, but they say whatever suits their present purpose. In the case of Manners Sutton, they took care to have the charges against him disseminated through the country, and did their best to have them believed. The constituencies believed them, and instructed their representatives accordingly; and when, by these means, they had secured a majority, they came down at the last moment to the House of Commons and owned that there was not one word of truth in the allegations against him. John Russell had written a letter (perhaps more than one) in which he urged opposition to Sutton, on the ground of his having advised the dissolution of the last Parliament. Goulburn got possession of this letter, which was handed to him during the debate, he does not know by whom. (Goulburn told me this himself.) He gave it to Peel while he was speaking, or just before. Peel asked John Russell if he had ever said so, and John Russell denied it. Peel did not produce the letter as he might have done, but the story was told in the ‘Times’ the next day. So in the case of the Bishop of Exeter, and Lord John’s controversy with him. He told an untruth, undoubtedly without knowing it, but he might have known it; the lie did its business—

In public spoke, it fell with greater force,
And, heard by hundreds, was believed, of course;

and though he afterwards made a very handsome apology, half the people who were influenced by the original statement never heard of the contradiction, or cared for it, if they did; and to show the candour of the Liberal press, the ‘Morning Chronicle,’ and other papers of that persuasion, which trumpeted forth the original lie, never inserted the subsequent correspondence, and Lord John’s contradiction of his own statement. I like him so much personally, that I am sorry for all this. To return to the party, they are boiling with indignation at the idea of another dissolution, and talk of UNION WITH O’CONNELL. such advice to the King as affording good ground for impeachment, though till they have settled the House of Lords, and had their wicked will of it, the Ministers would be pretty safe before that tribunal for such an act. It is the general opinion that Peel will dissolve, and go once more to the country if he can, but this must depend upon the sort of opposition they offer, and the majorities they can bring into the field. Adolphus FitzClarence told me that he never saw the King so determined as he is to stand by this Government to the last, and I do not think any of these men will prove deficient in courage.

February 24th, 1835

The Opposition expect a majority of from thirty to forty on the amendment. The union with O’Connell is complete, however long it may last, and he has agreed to give up Repeal, and they are to find some lucrative place for him when they get in again. What he wants is to be a Master of the Rolls in Ireland; the rent fails, and money he must have. It is a wretched thing that there is no buying that man now without disgrace; well would it have been to have made the purchase long ago; and it will not be the least curious part of his curious life if this bargain takes place, and he settles down into the regular discharge of his professional duties, and bonâ fide abandons agitation. There was great curiosity last night to know whether the Speaker dined with Peel. It is usual for him to dine with the leader of the House of Commons on these occasions, and hear the speech read. Sutton always dined with Althorp, but then Althorp put him in the chair. Abercromby, however, very properly told Peel the difficulty he felt, and that he thought he should only embarrass the company, and Peel acquiesced in his excuse.

February 25th, 1835

The King went down to Parliament in the midst of a vast crowd, and was neither well nor ill received; nobody takes his hat off, but there was some slight cheering. The speech disappointed me, it was rather bald, and so thought some of the moderate men. In the morning there was a meeting at the King’s Head, Palace Yard, to which moderate members of Parliament were invited by an anonymous circular. Thirty-three were present, Sir Oswald Mosley in the chair. Graham came to it, and said Lord Stanley would have come also, but that he had invited a few of his friends to assemble at his house, with an object similar to that which had brought the present meeting[2] together and that if it were agreeable to any of these gentlemen to meet his friends that afternoon he should be glad to see them. They all went, and there were present forty-five or fifty, of whom eight had voted for Abercromby. He made them a speech, stating that it was evident the Government must fall if they were to be repeatedly defeated, and his view of the necessity of obstructing violent measures directed against them was something to this effect. The result was an agreement to meet again this day, and last night a few more names were added to their list. This may, therefore, be considered the Stanley party, and the best thing that can happen will be that this party should grow numerous. Many men do not like the composition of the Government, and yet wish to support it, without being identified with it, as the majority of those who attend the meetings are disposed to support Peel. Stanley securing them as his adherents, and placing himself at their head, must in fact subscribe to their opinions and disposition; and as men are more inclined to join a numerous than a scanty sect, fresh adherents may repair to that standard. Eventually he will join the Government, and the best chance of weathering the storm will be through this moderate Liberal party.

[2] [This meeting (which will probably have important results, as it was the foundation of that which met afterwards at Stanley’s, and the formation of this party will turn the balance on the Conservative side) originated in the most insignificant causes. Sir Oswald Mosley, an ordinary person, and a Mr. Young, talking the thing over, suggested to one another to try and get together moderate men, and they penned and sent out a parcel of notes addressed to those who they thought came under that description, bearing no signature, and giving no indication of the quarter from which they emanated. When the thirty-three people who came were assembled, they found themselves for the most part strangers to each other, and each asking who such and such an one was. When Graham invited any who chose to go to Lord Stanley’s, Mosley rather wanted to decline, to go on with his own meeting, and play an important part, but nobody would hear of this, so he was obliged to go with the rest to Stanley’s house.]

DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS. The debate was opened by Sandon in a speech feebly delivered, but containing good matter. Morpeth made a good speech, moving the amendment. The debate was very dull indeed, Dr. Bowring a total failure. It was expected the House would adjourn, if not divide, and the Speaker put the question, when Peel got up. It was curious to see the lulling of the uproar, and the shuffling and scrambling into seats, till all was quiet and the whole coast clear. He spoke very ably for nearly two hours and a half, his speech not containing much oratory, but in a tone at once lofty and firm, yet discreet, calculated to inspire confidence and to make an impression on all who are impressible. There is no use in entering into details of speeches which are now reported with such perfect fidelity. This may not be without its effect on Stanley’s meeting to-day, and his speech will be listened to with intense anxiety to-night. The Opposition (as Duncannon told me) expected a majority of between thirty and forty, so that if it is considerably less than that, it will be tantamount to a defeat.

February 26th, 1835

Stanley spoke last night, attacking both sides, not violently, but announcing his intention to vote against the amendment. The Government were annoyed at his speech, especially at his expressing some sort of disapprobation of the Duke of Wellington, which he would have done well to omit, for many reasons. Lord John Russell, by universal admission even of his enemies, made an excellent speech. I did not hear either him or Stanley. John has surpassed all expectations hitherto, as leader, which is matter of great exultation to his party, but the tide is already beginning to turn, and there are evident symptoms of weakness in the great unwieldy heterogeneous body he is at the head of. Tavistock came to me yesterday morning, and told me his brother had sent for him, ‘finding himself in difficulties.’ He did not particularise them, but said that naturally, in a situation of such novelty, he found considerable difficulties to contend with. He owned that the meeting at Lichfield House, which O’Connell had attended by invitation, had alarmed and disgusted many of the old Whigs, and it was settled there should be no more such meetings. Then there has been some little correspondence between Ward and Lord John about the Irish Church question, the former wishing to manage the matter, which he brought forward last year, and he wrote to John about it, who replied rather shortly, that he himself intended to submit a motion on the subject. This is a trifle, but trifles like these contribute to form an aggregate of importance, and the moment there is any beginning of disunion or weakness in such a party, a very short time will make it fall to pieces.

Lord Stanley assembled his followers again yesterday to the number of about fifty; other adhesions, and half-adhesions, occurred in the course of the evening, and the result is an expectation that the boasted majority of thirty or forty will dwindle down to four or five, or perhaps be no majority at all. The erection of this standard will therefore, in all probability, save the Government, and defeat the factious designs of the great Whig and Radical coalition; but I distrust Stanley himself, and see the great chance there is of his vanity and selfish ambition producing other difficulties, the pressure of which, though he may not feel it now, will some time hence become heavy to him. His object at present is to gather to himself the largest party he can; but though he may lead them, he can only lead them the way they are minded to go, and the design of his friends is to show themselves Conservatives without being Tories, to save this Government, not from love to it, but from fear of its opponents and of the alternative. He certainly may have the appearance of being the arbiter of all great questions, and actually be so to a certain degree, but as his ultimate object must be his return to office, he can only hope to return (at least with any prospects of success) with Peel and the Tories. It is, therefore, egregious folly in him, by an affectation of neutrality and independence, to shock and disgust that great body, which must ever be the strength of a Conservative Government, by twitting the Duke of Wellington and attacking with sarcasms or reproaches certain measures POSITION OF LORD STANLEY. or omissions, or particular members of Government, and especially the Duke himself. The Duke is, after all, the idol of the Tories, and they will not endure that a youth like Stanley shall avail himself of his accidental advantages to treat their great man with levity and disrespect; and all this he has not coolness, sagacity, and temper enough to see, nor to discern that his most becoming and dignified course would be to conduct himself with a seriousness and gravity suitable to the importance of the crisis and of the part he aspires to play and the magnitude of the interests which are at stake. If he believes in his conscience that the Opposition are animated with a spirit of faction, and that their triumph would be the forerunner of revolution or confusion, he should take his stand on a great principle, and support the Government in such a manner as might best enable it to confound the schemes of its antagonists; but all this time he is dreading to be called a Tory, and he does not certainly give up the hope and notion of reuniting himself with the moderate section of his late colleagues. He endeavours to keep up an amicable intercourse with them, and to make them believe that he has no intention of connecting himself more closely with this Government. Such ambiguous conduct, and his occasional asperities and incivilities, have begun already to disgust and alienate the Tories; and though they have too much need of him now not to be obliged to restrain the expression of their feelings, the time may come when he will have need of them, and he will then find the inconvenient consequences of his present behaviour.

February 27th, 1835

They divided at half-past one this morning, 309 to 302. I went over the list before dinner, and made out a majority of six (correct all but one). Gisborne, Howick, and Graham spoke tolerably, O’Connell very good for the first ten minutes, and very bad all the rest. I was not there. Certainly Stanley’s conduct is queer. Notwithstanding the sharp things he said against Government in his speech on Wednesday, and various little marks of scorn he throws out here and there, he said to Francis Egerton on Tuesday, after all the Opposition men had been speaking, ‘Why does not Peel get up, or at least put up one of the Government, to put an end to all this balderdash?’ Francis went and told Peel, who was very much out of sorts (at the state of the debate I suppose), and asked rather angrily for Sir G. Clerk. Francis went to look for Clerk, and when he returned Peel was on his legs. This he told me yesterday morning.

March 5th, 1835

Met Mulgrave at dinner at Seaford’s, and he still talks with confidence of turning the Government out; that five or six of Stanley’s tail have whisked round again to the Whigs; that they can beat the Government on every question by greater majorities than on the two they have already tried, which were the worst for them, and that any other Government (of their party) would get through the business of the session.

March 11th, 1835

The repeal of the malt tax was defeated by a majority of 158, much more than was necessary, and it is thought that Government would have done wisely, when they found they were sure of not being beaten, to allow their friends to redeem their pledges (or as many of them as stood deeply committed), for it will be found that several of them will suffer greatly from this vote in their counties. Peel (as usual) made an admirable speech; he continues to distinguish himself by a marked superiority, both in oratory and management, which cannot fail to produce a great effect both in the House of Commons and the country. There is nobody who approaches him, and every day he displays more and more his capacity for government and undoubted fitness for the situation he is in. He cannot help being a great man, because he lives in an age of pigmies; and he will be as great as great talents without a great mind can make anybody. Even some of the violent Radicals say that if Peel’s associates could be disposed of, they would not object to him.

March 13th, 1835

There was a meeting of the Opposition at Lichfield House yesterday, to consider what they should do about Hume’s motion to grant the supplies for three months, and the result was that the design should be abandoned. APPOINTMENT OF LORD LONDONDERRY. Thus they have shown their teeth without daring to bite. Many of their people would not have gone with them, and if this grand project failed now thus early in the session, still less chance will it have at a later period. Peel’s skill and great superiority, and the disunion and uncertainty of the vast unwieldy body opposed to him, will carry him through.

March 14th, 1835

Last night was a terribly damaging night to the Government, and fully justifies all that I, in common with almost everybody else, thought of that miserable appointment of Londonderry.[3] Shiel brought it forward, and a storm burst from every side. Stanley made a strong speech against it, and Mahon totally broke down. Peel spoke cleverly, as usual, but fighting under difficulties, and dodging about, and shifting his ground with every mark of weakness. The result is that Londonderry cannot go, and must either resign or his nomination be cancelled. This is miserable weakness on the part of the Government, and an awkward position to be placed in. It is very questionable if the Duke of Wellington will not resign upon it, which would make another great embarrassment, for there is nobody to fill his place. It serves the Government right, and the Duke especially, for having built up such a wall to run their heads against. They knew the loathing people had for the man, how odious and ridiculous he had made himself, how obnoxious and indefensible the appointment would be, and yet, though there was no reason or occasion for it, and their circumstances were so difficult that the utmost caution and prudence were requisite in all their subordinate and collateral proceedings, as well as in the great and essential ones, they had the blind and obstinate folly to make this appointment. It is not contempt of public opinion in the Duke, but it is that ignorance or indifference, or disregard of it, which has been the besetting sin of his political life, and has so largely affected his political sayings and doings. Peel ought to have known better, and have taken a more correct view of his position, and the effect such an appointment would have on it. It is difficult to say what consequences may flow from this affair. The Government can stand no shocks and buffets; if they go on, it can only be by the most dexterous management, and by obtaining constant advantages in the petty and daily warfare of Parliament, and thus gathering confidence by degrees, that they can accomplish it. It would be too mortifying if such a man should be the cause of the downfall of the Government and of all the evils that would result therefrom. Knatchbull, who was dragged into the discussion by Peel (in order to make a diversion), defended himself and spoke remarkably well. He is the only Cabinet Minister who has shown anything like a faculty to support Peel. It was rather amusing to see the attempt of Peel to take the dogs off the scent of Londonderry and throw them on that of Knatchbull; but they were soon whipped off, and put again upon the right track. There was one good hit. A Sir George Strickland, attacking Knatchbull, said, ‘Talk of the Right Honourable Baronet as a Reformer, indeed, when I remember his coming down night after night during the Reform Bill, and opposing every part and particle of it, clause after clause,’ when Knatchbull took his hat off and said, ‘I was not a member of that Parliament.’

[3] [The Marquis of Londonderry had been appointed Ambassador to St. Petersburg.]

March 15th, 1835

The Londonderry debate has made a great sensation, and is a source of prodigious triumph and exultation to the Opposition. In the morning I met Lady Peel, who was full of compassion for Londonderry, and said, ‘He had behaved very nobly about it.’ Nobody doubts that he cannot go, whether he resigns voluntarily or not; but, end how it may, it is a disastrous occurrence. If Government should persist in the appointment, they would be beaten by a great majority, and the House of Commons would vote him out; if it is given up, it is a monstrous concession to the violence and power of the House of Commons, for however objectionable the appointment may have been, it is not so outrageous as to call for the interference of Parliament with the King’s undoubted prerogative, and on the whole the principle of such interference may be considered more inconvenient THE DUKE ON LORD LONDONDERRY. than submitting to the appointment itself. It will probably lead before long to other encroachments upon the Executive power, and we shall soon see the House of Commons interfering about everything.

In the evening I met the Duke of Wellington at Lady Howe’s, who talked about the affair, and said that he was not particularly partial to the man, nor ever had been; but that he was very fit for that post, was an excellent Ambassador, procured more information and obtained more insight into the affairs of a foreign Court than anybody, and that he was the best relater of what passed at a conference, and wrote the best account of a conversation, of any man he knew. I said this might be all true, but that though he knew it, the generality of people did not, and the public could only judge of him by what they heard or read of his speeches, and what was related of his conduct on former occasions; that on that account he was very obnoxious, and that his violent and intemperate attacks upon the foreign policy of the late Government, the sentiments he had displayed generally, had raised a great prejudice against him, and I had therefore been sure from the moment I heard of the appointment that it would be severely attacked, and regretted exceedingly for that reason that it had ever been made. I had told Lady Peel the same thing, for it is difficult to resist telling them the real truth; and I know not why it should not be told them.

Last night I met Lord Howick, who is bitter enough against the Ministers, and expressed his earnest desire that they might be well dragged through the mire, but not be turned out. I asked, ‘Why, if he wished they should stay in, he desired that they should be discredited?’ and he replied, ‘That it would be very difficult at present to replace them, but that he saw the prospective means, and he would have them go on till the time was ripe for change, but that they should be made every day more odious.’ These means, I doubt not, are the reconciliation of Stanley with the Whigs, which is clearly contemplated by both one and the other. Hobhouse’s speech the other night was very civil to Stanley, no doubt with that view, and much personal intimacy is affected between him and the Whig leaders. Then much light is thrown upon it in my mind by the account I have just heard from Charlton (who enlisted under the Stanley banner) of the tone and animus displayed at the last meeting at Stanley’s. There Stanley was pressed by Mr. Young to declare in strong terms his want of confidence in the Government; and Patrick Stewart said that if Hume’s motion, for limiting the supplies to three months, was placed in the hands of Lord John Russell, he thought he must vote for it. Stanley opposed this suggestion, and declared his disapprobation (let who would bring it on) of so strong a measure as stopping the supplies, and he said he thought the want of confidence might be sufficiently evinced without having recourse to any murderous measures, anything absolutely destructive of the Government. The general tone and disposition of the meeting was very inimical to the present Ministry, and Charlton was himself so little satisfied with what passed, and especially with Stanley’s apparent bias and feeling, that he wrote to him to say that he had joined his party on the express notion that he was prepared to give the Government a fair trial, and to ask whether he did not understand him correctly in attributing to him still such an intention. He replied very courteously, and tolerably satisfactorily, but it certainly seems probable that he is more disposed to reunite with his old friends than to form any connection with these men, though what is uppermost in his mind is to raise his own consequence and authority, and make the best bargain he eventually can. Charlton says that he has since tried to engage him in conversation upon the subject of the democratic tendency of the times, but that he has no mind to discuss the subject. Charlton is such a violent, foolish, dangerous fellow, that it is no wonder if Stanley kept aloof from him, and was not disposed to be more than merely civil to him.

March 17th, 1835

Londonderry made a good speech in the House of Lords last night, gentlemanlike and temperate. He got a good deal of empty praise in both Houses in lieu LORD LONDONDERRY’S DEFENCE. of the solid pudding he is obliged to give up. He said ‘that he had had no communication with the Government, nor had sought any advice, neither had any been tendered to him; that he had after due deliberation determined on the course he should pursue.’ All this is untrue; he went to Peel on Saturday morning, and told him he was ready to do what he pleased; but Peel said he could give him no opinion. He then consulted various people, the Dukes of Cumberland and Buckingham inter alios, who advised him not to resign. It appeared to be his object to obtain opinions to that effect, and up to late yesterday afternoon nobody knew what he meant to do; so much so, that the Duke left the Foreign Office without being apprised of his intentions, and desired if any letter came from him that it might be sent after him to the House of Lords. He received the letter on the stairs, which he read and instantly sent to Peel. It has altogether been a miserable affair, and it is certainly true what John Russell said, that in ‘the experiment they are now making, that which the Right Honourable Baronet called a fair trial, they were running considerable hazard that the most useful prerogatives of the Crown would lose that dignity and respect in which they had formerly been held.’ It is clearly true that this most dangerous precedent of interference has occurred because the Government has not strength to prevent it, and because we have the anomaly of a Government beating up against a hostile majority. The man was utterly unfit, and ought never to have been appointed, but the case against him (such as it appears in their hands) is quite insufficient to warrant the interference of Parliament.

I take it that the effect abroad will be prodigious, for though Londonderry resigns of his own accord, and Peel says he would have stood by him if he had not, the simple case is (and such will be the appearance of it all over Europe) that the King appointed Londonderry Ambassador to Russia, and the House of Commons cancelled the appointment.

Everything meanwhile continues in a state of uncertainty. The Opposition is not united; the Stanley party, with their leader, observe a suspicious and suspected neutrality, but the Government is at their mercy whenever they join the Opposition, or, indeed, if they keep aloof. Such a state of things cannot go on very long, and the fate of the Government must be settled one way or the other. Every day produces fresh indications of Peel’s superiority, and his capacity for the lead in the House of Commons, but he does not appear to have gained much in those points where he was most deficient—cordiality and communicativeness. Francis Egerton came to me to-day and complained that on the Londonderry debate, finding that nobody spoke on the Treasury Bench, he went and sat by Peel and offered to speak, but could get no answer from him; and Ashley was furious because when Hume asked for some information on some point of Navy estimates, on which he (Ashley) had taken pains to prepare himself, Peel would not let him give it, but took it out of his hands. All this is very impolitic, and shows that whatever else he has gained by experience, he has not gained the art of making himself popular with his own adherents in the way that Castlereagh and Canning used to be; and therefore, however he may be looked up to as a Minister, he will never be followed with the same personal devotion that they commanded.

March 20th, 1835

I have been laid up with the gout all this week, and could not go out to see and hear what is going on. On Tuesday night Peel brought in the Dissenters’ Marriage Bill, and his plan gave almost general satisfaction except to those whom nothing can satisfy. The Opposition papers gave it a sort of cold and sulky approbation, evincing how little the loudest advocates for reforms of this nature really care about them. The ‘Morning Chronicle’ seemed to regret that Peel’s Bill should give satisfaction more than it rejoiced that the Dissenters were to obtain it. Marriage is made a civil contract for the Dissenters, and a slight civil form is substituted for the religious ceremony of the Church of England. This relieves them from all their grievance; but it is now said that they lie under a degradation, because SIR EDWARD AND LADY SUGDEN. it is not also made a civil contract for everybody else, and that the law ought to be changed universally. I think it would be better if it was a civil contract, but nothing can be more captious than such an objection, or more impertinent, and I do not desire to see the law changed, because I believe the majority of members of the Church of England are content that it should remain as it is, and that their feelings or prejudices would be shocked by the alteration.

The King is in great indignation at the proceedings in the House of Commons about Londonderry. The Duke sent Londonderry’s letter of resignation to him, and his Majesty returned it with a letter in which he expressed his approbation of Londonderry’s conduct, and added, that ‘he was more than ever satisfied of the correctness of his determination in November last, to refuse his consent to his Government being led by Lord John Russell in the House of Commons, since he had witnessed his conduct upon the occasion, and the support he had given to the unconstitutional attack that had been made upon this appointment.’ He made no allusion to Stanley, whose conduct must have galled him still more.

Sir E. Sugden has resigned the Chancellorship of Ireland because his wife is not received at Court. He might have ascertained very easily beforehand what would happen, or have contrived to keep her away from Dublin. It was understood when he took the Great Seal that he declined being made a peer, on account of the illegitimacy of his eldest son. Half the world had never heard of Lady Sugden, or knew anything of her history; and as she is an excellent woman, charitable and kind-hearted, I fancy she has moved without obstruction in his natural circle of society. He went to Ireland before any Lord-Lieutenant was named, and Lady Sugden was received as a matter of course. When Lady Haddington was apprised of her origin and history she foresaw the difficulty, and asked the Queen what she was to do. Her Majesty told her to do what she pleased, but that certainly she could not be received at Court here. The Lady-Lieutenant therefore was compelled to decline receiving her, for all Ireland would have been affronted had she received at the Castle a lady not presentable at St. James’s. Sugden was very angry, and his indignation arose principally, it would seem, from Lady Canterbury’s having been received at Court, which he considers (with some reason) as a case equally flagrant. Her reception was a matter of bargain, I forget at this moment on what occasion, and certainly a strong measure. The talk is that James Parke will go to Ireland, and Sugden return to the Bar, which will be hard upon those who had shared his vast business, especially on the silk gown men.

March 21st, 1835

Lord Grey is come to town; he is very strong against the Radicals, and highly disgusted at so many of them having been admitted to the Opposition meetings. He and Stanley met with excessive cordiality. Sefton was there when Stanley called upon him. The King received Lord Grey at the levee with such civility and attention as to excite peculiar observation.

March 22nd, 1835

A few nights ago Brougham was speaking in the House of Lords (upon Lord Radnor’s motion about university oaths), and was attacking, or rather beginning to attack, the Duke of Wellington in that tone of insolent sarcasm which is so familiar to him, when in the midst of his harangue the Duke from the opposite side lifted up his finger, and said loud enough to be heard, ‘Now take care what you say next.’ As if panic-struck, Brougham broke off, and ran upon some other tack. The House is so narrow, that Lords can almost whisper to each other across it, and the menacing action and words of the Duke reached Brougham at once. This odd anecdote rests upon much concurrent evidence. Alvanley told it to De Ros, and Lord Salisbury said he was sitting close to the Duke, and witnessed it all. The Chancellor afterwards confirmed it.

On Friday night, on the debate upon Irish Tithes, Peel bowled down his opponents, Howick, Rice, and Thomson, like so many ninepins; for, besides his vigour and power in debate, his memory is so tenacious and correct, that they never can make any mistakes without his detecting them; COURAGE OF SIR R. PEEL. and he is inconceivably ready in all references to former debates and their incidents, and the votes and speeches of individual members. It cannot be denied that he is a great performer in his present part. Old Sir Robert, who must have been a man of exceeding shrewdness, predicted that his full energies would never be developed till he was in the highest place, and had the sole direction of affairs; and his brother Lawrence, who told this to Henry de Ros, said that in early youth he evinced the same obstinate and unsocial disposition, which has since been so remarkable a feature of his character. I wish he was not hampered with the Irish Church fetters, which he cannot throw off.

Peel wrote a letter to Hume, demanding an explanation of certain offensive expressions he had made use of in the House of Commons, and got an answer, which was sufficient, though not very civil. It was rather unnecessary that he should take any notice of what Hume said, but Peel is a man of very high and prompt courage, and seems to have made a rule to himself never to suffer impertinence from any quarter to pass unchecked. It is certainly of great service to a public man, and it largely increases the estimation in which he is held, to establish such a character. It is no small detriment to Brougham that he is accounted an arrant coward; and it is remarkable that Peel never was known to deal in the insolence, and bullying, and offensive personalities in which the other has so copiously indulged, both in Parliament and at the Bar.

March 24th, 1835

A meeting at Lichfield’s yesterday, when they resolved to reserve themselves for the great battle on Monday next, in full persuasion that Peel will resign after the division. Whether he means it or not, I have no idea, but it is surprising to me that they do not think it better to attack him on his Tithe Bill than on the Appropriation clause; for I think he must go out if beaten on the former, but need not if beaten on the latter. They are, however, bent upon his expulsion; and Lichfield (who is more or less in their secrets) told me they feel no difficulty as to making another Government under Melbourne’s auspices. There was a great dinner of the Opposition at the Duke of Sussex’s on Sunday, to which Brougham was not invited. It will not be the least of their difficulties how to deal with him. Sugden, after all, stays in Ireland. The Bar were up in arms at his menaced return among them, which would have had the effect of half ruining some of those who took silk gowns upon his retirement. His absurdity will, therefore, have had no other effect than that of revealing his wife’s misfortune to the whole world in a very noisy way. Lord Canterbury gives up Canada on account of his wife’s health, and probably not liking to face the disagreeable things that would have been said about himself and her. Lord Aberdeen has offered it to Stratford Canning, who, though clever enough, is so difficile à vivre, that nobody can be less calculated for conciliatory objects; so that for a situation which required an agent of strong understanding and good temper, they successively selected a foolish man of good temper, and a clever man of bad.

March 26th, 1835

On Tuesday night Government was beaten on a division about the Chatham election; a thing of no consequence in itself, but the whole affair was mismanaged. John Russell had said he should not divide, but his people were not to be restrained. Peel would have given way, but his whippers-in told him he was strong enough in the House to carry it, which only shows how stupid they are. It is now universally believed that he will resign next week, after the division on John Russell’s motion, upon which he is sure to be beaten by twenty or thirty votes. I am inclined to believe that he has made known his intentions to Stanley, for the latter entertains no doubt on the subject. The Greyites are all alive, and patting Lord Grey on the back all day long to incline him to obey the summons they confidently expect him to receive from the King. It is very obvious that Peel cannot go on; and I doubt much if he could even were he to obtain a majority on Monday. His physical strength would not suffice for the harassing warfare that is waged against him, the whole brunt of which he bears alone. This, however, is his own fault, for he will not let anybody else take a part, whether from distrust of his colleagues, or his own rage APPROACHING DEFEAT OF GOVERNMENT. for being all in all. Then, from the relative constitution of the two parties, he must be in continual danger of defeats upon minor and collateral questions, or suddenly started points. His party is in great part composed of the rich and fashionable, who are constantly drawn away by one attraction or another, and whose habitual haunts are the clubs and houses at the west end of the town; and it is next to impossible to collect his scattered forces at a moment’s notice. The Opposition contains a dense body of fellows who have no vocation out of the walls of the House of Commons; who put up in the vicinity; either do not dine at all, or get their meals at some adjoining chop-house, throng the benches early, and never think of moving till everything is over; constituting a steady, never-failing foundation, the slightest addition to which will generally secure a majority in the present state of the House. In old times the placemen and immediate hangers-on of Government, who make it their business to attend in order to carry the public business through, afforded a regular certain majority for the Ministers of the day; but now this household phalanx is outnumbered by these blackguards, the chief of whom are O’Connell’s Tail and the lower Radicals. All this immensely increases Peel’s embarrassment; and the tactics of his opponents have been extremely able, considered with a view to obstruct the march of Government. While the leaders have abstained from any violent measure, and have always resolved at their consultations not to stop the supplies or impede the public service, their active partisans have taken good care to produce all the same effects, by raising debate after debate upon every description of personal question, and every miscellaneous matter they could drag in, so as to prevent any progress being made in the public business; and in this they have completely succeeded, for never was there more noise and violence, and less business done, than in this session.

In anticipation of Peel’s resignation there are three parties all animated with different hopes and desires—the Grey party, the Melbourne, the Stanley. The first want Lord Grey back with all the moderate Whigs, throwing over the Radicals; and leaving out the ‘Dilly’ (as Stanley’s party is derisively called); in fact, Lord Grey would only come back to carry the Irish question, which Stanley will be no party to. The second want Melbourne and all his kit back again, to go on with all the strength that the united force of Whigs and Radicals amounts to. The third, expecting that Lord Grey will decline to return without Stanley, desire that the Radical Whigs should attempt it, with (as they think) the certainty of failing, and then, that the urgency of the case may bring about a coalition between Lord Grey, Peel, and Stanley. Such a coalition would be very desirable in many respects, but I much doubt Peel’s ever consenting to take office under Lord Grey (though with an equality of authority and influence in the Government), and to lead a party from which all his old friends, and those who look up to him with unbounded devotion, must necessarily be excluded, and to give up all pretensions to ascendency and domination in the Cabinet.

March 28th, 1835

It appears now very doubtful whether Peel will resign after a defeat on Monday; and I am disposed to believe that it is not his intention; indeed, I never could understand why he should. He has over and over again declared that whenever the Opposition would bring forward a direct motion against him, he should be prepared to resign, but not till then. Still, I do not see how he can go on, and am much inclined to think he ought not. Weak as he is, at the mercy of this furious and reckless Opposition, Government suffers in his hands; the Crown and all Executive authority suffer. Every Government, to be useful and respectable, should have the power of carrying its measures in its own way through Parliament; but Peel cannot do this, and instead of quashing any mischievous or untimely motion, he is compelled to submit to one defeat after another upon matters which would never have been stirred (or certainly not successfully) with the late Government, or with any which possessed the confidence of the House of Commons. It was expected that Hume would persist in his motion for referring the Army estimates to a committee, and that the Whigs would support FRESH REVERSES. him; but when it came to the point, at the suggestion of John Russell and Stanley, he very sulkily withdrew it; but the night before, Government was beaten on two divisions, one about the Leicester election, upon which all the lawyers in the House were unanimous. But these opinions had no effect upon the Radical majority, and they voted an address to the Crown to confer a charter upon the London University, Lord John Russell supporting it, although this question had been argued before the Privy Council, which had still to report upon it; and I believe that the general opinion of the Lords was against conferring the charter in the present circumstances of the university. Certainly, there was no discussion in Council after the arguments were closed, but I gathered that the impression was unfavourable to the grant of the charter. The House of Commons knows nothing of the argument, and rejected Goulburn’s amendment to have the proceedings before the Privy Council laid upon the table, voting the address merely because Government opposed it.

March 29th, 1835

A meeting yesterday of Tories at Bridgewater House for the purpose of securing a better attendance. Twenty-nine Moderates met at the ‘King’s Head,’ passengers in the ‘Dilly;’[4] but of these, nine mean to vote with John Russell, and one stays away; also, two or three others vote against Stanley: queer partisans and soi-disant followers, who oppose him on his own vital question. Peel concerted with Stanley in the House on Friday, that the resolution should be met with a negative. Wharncliffe was here to-day, loud in his praises of the Duke of Wellington, and delighted with the Cabinet of which he is a member, jam morituri as they are.[5] He owned that they could not probably go on, but that they would not give in till they could show their friends that they had done all that men could or ought to do; so that they are resigned to their fate, and only studying in what attitude they shall meet it.

[4] [The ‘Derby Dilly’ was the nickname given to Lord Stanley’s section of a party, from a joke of O’Connell’s, who had applied to it the well-known lines,

‘So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourne, glides
The Derby Dilly, carrying six insides.’]

[5] [Lord Wharncliffe was Lord Privy Seal in Sir Robert Peel’s first Administration.]

March 31st, 1835

It is universally believed that Government will go out after this debate. I think it very doubtful, but the sooner they now go the better; they are well aware they must retire, and the question is, whether they shall do so immediately or wait till they have passed the Mutiny Bill. If the House of Commons refused to pass the Mutiny Bill, I think they would dissolve again. The King is in a dreadful state of mind, as well he may be; however, it is all his own doing, he had the courage, or rather rashness, to dismiss his late Ministers, but I fear he has none of the cool and reflecting resolution, and calm moral courage, which are necessary for this crisis; he will again submit to whatever is dictated to him.

In the meantime, the perplexity of the Opposition increases as the moment of their triumph approaches. There were 260 people at Lord John Russell’s dinner, all prepared to go any lengths, and 20 more who were absent put their names down. O’Connell, who declared ‘it was the most delightful evening he ever passed in his life,’ publicly acknowledged John Russell as his leader, and the Radicals were all present but Hume. Lord Auckland (who called upon me about a house he is thinking of taking through my mediation) said he would not do anything about it till this week was over, as circumstances might render it unnecessary for him to provide himself with a residence, but that he did not see how anything permanent could come out of the present state of things. He expected Ministers would resign, that there would be audiences and negotiations, and that at last they would come back again; that in the present state of parties he saw not how any other Government could go on any better than this; and when I asked him about John Russell’s dinner, he said it went off very well, but the composition of it was frightful (or some such word, but not, I think, quite so strong). John Russell and Melbourne, however, are satisfied they can go on with the Radical assistance, and they have gone too far now to throw these allies over; they must and will make sacrifices to secure them for their own BAD POLICY OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS. protection, and if the House of Lords is swamped in the first instance, they will have things all their own way.

If it were not for the peril to all that is worth preserving, I should not be sorry for anything that happened to the House of Lords, to whose bigoted and senseless obstinacy (upheld and directed I am sorry to say by the Duke and Lyndhurst) the present miserable condition of affairs is mainly attributable. Their rejection of the Tithe Bill last year was their crowning exploit. After all their blunders and impotent struggles against a stronger power, if they had passed that Bill, or restored Stanley’s in committee, and returned it to the House of Commons, I believe everything might have been retrieved. It has been remarked, and certainly with truth, that Peel has never once endeavoured to excuse the House of Lords or to vindicate the peers from the taunts and reproaches which have repeatedly been thrown out against them. In point of fact, I believe that the Lords either did not consult him, or did not care for his opinion. There is no disguising that the Lords liked nothing so well last year as beating the Government, and exhibiting their puny and spiteful power; now they are mightily shocked and disgusted at the majority of the House of Commons taking their revenge, though certainly the latter do it with much more rage and factious violence, but with them it is a system of tactics for a specific and attainable object. The Lords really had no intelligible object but to embarrass a Government they could not demolish, and gratify their own spite. If the most violent Radical had been permitted to chalk out the most suicidal course for the House of Lords to follow, he could have devised nothing more ingenious and well contrived than what they have actually done, taking care to keep up their character in the nation for intolerance, and inculcating a belief in their adherence to the most illiberal maxims of foreign and domestic policy, instead of devoting all their energies to the recovery of the ground they had lost in popular estimation, and strengthening themselves for the contest, which anybody might have seen was not very remote.

April 3rd, 1835

They divided at I know not what hour this morning—321 to 289,[6] a smaller majority than I was led to expect when I heard that 18 or 19 of Stanley’s (so-called) party meant to go against him. Anybody who records from day to day the shifting appearances of the political sky must constantly recant one day the opinion and expectation of the preceding. Stanley’s speech the night before last may very likely make an important difference in the result of this extraordinary contest, for he has, as it seems to me, put a final end to any possibility of junction with the great body of the Whigs now arrayed under John Russell; he attacked Lord John himself—his Whig and Radical alliance and the inconsistency of his present conduct—with the utmost vehemence and scornful reprobation, and he poured forth a torrent of sarcasm and ridicule upon the prospective Government that he concludes they meditate. This is so conclusive that it paves the way to his junction with Peel, or if the latter goes out and John Russell does come in, it is clear that he will have both Peel and Stanley in opposition to him, against whom in the nearly balanced state of parties he could not struggle on for a month. He was miserably feeble in this debate (in his opening speech), and though he may just do to lead an Opposition which wants no leading, and merely sticks him up as a nominal chief, he could no more lead a Government in the House of Commons than he could command an army in the field. [So much for my prediction. Stanley’s followers dropped off and left him alone, the Government had no difficulty, and John Russell proved a very good leader.—January 1837.] Whatever may be the fate of Government for the present, I believe it to be impossible that anything can prevent Peel’s speedy return to office; he has raised his reputation to such a height during this session, he has THE IRISH CHURCH QUESTION. established such a conviction of his great capacity and of his liberal, enlarged, and at the same time safe views and opinions, that even the Radicals, such as Hume, join in the general chorus of admiration which is raised to his merits; he stands so proudly eminent, and there is such a general lack of talent, that he must be recalled by the voice of the nation and by the universal admission that he is indispensable to the country.

[6] [On the 30th of March Lord John Russell moved the resolution which was carried by this division; the terms of it were, ‘That this House resolve itself into a committee of the whole House, in order to consider the present state of the Church Establishment in Ireland, with the view of applying any surplus of the revenues not required for the spiritual care of its members to the general education of all classes of the people, without distinction of religious persuasion.’]

I am much inclined to think that this debate on the Irish Church question will eventually damage the Whigs not a little. Their speeches this year might all have been answered by their speeches last year on the same subject, and nothing can be so glaring as their inconsistency and the factiousness of their motives. The question is not a popular one in the country, where nothing like favour to the Catholics of Ireland or their religion is agreeable to the mass. The arguments in the debate have been triumphantly in favour of the Government upon the resolution as contradistinguished from the principle; for though I am decidedly favourable to the principle, and never had a doubt that it is preposterous to contend that if there is a reform of the Church, and there turns out to be a surplus, such surplus should not be dealt with as Parliament in its wisdom shall deem best for the general interests, under the actual circumstances of the country, at the time the appropriation takes place; still it is perfectly consistent with that opinion to refuse to vote for the appropriation of the surplus which may never exist at all, or only exist at some distant period, when other circumstances may render the proposed appropriation altogether inexpedient.

In the afternoon.—Peel’s speech was not so good as usual; it was laboured, and some say tame. In the morning I met him and walked with him; he seemed in very good spirits, talked of the thing as over, said he could not endure any meddling with the Tithe Bill, that he considered great good had been done by the dissolution, which had created a party strong enough to obstruct any violent measures on the part of their opponents, said he understood they had sent for Lord Spencer did not believe Lord Grey would have any concern with it. I said that it was clear after Stanley’s speech that he would have nothing to do with the Whigs. He said he conceived so, but that it was very odd that Lord John Russell did not see it in that light, and had said that Graham could not join them, but he did not see why Stanley might not. I told Peel that in my opinion the best thing that had been done was the proof that he had been enabled to exhibit that he was indispensable to the government of the country, and that if he could infuse some firmness and courage into the King, and persuade His Majesty stoutly to resist any requisition to swamp the House of Lords, and rather to appeal to the country than consent to it, in a very short space of time he must come back. I asked him if he thought the King was capable of any such firmness. He said he thought he was, that he was in a miserable state of mind at the prospect before him, and all the more so from feeling how much there was in it which fell personally upon himself. In the meantime it does not seem that the Ministers have come to any positive resolution, or even conviction, as to the moment of their retirement, nor as to its absolute, unavoidable necessity. Peel evidently considers the contest at an end. Lord Rosslyn this morning thought he would resign immediately; the Duke, on the other hand, appears by no means so certain that the Tithe Bill will be mutilated, and that they shall be compelled to go out at all. Stanley and Graham are angry that they don’t resign directly; they think Peel would retire more brilliantly at once than by waiting for more defeats. They forget that he is bound to satisfy his own party. Stanley, with that levity which distinguishes all his conduct, talks of him as of ‘a hunted fox, who, instead of dying gallantly before the hounds in the open, skulks along the hedgerows, and at last turns up his legs in a ditch.’ This he said to George Bentinck, who told it to me; it is not the way that Lord Stanley ought to speak of Sir Robert Peel. What I certainly do regret is that he condescended repeatedly to entreat John Russell to put off bringing up the report till Monday, and SIR R. PEEL’S RETIREMENT. exposed himself to a refusal. He should have invited the decision of the contest rather than have tried to protract it.

April 4th, 1835

I told Jonathan Peel last night that Stanley and Graham blamed Sir Robert for not resigning at once. He said that Sir Robert would, as far as his own feelings were concerned, have preferred resigning long ago, but that a vast number of his supporters were furious at the idea of his resigning at all, and wanted him to persist at all hazards, and he was compelled to resign only upon such a point as might enable him to satisfy them that he had abided by the pledge which he gave at the beginning to persevere while perseverance could be useful or honourable. He then told me (which I certainly did not attach the slightest credit to[7]) that he should not be at all surprised if his brother were now to retire from public life. Such an idea in some moment of disgust may have crossed his mind, but if he were to do so in the vigour of his age and at the climax of his reputation, it would be the most extraordinary retirement that history ever recorded. Men of the most splendid talents have often shrunk from entering public life, but I am not aware of any instance of a man who had attained the eminence and the fame of Peel who has withdrawn from the theatre of his glory and power without some stronger motive than any that can be found for him.

[7] A great fool indeed I should have been if I had.—1838.

I was told last night that the scene of noise and uproar which the House of Commons now exhibits is perfectly disgusting. This used not to be the case in better, or at least more gentlemanlike, times; no noises were permissible but the cheer and the cough, the former admitting every variety of intonation expressive of admiration, approbation, assent, denial, surprise, indignation, menace, sarcasm. Now all the musical skill of this instrument is lost and drowned in shouts, hootings, groans, noises the most discordant that the human throat can emit, sticks and feet beating against the floor. Sir Hedworth Williamson, a violent Whig, told me that there were a set of fellows on his side of the House whose regular practice it was to make this uproar, and with the settled design to bellow Peel down. This is the reformed House of Commons. Peel told Lord Ashley the other day that he did not think it possible for the same man to be Prime Minister and leader in the House of Commons (he meant to be First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer), that no physical strength was adequate to the labour of both employments. He may therefore hereafter put some Peer at the head of the Government, but it is equally indispensable, as it seems to me, that the real substantial power should be vested in the leader of the House of Commons, especially when he is a man so superior as Peel must always be to any colleagues he may be associated with.

April 5th, 1835

I understand now what Jonathan Peel meant by talking of the possibility of his brother’s retiring from public life. He is no doubt thoroughly, heartily disgusted with his own associates. It appears that they (the Tories, or many of them) are indignant at his declaration the other night that on the Tithe Bill being altered he would go out, so that while others are blaming him for not going out at once his own followers are enraged that he will not set the House of Commons at defiance and stick to his post. It is very evident that many of them are desirous (if Peel does resign) of continuing the fight under the Duke of Wellington, if they could prevail on him to try it, and to dissolve Parliament and get up a ‘No Popery’ cry. They say that ‘the country’ (by which they mean their own faction) looks up to the Duke, and that Peel has really no interest there. The fact is that they cannot forgive him for his Liberal principles and Liberal measures, and probably they never believed that he was sincere in the professions he made, or that he really intended to introduce such measures as he has done. They feel (not without reason) that they cannot follow him in the broad path he has entered upon without abandoning all their long-cherished maxims of exclusion and ascendency, and that in so doing they would incur much odium and disgrace. Peel sees and knows all SIR R. PEEL AND THE TORIES. this, and cannot fail to perceive that he is not the Minister for them and they no longer the party for him. It is no wonder that he is anxious to break up this unmanageable force, and he probably would rather trust to that increasing feeling and opinion about himself, which is so apparent among all classes of politicians, to place him by-and-by at the head of a party formed upon Conservative principles and embracing a much wider circle of opinions. Still this Tory body, obstinate and bigoted as they are, have no other chief, and can find none, and it is essential to Peel to keep them if possible under his influence and direction, and therefore (I believe very reluctantly) he defers his resignation.

April 6th, 1835

Yesterday Wharncliffe came here; very low indeed; he says he never thought they were safe, though he owns that he was surprised and disappointed that there were no defections—not one—from the enemies’ ranks when these measures were brought forward. He says he was with the King the other evening, and asked him if he was going back to Windsor. His Majesty said ‘he could not go back, that he could not bear being there; there he had none of them (his Ministers) to talk to, and day and night his mind was absorbed in public affairs.’ Poor wretch! he suffers martyrdom, and has more to suffer yet, for I expect they will have no mercy on him. Yesterday I had more proofs of the animus of the Tories. One of them, a foolish, hot-brained fellow certainly (but there is no such enormous difference between the best and the worst), told me that if Peel really did go out upon the Tithe Bill he would abandon his party; that he ought to let them alter the Bill as they pleased, wait till the House of Commons threw it out, and then dissolve Parliament.

April 7th, 1835

Each day elicits some new proof of what I have written above—the totally altered feelings and expressions of all conditions of politicians about Sir Robert Peel. It would seem as if his friends were suddenly converted into his enemies, and his enemies into his friends. The Tories still cling to the expectation that he will hold on to office; they say that if he goes out he abandons his party, abandons the King. They call to mind Pitt in 1784. ‘Very slippery,’ said one to me yesterday, when I read to him Peel’s answer to the City address. On the other hand Mulgrave was last night enthusiastic in his praise; he owned that he had done admirably—given proof of his perfect sincerity and acted in accordance with all his declarations and professions. ‘I am,’ said he, ‘astonished; nothing in Peel’s past political career led me to expect that he would have done so admirably as he has. He has raised himself immensely in my opinion.’ Such is the language of them all, swelling a choral note of praise; and then, to make the whole thing more ridiculous (if anything so serious can be ridiculous), the Tories, who abuse him lustily, are moving heaven and earth to retain him, by violence almost, in his place; while the Whigs and Radicals, who laud him to the skies, are striving with might and main to turn him out. In a state of profound tranquillity these Ministers are quietly transacting business with a perfect consciousness and an universal understanding that their Government is at an end, and the Opposition are redoubling their blows in the House of Commons, and waiting in the complete certainty of returning to office, for which they are already making all their arrangements. The parts are all so quietly performed, the catastrophe is so clearly before everybody’s eyes and understanding, that it more resembles a dramatic representation than a mighty event in real life, big perhaps with incalculable consequences.

April 8th, 1835

There was a majority of twenty-seven last night, which I conclude settles the business.[8] There was to be a Cabinet this morning at eleven, at which they had resolved to agree upon their resignations. Wharncliffe saw the King last night. He is very composed; they think they can infuse courage and firmness into him, but when he is left to himself, I doubt him. Nothing can be imagined more painful on both sides than his approaching interview DEFEAT OF SIR R. PEEL’S MINISTRY. with the once rejected and now triumphant Whigs. Yesterday I rode with Ellice up the Park. He said, ‘Grey will do anything they wish him to do, but I think he had better have nothing to do with it.’ He talked of the new Government that will be formed as having no difficulty; that they might have if Peel and the Tories went into violent opposition, which he is convinced Peel will not do. I said they might go on till the Tithe Bill went to the House of Lords, when they would expunge the appropriation clause. He said, ‘They won’t be so mad; there is no Church of Ireland now, and the question is whether there shall be one, for without that clause no Tithe Bill will ever pass.’

[8] [The Ministry was defeated on the Irish Tithe Bill on the 3rd of April by a majority of 33 in a House of 611; on the 6th of April by a majority of 25 in a House of 499; and on the 7th of April by a majority of 27 in a House of 543.]

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CHAPTER XXVIII.

Lord Grey and Sir James Graham express Conservative Views — Opinions of Lord Stanley — Lord Grey sees the King, but is not asked to resume Office — Lord Melbourne’s Second Administration — His Moderation — A Difficulty — Spring Rice — A Joyless Victory — Exclusion of Brougham — The New Cabinet — Lord John Russell defeated in Devonshire — Lord Alvanley and O’Connell — Duel with Morgan O’Connell — Lord Wellesley resigns the Lord Stewardship — The Eliot Convention — Swift v. Kelly — The Kembles — London University Charter discussed at the Privy Council — Corporation Reform — Formation of the Conservative Party — The King’s Habits — Secretaryship of Jamaica — Lord Melbourne’s Tithe Bill — The Pope rejects the Recommendation of the British Government — Relations with Rome — Carlists and Christinos in Spain — Walcheren — The King’s Address to Sir Charles Grey — Stanley and Graham cross the House — Failure of Stanley’s Tactics — Alava and the Duke of Cumberland — A Sinecure Placeman — Lord Glenelg and the King — Concert at Stafford House — The King’s Aversion to his Ministers and to the Speaker — Decision on the Secretaryship of Jamaica — Archbishop Whateley — Irish Church Bill — Payment of Catholic Clergy — Peel and Lord John Russell — Factious Conduct of Tory Peers — The King’s Violence — Debate on the Corporation Bill.

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April 9th, 1835

Yesterday the Ministers resigned. Peel announced it to the House of Commons in a short but admirable speech by all accounts, exactly suitable to the occasion, and to his principal object—that of setting himself right with his own supporters, who begin to acquiesce, though rather sulkily, in the course he has pursued. Lord Grey is to be with the King this morning. He was riding quietly in the Park yesterday afternoon, and neither knew nor cared (apparently) whether he had been sent for or not. His daughter told me (for I rode with them up Constitution Hill) that his family could not wish him to return to office, but would not interfere. She then talked, much to my surprise, of the possibility of a junction between him and Peel; she owned that SIR JAMES GRAHAM ON PEEL AND STANLEY. Peel had done wonders, but said that she could not wish for such a junction now, however it might be possible and desirable that it should take place some little time hence. This shows a very Conservative spirit and a marvellous thaw in the rigidity of the Grey politics.

In the morning I went to Graham to ask him to advocate my cause in the Sinecure Committee and defend my interests there. After talking over my case (about which he was very obliging and promised his zealous assistance) we discussed general politics at great length. It is very evident that he and Stanley have no leaning towards the Whigs, and look now solely to a junction with Peel and the construction of a Liberal and Conservative party and Government. He talked of this, and of the mode of accomplishing it, with as much zeal and fervour as if he had been a member of the Cabinet which has just fallen, and I think his opinions coincide very much with my own. He wants the King to be well endoctriné, and that his firmness (if he has any) should be directed to one or two points, and his mind not puzzled with complicated instructions. He should be advised never to admit O’Connell to any office, and to resist a creation of Peers. He thinks, if his Majesty is stout on these points, that things will come round, and he by no means despairs of the feeling and animus of the country. I told him the Tories and late Government people still contended that if he and Stanley had joined the thing would have gone on, which he vehemently denied, and declared that they could not have saved Peel and should have entirely compromised themselves; he talked with great admiration of Peel, and of the reception he had met with from him in the interview they had on his return, which he said was cordial and obliging to the greatest degree, and without any appearance of that coldness and reserve of which he has been so often accused. He then talked of Stanley with great openness—of his talents, character, and political views. I told him that Stanley had not raised himself this session, that he had given much offence by the general levity of his conduct, and especially to the Tories by the occasional flippancy or severity of his attacks upon them, that as it was clear that any Conservative Government must depend upon the great body of the Tory party for support, it was improvident in him to make himself obnoxious to them, and that he would do well to exert his influence over Stanley for the purpose of restraining those sallies in which he was too apt to indulge, and showing him the expediency of conciliating that not very wise but still powerful body. He asked in what way Stanley had offended. I told him generally in the sarcastic or reprobating tone he had used, and particularly in his personal attack on the Duke for holding the offices. He owned there was truth in this, ‘but what could you do? it was impossible to change a man’s character, and Stanley’s was very peculiar. With great talents, extraordinary readiness in debate, high principles, unblemished honour, he never had looked, he thought he never would look, upon politics and political life with the seriousness which belonged to the subject; he followed politics as an amusement, as a means of excitement, as another would gaming or any other very excitable occupation; he plunged into the mêlée for the sake of the sport which he found it made there, but always actuated by honourable and consistent principles and feelings, and though making it a matter of diversion and amusement, never sacrificing anything that honour or conscience prescribed.’ I said that this description of him (which I had no doubt was true) only proved what I already thought—that, with all his talents, he never would be a great man. He said he always must be very considerable; his powers, integrity, birth, and fortune could not fail to raise him to eminence. All this I admitted—that nothing could prevent his being very considerable, very important, as a public man—but I argued that one who was animated by motives so personal, and so wanting in gravity, to whom public care was a subsidiary and not a primary object, never could achieve permanent and genuine greatness. He said that Stanley had a great admiration for Peel, without any tincture of jealousy, and that he was quite ready to serve under him, though he could not help doubting whether it would be possible for two such men, so different in character, to go on DISTRESS OF THE KING. well together in the same Cabinet. I told him what Wharncliffe had told me, that no man was ever more easy to act with, more candid and conciliatory, and less assuming than Peel in the Cabinet, and Graham said that Stanley was likewise perfect as a colleague, so that it may be hoped there would not be any such incompatibility if they were to come together. I was with him two hours and a half, and we discussed very fully all political contingencies with the freedom of twenty years ago, when we were great friends.

April 10th, 1835

Nothing decisive yesterday. Lord Grey was with the King in the morning; he there met Lord Melbourne, Lord Holland, Lord John Russell, and Lord Lansdowne, and went back to St. James’s. It was said in the evening that Lord Grey was to assist in the formation of the Government, but not to take office himself.

April 11th, 1835

The intention of Lord Grey evidently was to avoid office if he could, but if strongly urged by the King, and his feelings appealed to, to yield. The King, however, did not urge him at all, probably much to his astonishment, but assuming apparently that he would under no circumstances return to office, consulted him as to the course he should adopt. All my information as to what has hitherto taken place amounts to this:—His Majesty has been in a very composed state of mind, has received the Whig leaders in a way that has given them complete satisfaction, and as far as personal intercourse goes the embarrassment appears to be removed. He has given Melbourne carte blanche to form a Government, and he is proceeding in the task. Notwithstanding the good face which the King contrives to put upon the matter in his communications with his hated new-old Ministers and masters, he is really very miserable, and the Duchess of Gloucester, to whom he unbosoms himself more than to anybody, told Lady Georgiana Bathurst that with her he was in the most pitiable state of distress, constantly in tears, and saying that ‘he felt his crown tottering on his head.’

It is intended to leave O’Connell out of the arrangement, and at the same time to conciliate him and preserve his support. In this they have apparently succeeded. O’Connell ‘has behaved admirably well,’ and the difficulty with regard to him is at an end. Of the Radicals some are to be included and no notice taken of the rest. Brougham is to be set at defiance; his fall in public estimation, his manifold sins against his own colleagues, and his loss of character all justify them, and enable them (as they think) to do so with impunity. Melbourne, who when Lamb[1] is here is greatly influenced by him, is strongly against any Radical measures or Radical colleagues, and has no thought of a creation of Peers or of any desperate expedients, and he is not at all satisfied with the resolution which John carried, and which was the immediate cause of Peel’s resignation, being fully alive to all the inconvenience of it.

[1] [Meaning Sir Frederick Lamb, his brother, usually residing abroad in the diplomatic service.]

Just now Tavistock was here, having come from St. George’s Church, where he went to assist at Lord John Russell’s marriage, and as the ceremony could not begin for half an hour, he came over to pass the interval with me.[2] He told me that ‘there still existed one difficulty, one only, which I should not think of, apparently unimportant, but which circumstances rendered important, and if this was got over, the Government would be formed and go on, that he thought it was an even bet whether it was got over or not. What this difficulty is, so little obvious, but so important, I do not guess; but in such affairs one difficulty will not stand in the way of completing an arrangement the consummation of which has cost such incredible exertions, and such sacrifices of consistency and of public interests to the interests or ambition of a party.

[2] [Lord John Russell married, in April 1835, Theresa, widow of Lord Ribblesdale. Mr. Greville lived at this time on the north side of Hanover Square.]

April 12th, 1835

Nothing settled yesterday, and great doubts if anything would be. Lord John was married in the morning; he returned to Kent House with his bride, and Melbourne was to have sent him word at one what was definitively SIR R. PEEL’S MINISTRY. settled; he waited till two, when no news arriving from Melbourne, he went off to Woburn. He was at that time by no means sanguine as to the arrangements being completed, and talked in doubt of the Foreign Office, to which he is to go. However, Melbourne was to be with the King this morning to announce that the Ministry would or would not do. Sefton told me last night that the difficulty proceeds from Spring Rice; if it should fail (which it will not, I expect) Peel must stay in and take in the Dilly, who would not then scruple to join him. The Government would be formed upon the principle of not settling this eternal Irish Church question, which I think so great an evil that it is on the whole better that Melbourne should form a Government and go on as long as he can—that is, till something decisive is done about the Irish Church. I met the whole Dilly at dinner yesterday at Stafford House, and when I told Stanley and Graham that I understood Spring Rice made the difficulty, they both said that it must be what they called ‘his conundrum,’ which I had never heard of before; but it means his determination to apply the surplus to the purposes of general education, but not to go a jot further, and they suppose that this is not far enough for the others, and hence the difficulty.

April 13th, 1835

Nothing positively known yesterday, but that the thing is settled in some way, Clusterings and congregations of Whigs about Brookes’, audiences with the King, and great doubt whether Grey took office, and the Foreign Office.

April 14th, 1835

Yesterday it was understood that everything was settled, but after all it was only the night before last that Melbourne was definitively charged with the formation of a Government. The difficulties were O’Connell and Spring Rice; the former was got over by his waiving all claim to employment and promising his gratuitous support. By what underhand management or persuasion, and what secret understanding, this was effected will be a mystery for the present, but nobody doubts that it has been accomplished by some juggle. Spring Rice wanted to wash his hands of the concern; he did not think it promised sufficient stability, and without some assurance of its lasting he wished to decline taking office. They would not hear this, and represented to him that he was indispensable, and it ended in his giving way. It certainly would have been very unjustifiable of him, after going all lengths with them, to hold back at last, but it shows the opinion of the best men among them of the rottenness of the concern. Lord Grey declined taking office, but wrote to say that the Government should have all his support, and that he wished Howick to be included in it, which is the same thing as if he were there himself. Nothing was settled about the cast of offices, and they were waiting for Lord John’s arrival from Woburn to discuss that matter. Between the pretensions of one man, the reluctance of another, and the hymeneal occupation of the leader the matter hobbled on very slowly. I certainly never remember a great victory for which Te Deum was chanted with so faint and joyless a voice. Peel looks gayer and easier than all Brookes’ put together, and Lady Holland said, ‘Now that we have gained our object I am not so glad as I thought I should be,’ and that I take to be the sentiment of them all.

Riddlesworth, April 16th, 1835

At Newmarket the day before yesterday, and came here to-day, where I find the Duke and Duchess of Cleveland and two or three others. I know nothing but by my letters from London, by which I learn that nothing is yet settled, but they go on negotiating and endeavouring to arrange their rickety concern. Having concluded their bargain with O’Connell, they have taken fright about Brougham, and degraded as he is, and contemptuous and confident as they were about him, they are endeavouring to make terms with him, and it will probably end in his recovering the Great Seal. When this is done they will have consummated their disgrace. Sheil said, ‘The difficulty is how to deal with a bully and a buffoon,’ and as they have succumbed to and bargained with the one, now they are going to truckle to the other; there is not one of them who has scrupled to express his opinion of Brougham, THE NEW WHIG CABINET. but let us see if he really does come in or much indignation may be thrown away. The general opinion (I am told) is that this Ministry will last a very short time and that ultimately a coalition must take place under the direction and supremacy of Sir Robert Peel. This is jumping to a conclusion over many difficulties. However, nothing can be more meagre than the triumph of the Whigs nor more humiliating than their position; even my Whig-Radical friends write me word that ‘O’Connell holds the destiny of the Government in his hands, and is acknowledged to be the greatest man going.’ It was hardly worth while (in a national point of view, whatever it may have been in a party one) to turn out Sir Robert Peel in order to produce this result.

Buckenham, April 29th, 1835

At Newmarket all last week, here since Monday. I know nothing of politics but from newspapers and my letters; racing and hawking are my present occupations. There seems to be an impression that the present Government will not last very long, but as the grounds of that opinion are the badness of its composition, I do not see that its speedy dissolution is so certain; the public seems to have got very indifferent as to who governs the country. I was curious to hear how the Council went off at which the Ministers took their seats, and how the King comported himself. He seems to have got through it tolerably, though it must have been a bitter ceremony to him. He made no speeches and took no particular notice of anybody except Lord Howick, to whom he was very civil, on account probably of his father, and because he is a new man. The threatened contests of most of them ended in smoke. Devonshire and Yorkshire will, however, be important and severe. Of all the appointments those that are most severely criticised are Mulgrave’s and Morpeth’s. It is said that Charles Kemble and Liston might as well have been sent, as the former has always imitated the one, and the latter involuntarily resembles the other. Mulgrave, however he may be sneered at, has been tried and found capable, and I think he will do very well; he has courage and firmness and no want of ability. He is besides hospitable, generous, courteous, and agreeable in private life.[3]

[3] [Lord Melbourne’s second Administration was composed as follows:—

First Lord of the Treasury	Viscount Melbourne.
Lord President of the Council	Marquis of Lansdowne.
First Lord of the Admiralty	Lord Auckland.
Lord Privy Seal	Viscount Duncannon.
Home Secretary	Lord John Russell.
Foreign Secretary	Viscount Palmerston.
Colonial Secretary	Lord Glenelg.
Board of Control	Sir John Cam Hobhouse.
Secretary at War	Viscount Howick.
Board of Trade	Mr. Poulett Thomson.
Chancellor of the Exchequer	Mr. Spring Rice.
Irish Secretary	Viscount Morpeth.

The Earl of Mulgrave was Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, The Great Seal was put in Commission.]

May 1st, 1835

Morpeth made an excellent speech on introducing his Irish Tithe Bill, and has raised himself considerably. Morpeth is (as it appears to me) ill selected for the difficult post he occupies; he has very fair ability of a showy kind, but I doubt the solidity and strength of his material for the rough work which is allotted to him.

The last day of Parliament was distinguished by a worse attack of O’Connell upon Alvanley for what he had said the day before in the House of Lords. Alvanley has sent him a message through Dawson Damer demanding an apology or satisfaction, and the result I don’t yet know.[4]

[4] [O’Connell had called Lord Alvanley a ‘bloated buffoon,’ and as usual took refuge in his vow never to fight another duel. Upon this his son, Morgan O’Connell, offered to meet Lord Alvanley in lieu of his father, which was accepted and the duel took place.]

London, May 17th, 1835

Newmarket and gout have between them produced an interval of unusual length in my scribblings, though I am not aware of having had anything particularly interesting to record. We had Stanley at Newmarket the second week as well as the first, taking a lively interest in John Russell’s defeat in Devonshire. This defeat was a great mortification to his party, and was not compensated by the easy victory which Morpeth obtained in Yorkshire. These elections and the affair between Alvanley LORD ALVANLEY’S DUEL. and O’Connell have been the chief objects of attention; all the newspapers are full of details, which I need not put down here. Alvanley seems to have behaved with great spirit and resolution. There was a meeting at De Ros’s house of De Ros, Damer, Lord Worcester, and Duncombe to consider what was to be done on the receipt of Morgan O’Connell’s letter, and whether Alvanley should fight him or not. Worcester and Duncombe were against fighting, the other two for it. Alvanley at once said that the boldest course was the best, and he would go out. It was agreed that no time should be lost, so Damer was despatched to Colonel Hodges, and said Alvanley was ready to meet Morgan O’Connell. ‘The next morning,’ Hodges suggested. ‘No, immediately.’ The parties joined in Arlington Street and went off in two hackney coaches; Duncombe, Worcester, and De Ros, with Dr. Hume, in a third. Only Hume went on the ground, for Damer had objected to the presence of some Irish friend of O’Connell’s, so that Alvanley’s friends could only look on from a distance. The only other persons who came near them were an old Irishwoman and a Methodist parson, the latter of whom exhorted the combatants in vain to forego their sinful purpose, and to whom Alvanley replied, ‘Pray, sir, go and mind your own affairs, for I have enough to do now to think of mine.’ ‘Think of your soul,’ he said. ‘Yes,’ said Alvanley, ‘but my body is now in the greatest danger.’ The Irishwoman would come and see the fighting, and asked for some money for her attendance. Damer seems to have been a very bad second, and probably lost his head; he ought not to have consented to the third shots upon any account. Alvanley says he execrated him in his heart when he found he had consented to it. Hodges acted like a ruffian, and had anything happened he would have been hanged. It is impossible to know whether the first shot was fired by mistake or not. The impression on the minds of Alvanley’s friends is that it was not, but it is difficult to believe that any man would endeavour to take such an advantage. However, no shot ought to have been fired after that. The affair made an amazing noise. As O’Connell had threatened to mention it in the House of Commons, Damer went to Peel to put him in possession of all the circumstances, but he said that he was sure O’Connell would not venture to stir the matter there.

Lord Wellesley’s resignation of the White Wand has set conjecture afloat as to his motives, and it is asserted on one side, but denied on the other, that disgust at O’Connell’s predominance is the reason, following disappointment at not having been himself reinstated. I do not know the truth of the matter. Lord John Russell takes his seat on Monday, after which business will begin again in earnest in the House of Commons. There is an impression that this Government will not be of long continuance, and that the Ministers are themselves aware that their tenure of office must be brief. They will at all events get through this session, for much remains to be done in the way of approximation and combination between different sections of public men before any satisfactory arrangement can be made for replacing the present Ministers. If it was not for the Irish question, and the apparent impossibility of bringing that to any final adjustment, I should not despair of the introduction of a better state of feeling and the mitigation of the bitterness and animosity which set men of different parties so irreconcilably against each other. At present there is certainly a great calm after the storm which raged so fiercely a little while ago. I have been so out of the world between Newmarket and the gout that I know but little of what has been passing, and merely throw in this brief notice to keep up the chain of my observations and remarks.

May 24th, 1835

Came from Newmarket on Thursday night. Melbourne is said (by his friends) to be doing very well in the House of Lords, but the discussion on Friday about Lord Wellesley’s resignation gave him great annoyance. Lord Wellesley declined to say why he had resigned, and merely declared it was not on account of Mulgrave’s procession, but he did not contradict any one of the assertions that the cause was disgust at O’Connell’s ascendency. When Lord Harrowby said that ‘if he had been Mulgrave he THE APPEAL OF SWIFT v. KELLY. would rather have been torn in pieces than have marched in under such banners as were displayed,’ Lord Wellesley loudly cheered him. Peel’s speech at the dinner the other day has made a great deal of noise, for he is supposed to have thrown over his High Tory friends very completely in it, and to have exhibited a determination to adapt his opinions and conduct to the spirit of the times. However, the Tories affect to be satisfied, laud it to the skies, and distribute it through the country. In the House of Commons up to this time nothing has been done; Peel has made over his Dissenters Bill to the Government, who will probably do nothing with it this session. Nobody expects the present Administration to last long, as it is said, not even themselves; but nothing is prepared for the formation of a better and more durable Cabinet.

Lord Eliot[5] and Colonel Gurwood have returned from Spain, satisfied that the Carlist party cannot be put down, and having had a conversation with Louis Philippe, the substance of which appeared in the ‘Times,’ and very correctly. Great indignation is expressed at the indiscretion which let this out, and it is understood that Gurwood has been chattering about what passed in all directions. The King of France, it is clear, will not interfere, and so they must fight it out. Spanish stock fell 15 per cent, in one or two days. The King is in such a state of dudgeon that he will not give any dinners to anybody.

[5] [Lord Eliot (afterwards Earl of St. Germans) had been sent to Spain by the Duke of Wellington, in March 1835, to endeavour to mitigate the atrocities which at that time disgraced the leaders on both sides in the civil contest raging in Spain. He was eminently successful in his mission, and a Convention (commonly known as the Convention of Bergara) was signed under his Lordship’s mediation at Logroño on the 27th of April, 1835. A narrative of this mission was printed by Lord St. Germans in 1871.]

Yesterday Swift and Kelly’s[6] case came on before the Privy Council. It was to have been heard the Monday before, when it would have been argued and decided, because every day in the week was disposable for the purpose, but Brougham thought fit to interfere. He insisted upon being there to hear it, and compelled Lord Lansdowne to put off the hearing till Saturday, to the extraordinary inconvenience of all parties. On Saturday the court met, but no Brougham. They began, and in about two hours he made his appearance, read his letters, wrote notes, corrected some paper (for the press, as I could see), and now and then attended to the cause, making flippant observations, much to the terror of Jervaise—Miss Kelly’s uncle—for all his interruptions appeared to be directed adversely to them. I told Mr. Jervaise he need not pay any attention to what Brougham said. As he came late, so he went away early, breaking up the court at half-past three, and as other engagements occupied the Judges the rest of the week, it was put off till the 18th of June.

[6] [The curious case of Swift v. Kelly was heard by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and is reported in Knapp’s ‘Privy Council Reports,’ vol. iii. p. 257. Mr. Greville had known something of the parties in Rome, and their adventures are related in a former part of these Journals, vol. i. p. 379.]

May 30th, 1835

On Wednesday last went to Charles Kemble’s in the evening; singing and playing; Mrs. Arkwright, Miss Strutt, old Liverati (horrible squabbling), and Miss Adelaide Kemble. The father and mother both occupied with their daughter’s book, which Kemble told me he had ‘never read till it appeared in print, and was full of sublime things and vulgarities,’ and the mother ‘was divided between admiration and disgust, threw it down six times, and as often picked it up.’

Thursday night.

To Horace Twiss’s what he called ‘a Judy party’—a supper and jollification, where all were expected to contribute to the amusement of the company who possessed wherewithal. The contributors were Twiss himself, Mrs. Arkwright, Miss Cooke, Dance, Miss Dance, Planché, Mrs. Blood, Mrs. Groom, Theodore Hook, Billy something, who imitated Cooper and Ward. I stayed till two, and they went on till three. It was sufficiently amusing altogether, though noisy and vulgar; company very miscellaneous, but everybody ready to amuse and be amused.

Friday.

The Committee of Council met on the matter of the London University; Brougham of course the great performer; LONDON UNIVERSITY CHARTER. the same persons were summoned who had attended before, but great changes had since taken place, which made the assembly curious. There were Melbourne, Lord Lansdowne and certain of his colleagues, Brougham and Lyndhurst—both ex-Chancellors since the last meeting—Richmond, Ripon, Stanley and Graham, the Dilly complete, and Lord Grey. When they came to discuss the matter nobody seemed disposed to move; at last Brougham proposed a resolution ‘that the King should be advised to grant a charter making the petitioners an University, the regulations and restrictions to be determined hereafter.’ The Bishop of London objected on behalf of King’s College to any advantages being conferred on the London University which would place the latter institution in a better condition than the former. After much tedious discussion the words ‘university,’ &c., were omitted, and the resolution moved was ‘to grant a charter.’ The Duke of Richmond formally opposed it, his principal objection being to the insolvent state of the concern. Brougham sat in contemptuous silence for a few minutes while the Duke spoke, and then replied. There was a squabble between them, and an evident inclination on the part of the majority present to refuse the charter, but the address of the Commons with the King’s answer were read, which presented a very difficult case to act upon. The King’s answer amounted very nearly to an engagement to grant a charter; the Privy Council was bound to decide without reference to the address and answer, and the bias there was to advise against the grant. Brougham, after much ineffectual discussion, said in a tone of sarcastic contempt that ‘their hesitation and their scruples were ridiculous, for the House of Commons would step in and cut them both short and settle the question.’ This is doubtless true, and he can effect it when he will; but how monstrous, then, was the vote. The House of Commons had never heard a tittle of the evidence or the argument; the Council had heard it all, and were bound to report upon it, when the House, while the judgment of the Privy Council was still pending, voted an address to the Crown for the purpose of obtaining an adjudication of the matter one particular way, without reference to the proceedings before the tribunal. They all seemed agreed that if it was expedient to grant a charter it required much consideration to decide under what restrictions and regulations it should be conceded, and Lord Grey declared that if he was called upon, without reference to any proceedings elsewhere, to decide upon the arguments they had heard at the bar, he should decide against giving the charter, but if he were called upon to advise the Crown what under all the circumstances it was expedient to do, his advice might be very different. Graham said he could not divest his mind of the knowledge he possessed of what had passed in the House of Commons, and he thought the Government ought to advise the Crown on its own responsibility what course it was expedient to adopt. After wasting an hour and a half in a very fruitless and not very interesting discussion (everybody looking bored to death except Brougham, who was talking all the time) the Council broke up without doing anything, and agreed to meet again on Friday next. Old Eldon was very busy and eager about it, and had all the papers sent to him; he could not attend, being wholly disabled by the gout. Of course the charter (at least a charter) will be given, because the House of Commons in the plenitude of their ignorance, but of their power, have so decided.

June 14th, 1835

Taken up with Epsom since I last wrote, and indisposed to journalising, besides having nothing to say. I did not attend the second meeting at the Privy Council on the London University question. Lord Eldon came to it, and there was some discussion, but without any violence; it ended by a report to the King, requesting he would dispense with the advice of the Council; so the matter remains with the Government. It is clear that they would have advised against granting the charter but for the answer which the King made to the address of the House of Commons, which was in fact a promise to grant it. This answer was the work of Peel and Goulburn, and I can’t imagine what induced them to put such an one into his THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY. Majesty’s mouth, when they might have so properly made him say that he had referred the matter to the Privy Council, and was waiting for their report.

The calm and repose which have succeeded to the storms of the early part of the session are really wonderful; all parties seem disposed to lay aside their arms for the present, one reason of which is that parties are so evenly balanced that neither wishes to try its strength. Then the line which Peel is taking precludes any immediate renewal of hostilities. The measures of Government are confined to one or two questions, of which the Corporation Reform has alone been brought forward. Peel made a very able and dexterous speech upon John Russell’s introduction of that measure, in which he exhibited anew his great superiority, and at once declared his intention of admitting the whole principle of it, reserving to himself to deal as he thought fit with the details. It has been asserted on both sides that the Whigs and the High Tories are equally disgusted at his speech, the former for cutting the ground from under his feet, the latter for his departure from good old High Tory principles. There may be some truth in this, but the Tories profess generally to be satisfied and convinced, and to be quite ready to follow him in the liberal course on which he has entered; so much so that it is now said there is no longer such a thing as a Tory. Peel clearly does not intend that there shall be (as far as he is concerned as their leader) a Tory party, though of course there must be a Conservative party, the great force of which is the old Tory interest, and his object evidently is to establish himself in the good opinion of the country and render himself indispensable—to raise a party out of all other parties, and to convert the new elements of democratic power into an instrument of his own elevation, partly by yielding to and partly by guiding and restraining its desires and opinions. Neither is there any mystery in his conduct; his object and his intentions are evident to all, and it is perhaps advantageous that he has nothing to conceal. At the same time he plays this game with great prudence and ability. It is not his interest to strike great blows, but constantly to augment the reputation and extend the influence he has acquired, and this he does visibly and sensibly. There seems to be an universal impression that nothing can keep him out of office long. This Government may probably scramble through the session; there is no particular question on which they are likely to be overturned, but there is a conviction that any Government must be provisional in which Peel is not included, and that before long the country will insist upon his return to power.

June 19th, 1835

At Stoke for the Ascot races. Alvanley was there—nobody else remarkable; fine weather and great luxury. Riding to the course on Wednesday, I overtook Adolphus Fitzclarence in the Park, who rode with me, and gave me an account of his father’s habits and present state of mind. The former are as follows:—He sleeps in the same room with the Queen, but in a separate bed; at a quarter before eight every morning his valet de chambre knocks at the door, and at ten minutes before eight exactly he gets out of bed, puts on a flannel dressing-gown and trousers, and walks into his dressing-room. Let who will be there, he never takes the slightest notice of them till he emerges from this sanctuary, when, like the malade imaginaire, he accosts whoever may be present with a cheerful aspect. He is long at his ablutions, and takes up an hour and a half in dressing. At half-past nine he breakfasts with the Queen, the ladies, and any of his family; he eats a couple of fingers and drinks a dish of coffee. After breakfast he reads the ‘Times’ and ‘Morning Post,’ commenting aloud on what he reads in very plain terms, and sometimes they hear ‘That’s a damned lie,’ or some such remark, without knowing to what it applies. After breakfast he devotes himself with Sir Herbert Taylor to business till two, when he lunches (two cutlets and two glasses of sherry); then he goes out for a drive till dinner time; at dinner he drinks a bottle of sherry—no other wine—and eats moderately; he goes to bed soon after eleven. He is in dreadfully low spirits, and cannot rally at all; the only interval of pleasure which he has lately KING WILLIAM’S PERSONAL HABITS. had was during the Devonshire election, when he was delighted at John Russell’s defeat. He abhors all his Ministers, even those whom he used rather to like formerly, but hates Lord John the most of all. When Adolphus told him that a dinner ought to be given for the Ascot races he said, ‘You know I cannot give a dinner; I cannot give any dinners without inviting the Ministers, and I would rather see the Devil than any one of them in my house.’ I asked him how he was with them in his inevitable official relations. He said that he had as little to do with them as he could, and bowed them out when he gave any of them audiences as fast as possible. He is peculiarly disgusted with Errol, for whom he has done so much, and who has behaved so ungratefully to him; but it is a good trait of him that he said ‘he hoped the world would not accuse Errol of ingratitude.’ He did not invite Errol to the Castle even for the Ascot races, and has seen little or nothing of him since the change. Adolphus said that he believed he was saving money. He has 120,000ℓ. a year, of which 40,000ℓ. goes in pensions; the rest is at his own disposal. He gives up his Hanoverian revenue—about 16,000ℓ. a year—to the Duke of Cambridge.

June 21st, 1835

Yesterday I dined with Lord Ripon; Lord Grey and Stanley and Graham dined there. I sat next to the latter, who holds nothing but Tory language. He talked of Stanley’s letter to Sir Thomas Hesketh, and of the great offence it has given the Tories. Graham thought it indiscreet and uncalled for, though in the principles (anti-clubbism and anti-associations) he agreed. Graham is very full of the expedition to Spain,[7] and expresses much alarm at the idea of an army being formed which is to act independently of the control and authority of the Government, to be composed of Irish Catholics, supplied by O’Connell (who, he says, has been to Alava and offered him any number of men) and commanded by Evans, who is a Republican. He believes that Peel entertains the same sentiments of aversion and alarm that he does; but he said that when he attempted to draw from him his opinion the other night he could not succeed; that Stanley has no alarm on the subject; expects that on Wednesday next Peel will make a severe attack upon the Government on this matter; [but this fell to the ground].

[7] [This was the Spanish Legion, commanded by General de Lacy Evans. Licence was given under the Foreign Enlistment Act for British subjects to enter the service of Queen Isabella.]

In the morning yesterday I was in court for the unfortunate case of Swift and Kelly, about which I cannot help taking an interest from having been originally concerned in it, and because I think there has been great villany somewhere. Some of the circumstances connected with this appeal are curious, as showing the accidents on which the issue of matters of vital importance to the parties often depend, and how the mistakes or selfishness of individuals concerned may influence the result, and in a way they little expected or calculated upon.

June 27th, 1835

I am again tormented to death with the Committee on West India places, and menaced with a report that will be fatal to my case.[8] Graham has been very obliging about it, and attended the Committee on Thursday to see what they were about and give me notice. I went to Lord Melbourne yesterday and stated my case to him, invoking his protection, and he appeared extremely well disposed to do what he could for me. I told him I did not wish him to pledge himself till he had seen the case and considered it, such as I had laid it before the Committee; and then, if he is satisfied that I stand upon tenable grounds, I will ask him to exert his influence and authority in my behalf. However, I much doubt whether, strive and struggle as I may, I shall ever escape from the determination of this morose and rigid millionaire [Francis Baring, who was not, however, a millionaire or anything like it, either in præsenti or in futuro] to strip me of my property; and I have made up my mind to its loss, though resolved to fight while I have a leg to fight upon.

[8] [Mr. Greville held the sinecure office of Secretary of the Island of Jamaica, which was threatened at this time by a Committee of the House of Commons. He succeeded, however, in retaining it, until he voluntarily resigned the appointment many years afterwards. His salary as Clerk of the Council was diminished by 500ℓ. a year as long as he held the two offices.]

LORD BROUGHAM AND THE PRIVY COUNCIL. Yesterday we were again occupied all day with Swift and Kelly, which to-day will be brought to a close. The conduct of Brougham on this trial exceeds all imagination and belief. From the beginning he has taken a one-sided view of the case, and apparently set out with a bias which has continually increased, till he has become altogether identified, and in a manner passionately identified, with the appellant’s side; and he exhibits this bias by one continual course of advocacy, battling every argument and every point with the respondent’s counsel with a virulence and an intemperance that are so disgusting that my blood boils while I listen to him. But his conduct in all other respects displays the most extraordinary contrast with that of the other judges who sit there; they, at least, listen attentively and consecutively to the whole case, and when they do interrupt it is for the purpose of obtaining explanations and elucidations, and without the exhibition of any bias. But he is writing letters, reading newspapers, cutting jokes, attending only by fits and starts; then, when something smites his ear, out he breaks, and with a mixture of sarcasm and ribaldry and insolence he argues and battles the point, whatever it may be.

Afternoon.—I am just come from the court. Lushington finished his speech at two, and when Pemberton was about to reply Brougham announced that he must go away to the London University, where he was to distribute prizes. The consequence was that the reply was deferred till next Wednesday, and the parties will be put to the expense of 60ℓ. more. His conduct to-day was exactly of a piece with that which he has exhibited throughout the trial. With all the ingenuity and astuteness of which he is master he has attacked every part of the respondent’s case; and, to do him justice, he has often displayed great acuteness and expressed himself with admirable force and precision; but it was the conduct of an advocate and not of a judge, and a much better advocate has he been for Swift than either of those he retained. (Pemberton, however, conducted the case with consummate skill and judgment.) He finished by declaring that as far as he was concerned he should not desiderate a reply, except on one or two points on which he wished to hear it. After the court broke up Baron Parke came into my room and asked my opinion, at the same time telling me his own, which was as decidedly against the girl as Brougham’s. I argued the case with him, especially the points which Lushington failed to enforce as strongly as I think he might have done, but his mind was made up. Shadwell, on the contrary, leans the other way, and agreed with me in my view of it. It is, however, very clear that nothing can prevent the reversal of Sir John Nicholl’s judgment; for Erskine will very likely go with Brougham and Parke, and if he does not Lord Lansdowne undoubtedly will; but if I were to attend this court a hundred years I should never forget the conduct of Brougham on this trial. My disgust would not have been a jot less had he espoused the same side that I do; and if I were myself engaged in a suit, and he were to take up my own cause in such a barefaced and outrageous manner, with such an utter contempt of dignity and decency, I should feel the utmost shame at such partiality, though exerted in my behalf.

June 30th, 1835

I went to Melbourne on Sunday and carried him my case.[9] He told me he had already desired Spring Rice to speak to Baring on the subject, and I believe he will do what he can; but these great people, however well disposed, can seldom be urged into sufficient resolution and activity to take an energetic way of settling the matter, and they have always so much consideration for each other that Melbourne will probably, with all his good-nature, feel a sort of delicacy to his subordinate colleague in rescuing me from his clutches. Yesterday I went to the Duke of Wellington and gave him my case to read, requesting him to exert his influence with his Tories, and get them to attend the Committee and defend me there. He read it, approved, and promised to speak to both Peel and Herries. I had previously desired George Dawson to speak to Peel. I might certainly, after the very essential services I rendered Peel and his Government, go with some confidence to Peel or any THE POPE AND THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT. of them and ask for their aid in my difficulty; but it is not wise to remind men of an obligation; if they do not feel it without being reminded they will not be made to do so by any hint, and an accusation of ingratitude will be implied, which will only excite their resentment; if they are sensible of the obligation they will return it without any reminder.

[9] [Relating to the Secretaryship of Jamaica.]

After I had said what I had to say to Melbourne he asked me what was thought of the Tithe Bill. I told him it was thought a very outrageous measure by the Tories, but that I thought it useless and that it did not go far enough. ‘I know you do,’ he said, ‘but such as it is it will very likely overturn the Government.’ He then talked over the Irish question, and owned that nothing could settle it, that they might perhaps bolster up the Irish Church a little longer than the other party could, that they, however, could not do more than this now, and it was only doubtful if they could do this. He talked the language of reason, and with a just sense of the insuperable difficulties which present themselves on all sides with respect to this question, but at the same time of their eventual (though as to time uncertain) solution. I told him that I had long been of opinion that the only practicable and sound course was to open a negotiation with Rome, and to endeavour to deal with the Catholics in Ireland and the ministers of the Catholic religion upon the same plan which had been mutatis mutandis adopted universally in Germany and almost all over the Continent, and that there was nothing the Church of Rome desired so much as to cultivate a good understanding with us. He then told me a thing that surprised me, and which seemed to be at variance with this supposition—that an application had been made to the Pope very lately (through Seymour) expressive of the particular wish of the British Government, that he would not appoint M‘Hale to the vacant Catholic bishoprick, anybody but him, notwithstanding which the Pope had appointed M‘Hale; but on this occasion the Pope made a shrewd observation. His Holiness said that ‘he had remarked for a long time past that no piece of preferment of any value ever fell vacant in Ireland that he did not get an application from the British Government asking for the appointment.’ Lord Melbourne supposed he was determined to show that he had the power of refusing and of opposing the wishes of Government, and in reply to my question he admitted that the Pope had generally conferred the appointment according to the wishes of Government. Can anything be more absurd or anomalous than such relations as these? The law prohibits any intercourse with Rome, and the Government whose business it is to enforce the law has established a regular but underhand intercourse, through the medium of a diplomatic agent, whose character cannot be avowed, and the Ministers of this Protestant kingdom are continually soliciting the Pope to confer appointments, the validity, even the existence, of which they do not recognise, while the Pope, who is the object of our orthodox abhorrence and dread, good-humouredly complies with all or nearly all their requests. These are the national and legislative follies of this wise and prosperous people, and such is the false position into which we are drawn by a long course of detestable policy—policy arising at first out of circumstances, and eventually adhered to from those powerful prejudices which struck their roots so deep into the soil that the force of reason and philosophy has not yet been sufficient to tear them up. Peel, in one of his speeches on Catholic emancipation, bade the House of Commons not to deceive itself, and to be aware that if that Bill was carried, we must have Episcopal (or Protestant) England, Presbyterian Scotland, and Catholic Ireland. He prophesied well and truly no doubt, and to that consummation affairs will eventually come, as they ought to come, though not without many a struggle, through many a year. The prophecy of Peel is advancing to its accomplishment, but he has either forgotten it or finds it convenient to forget it.

Yesterday the Duke of Wellington talked about the Spanish war, the nature of which he described very well, and expressed his opinion that on the whole the Christinos have the best chance; he said Zumalacarreguy was an able man, and that his death must have a very important influence on the THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON ON SIR W. NAPIER. result. We talked of Napier’s controversy with Perceval.[10] He said Napier had not fairly treated Perceval’s character in the controversy, said he had never read a syllable of the book, in order to keep clear of discussions, but that when the work was completed, and all controversies were silenced, he might probably look it over, and if he discovered any errors tell the author of them. He said that no doubt the army had been greatly in want of money, but that this was not the fault of the Government. It was a great mistake to suppose that any advantage had been derived (as to obtaining funds) from the bank restriction; certainly the raising of loans was facilitated by it, but the war would have been much less expensive without it, and he had always been of opinion that the immediate cause of the bank restriction was the Loyalty Loan. This loan had drained the bankers and individuals of ready money, and the consequence was a stagnation in commerce, and therefore in circulation, which rendered the bank restriction necessary. He then talked of the Walcheren expedition, and said that though it was wretchedly conducted and altogether mismanaged, it was not ill-planned, and if they had gone straight to Antwerp it might have rendered very great service to the general cause, and have put Bonaparte in great difficulties. I had always fancied that he had disapproved of that expedition.

[10] [The Duke referred to Sir William Napier’s ‘History of the Peninsular War.’]

July 1st, 1835

This morning Pemberton was heard in reply in Swift’s case, and after a short discussion the court came to a resolution to upset Sir John Nicholl’s decision. Brougham behaved very decently to-day, and stated fairly enough his opinion, but he was quite clear, and so was Baron Parke, as to the judgment. The Vice-Chancellor with hesitation acquiesced, and Erskine said nothing; the Lord President went with them, so that the court was unanimous.

From thence I went to St. James’s to swear in Sir Charles Grey[11] and Charles Fitzroy Privy Councillors, when we had a most curious burst of eloquence from his Majesty. This is the first time I have seen him and his present Ministers together, and certainly they do not strike me as exhibiting any mutual affection. After Sir Charles Grey was sworn the King said to him, ‘Stand up,’ and up he stood. He then addressed him with great fluency and energy nearly in these words:—‘Sir Charles Grey, you are about to proceed upon one of the most important missions which ever left this country, and, from your judgment, ability, and experience, I have no doubt that you will acquit yourself to my entire satisfaction; I desire you, however, to bear in mind that the colony to which you are about to proceed has not, like other British colonies, been peopled from the mother country—that it is not an original possession of the Crown, but that it was obtained by the sword. You will take care to assert those undoubted prerogatives which the Crown there possesses, and which I am determined to enforce and maintain, and I charge you by the oath which you have just taken strenuously to assert those prerogatives, of which persons who ought to have known better have dared even in my presence to deny the existence.’ His speech was something longer than this, but the last words almost precisely the same. The silence was profound, and I was amused at the astonishment depicted on the faces of the Ministers. I asked Lord Lansdowne and Lord Holland who it was that he alluded to. Neither knew, but the former said he thought it might be Ellice, and that the King referred to something Ellice had said to him when he was Minister. Somebody said they thought it was Spring Rice, but that could not be when Rice was sitting at the table. I have heard many specimens of his eloquence, but never anything like this. After this he had to give Durham an audience on his embassy, which must have been very agreeable to him, as he hates him and the Duchess of Kent, whose ‘magnus Apollo’ Durham is.

[11] [Sir Charles Grey had just been appointed Governor of Jamaica. He had previously filled for a short time the office of Chief Justice of Bengal, and enjoyed at this time a considerable reputation in society. The Minister to whom the King referred in his concluding observation was Lord Glenelg as will be seen presently.]

July 3rd, 1835

The night before last Lord Stanley and Graham quitted their neutral seats below the gangway, and established LORD STANLEY AND GRAHAM CROSS THE HOUSE. themselves on the opposite bench below Peel. This was considered as an intimation of a more decided hostility to the present Government, and as an abandonment of the neutrality (if such it can be called) which they have hitherto professed. Last night O’Connell made a very coarse attack upon Stanley in consequence of this change, which lashed him into a fury, and a series of retorts followed between them, without any result. O’Connell half shuffled out of his expressions, but refused to apologise; the chairman (Bernal) took no notice, and the matter ended by a speech from Stanley and a few remarks upon it from Lord John Russell. The former stated his reasons for this ostentatious locomotion, which amounted to this: that he had been rudely treated in the House by ironical cheers and other intelligible sounds, and attacked by the Government newspapers, and he had, therefore, departed from a society for which he owned he was not fitted. It was not, I think, dignified or judicious, and George Bentinck, the most faithful of his followers, was not satisfied with the proceeding or the explanation. His party, such as it was, was finally extinguished by this act, though it hardly had any existence before; some five or six men, among whom were Gally Knight, George Bentinck, Stratford Canning, and Sir Matthew Ridley, went over to the Opposition benches; the others dispersed where they chose.

The real history of the transaction is this: it originated with Graham, and it is not the first time he has lugged Stanley into what may be called a scrape. He was returning from some division to his usual seat when he was assailed by those cheers, and some voice cried out, ‘Why don’t you stay where you are?’ on which he bowed in acquiescence to the quarter whence the recommendation proceeded, and instantly retreated to the other side. The next day he told Stanley that he must now stay where he was, and at the same time he produced the ‘Globe’ newspaper, which contained a very coarse attack upon Stanley himself. This article, together with Graham’s representation, determined him to take up his position on the Opposition bench, and accordingly there he went, but without any intimation to his friends, who, to their great surprise, found him there, and only got from him the above explanation that evening in the House. Lord John Russell’s reply to Stanley’s speech was very courteous, and rather well done as far as it went, for he only said a few words. Lord Stanley is certainly fallen from his high estate, and is in a very different position from that which he aspired to occupy at the beginning of the session. He is without a party, and without any authority in the House except what he derives from his own talents for debate. He has now no alternative but to unite himself with Peel’s party, and to act under him, without any pretension to competition, and without the possibility of being considered as a separate element of political power. He has been brought to this by a series of false steps from his first refusal to join Peel, followed by his flippant and undecided conduct throughout the great contest. The Whigs and the Tories both hate him, and neither will be very ready to forgive him. There is a mixture of contempt in the dislike of the former, and an undisguised satisfaction among the most violent at having got rid of him, which make any future approximation to their side impossible, and the Tories, though they will receive him in their ranks, will never forgive him for his conduct, to which they attribute the failure of the Conservative effort, for his presumption in endeavouring to set up a middle party and render himself the arbiter of the contest, and especially for his affectation of want of confidence in Peel and his attacks upon the Duke. In the meantime this move of Stanley’s has rather served to strengthen the Government in the House of Commons; between the disposition of many to go with Government, the lukewarmness and indolence of the Conservatives, and the steady attendance of a phalanx of Radicals, they have got good, regular, steady-working majorities, and appear as strong in the House of Commons as any Government need be.

July 4th, 1835

Yesterday Brougham gave judgment in the case of Swift and Kelly—a written judgment and at great length. I thought it remarkably well done, embracing all the points of the case, and laying down the law and the ALAVA AND THE DUKE OF CUMBERLAND. reasons for reversing the decree of the court below in a very forcible and perspicuous manner. He must have written this judgment with great rapidity, for it was only on Tuesday afternoon that it was settled to be given on Thursday, all of which is a proof of his admirable talents. His conduct on the last day of the hearing and this judgment in some degree made up for his previous intemperance and violence. He said that he had shown the judgment to Lord Lyndhurst, who entirely agreed with him. A negotiation had been previously opened to endeavour to get the other side to concur in an application to the court to stay the judgment and to consent to a pecuniary compromise, but it was quite ineffectual.

A night or two ago there was a breeze at Lady Jersey’s between the Duke of Cumberland and Alava, and many stories made of it, more than were true. The Duke, who had frequently taunted him before, was again attacking him about his expedition and Spanish affairs generally, when Alava got into a fury and said to him, ‘Monseigneur, Don Carlos peut être roi d’Espagne, mais il ne sera jamais le roi du général Alava.’ This Lord Jersey told me, and that the other things he is reported to have said to the Duke are not true.

July 7th, 1835

I can’t deny that many persons have shown a very kind disposition to assist me in this business of my Jamaica place, of different political persuasions, and with most of whom I have but a very slight personal acquaintance, among these none more than Mr. Gladstone and Lord Lincoln, neither of whom did I know to speak to till I put myself into communication with them on this business. On the other hand Charles Wood, who is against me in his opinion, has been the channel of communication with Baring and shown generally a good will towards me. These demonstrations are agreeable enough, and contribute to put one in harmony with mankind, but it is after all a humiliating position, and I feel unutterable disgust, and something akin to shame, at being compelled to solicit the protection of one set of men, and the friendly offices of another, in order to be maintained in the possession of that which is in itself obnoxious to public feeling and opinion. A placeman is in these days an odious animal, and as a double placeman I am doubly odious, and I have a secret kind of whispering sensation that these very people who good-naturedly enough assist me must be a little shocked at the cause they advocate. All that can be said in my favour is not obvious, nor can it be properly or conveniently brought forward, and all that can be said against me lies on the surface, and is universally evident. The funds from which I draw my means do not somehow seem a pure source; formerly those things were tolerated, now they are not, and my prospects were formed and destiny determined at a remote period, while I incur all the odium and encounter all the risks consequent upon the altered state of public feeling on the subject.

July 15th, 1835

Sefton told me that a correspondence has taken place between Lord Glenelg and Sir Herbert Taylor about that speech of the King’s at the Council on Wednesday se’nnight. Glenelg felt himself called upon to enquire whether the blow was aimed at him, and it was evident from the tenor of the reply that it was. I heard from Stephen a day or two afterwards the real truth of this matter. It was Lord Glenelg that the King intended to allude to in his speech. Lord Melbourne spoke to his Majesty on the subject, remonstrated, and said it was impossible to carry on the government if he did such things. He said that he was greatly irritated, and had acted under strong feelings in consequence of what Glenelg had said to him. Melbourne rejoined, ‘Your Majesty must have mistaken Lord Glenelg.’ ‘Not at all,’ said the King, and he then went into a dispute they had had about the old constitution of Canada—I forget what, but something the King asserted which Glenelg contradicted. He repaired to the Colonial Office and told Stephen, who informed him that the King was right and he was wrong. (The King, in fact, had got it up, and had the thing at his fingers’ ends.) This was awkward; however, it ended in the King’s making a sort of apology and crying peccavi for the violence of his language, THE KING AND HIS MINISTERS. and this will probably be somewhat of a lesson to him, though it will not diminish the bitterness of his sentiments towards his Ministers.

I expressed my astonishment that any man could consent to stay in office after receiving such an insult as this was, to which Stephen replied that they were all thoroughly aware of their position relatively to the King and of his feelings towards them; but they had undertaken the task and were resolved under all circumstances to go through with it, and, whatever he might say or do, they should not suffer themselves to be influenced or shaken. This is the truth; they do not look upon themselves as his Ministers, and perhaps they cannot do otherwise as things now are. It is, however, a very melancholy and mischievous state of affairs, and does more to degrade the Monarchy than anything that has ever occurred: to exhibit the King publicly to the world as a cypher, and something less than a cypher, as an unsuccessful competitor in a political squabble, is to take from the Crown all the dignity with which it is invested by that theoretical attribute of perfection that has been so conveniently ascribed to it. Both King and Ministers have been greatly to blame, the one for the egregious folly which made him rush into this sea of trouble and mortification without calculation or foresight; the other for the unrelenting severity with which they resolved to gratify their revenge and ambition, without considering that they could not punish him without degrading the throne of which he is the occupant, and that the principle involved in his impunity was of more consequence in its great and permanent results than any success of theirs. But it would have required more virtue, self-denial, wisdom, and philosophy than falls to the lot of any public man individually in these days to have embraced all these considerations, and it would have been a miracle if a great mob of men calling themselves a party could have been made to act under the influence of such moral restraints. The King’s present behaviour only makes matters worse. When he found himself compelled to take these people back, and to surrender himself a prisoner into their hands, he should have swallowed the bitter pill and digested it, and not kept rolling it in his mouth and making wry faces. He should have made a very bad business as tolerable as he could, by yielding himself with a good grace; and had he treated them with that sort of courtesy which one gentleman may and ought to show to all those with whom he is unavoidably brought into contact, and which implies nothing as to feeling and inclination, he would have received from them that respect and attention which it would have been equally their interest and their desire to show. This would have rendered their relations mutually much more tolerable, a decent veil would have been thrown over all that was humiliating and painful, and the public service must have gained by the tacit compromise; but extreme folly, great violence in those about the King, and hopes of emancipation secretly cherished, together with the intensity of his hatred of his Ministers, have conspired to keep his Majesty in his present unwise, irksome, and degrading posture.

The night before last there was a great concert on the staircase at Stafford House, the most magnificent assembly I ever saw, and such as I think no crowned head in Europe could display, so grand and picturesque. The appearance of the hall was exactly like one of Paul Veronese’s pictures, and only wanted some tapestry to be hung over the balustrades. Such prodigious space, so cool, so blazing with light; everybody was comfortable even, and the concert combined the greatest talents in Europe all together—Grisi, Malibran, Tamburini, Lablache, Rubini, and Ivanhoff. The splendour, the profusion, and the perfect ease of it all were really admirable.

Dined yesterday with the Vice-Chancellor; sixteen people whom I never saw before, almost all lawyers and lawyeresses. He told me that he believed Melbourne had no intention as long as he was Minister of changing the present arrangement with regard to the Great Seal,[12] that he DECISION OF THE WEST INDIA COMMITTEE. was of opinion that a Chancellor was of no use, and that it was more convenient to keep in his own hands the law patronage of the Great Seal, that this obviated the disputes between Ministers and Chancellors, which have generally been very violent, as between Thurlow and Pitt, and still more between Eldon and Liverpool, which were incessant, and that nothing could exceed the hatred Eldon had for Lord Liverpool, as he knew.

[12] [The Great Seal was still in Commission.]

Tavistock told me a day or two ago that his Majesty’s Ministers are intolerably disgusted at his behaviour to them and his studied incivility to everybody connected with them. The other day the Speaker was treated by him with shocking rudeness at the drawing-room. He not only took no notice of him, but studiously overlooked him while he was standing opposite, and called up Manners Sutton and somebody else to mark the difference by extreme graciousness to the latter. Seymour, who was with him as Serjeant-at-Arms, said he had never seen a Speaker so used in the five-and-twenty years he had been there, and that it was most painful. The Speaker asked him if he had ever seen a man in his situation so received at Court. Since he has been Speaker the King has never taken the slightest notice of him. It is monstrous, equally undignified and foolish.

July 18th, 1835

Yesterday I sat all day at my office wondering why I heard nothing of the Committee, till at half-past four o’clock Graham and Lord Lincoln came in with smiling countenances, that announced good news. They had had an angry debate of three hours’ duration. Baring moved that my holding the office of Secretary of Jamaica was against the spirit of the Act of Parliament. Graham moved that holding it with the leave of absence was in accordance with the Act, and the division was nine to seven. A teller on each side and Baring, who as chairman did not vote, made the numbers ten to nine. They told me that Baring and Vernon Smith were furious. The former endeavoured to turn off his defeat by proposing that the question should be reopened on framing the report; but even Grote opposed that, and he was forced to own that he was wrong in proposing it. I must say that Gladstone told me that Baring behaved very well after the division. I will not conceal the truth, much as I have reason to complain of the man. I owe this victory to the zealous assistance of the Conservatives, for not one Whig or Radical voted with me; some of the former stayed away, whether designedly or not I don’t know, except Stanley, Secretary to the Treasury, who told me he could not make up his mind to go and vote against me. The majority consisted of Herries, Fremantle (Sir Thomas), Gladstone, Nicholl, Graham, Lord Lincoln, Bethell, Fector, Bramstone, and Pringle; the minority, Baring, Vernon Smith, Pendarves, Ruthven, Scholefield, Evans, Grote, Hume, R. Stewart. I never had any intimacy with any one of those who supported me except with Graham, and we were friends, and very intimate friends, twenty years ago. He dropped me all of a sudden from caprice or calculation, and we have been on very decent but scarcely cordial terms ever since. On this occasion I whipped up the old friendship, and with great effect, for he has served me very zealously throughout the business. I scarcely knew any of the other before, Lord Lincoln and Gladstone only on this occasion, and Fector, Nicholl, Bramstone, Bethell, and Pringle I do not know now by sight. It is really amusing to see the joy with which the news of Baring’s defeat has been hailed by every member of his own family, and all others who have heard of it. The goodwill of the world (a very inert but rather satisfactory feeling) has been exhibited towards me, and there is mixed up with it in all who are acquainted with the surly reformer who is my adversary a lively pleasure at his being baffled and mortified.

July 23rd, 1835

Dined with Bingham Baring[13] yesterday, and met Whateley, Archbishop of Dublin, a very ordinary man in appearance and conversation, with something of pretension in his talk, and telling stories without point, which smelt of the Common room; nevertheless he is a very able man, and they told me that when he is with such men as Senior, and IRISH CHURCH BILL. those with whom he is very intimate, he shines. I was greatly disappointed with what I saw and heard of him. The Church Bill has been in the House of Commons these two nights. Peel introduced his motion for dividing the Bill in a very able speech, well adapted to the purpose, if anything was to be gained in such a House of Commons; but the fact is, both parties look beyond the immediate question: one wants to bolster up the present system, the other to overthrow it, and though I go along with Peel on his point, I go along with his opponents on their principle. He stated, however, very forcibly the dilemma in which his opponents are placed, and said, ‘Why don’t you make the Establishment Catholic at once, openly and avowedly, or abstain from doing what has that inevitable tendency?’ Melbourne said there was no escape from this, and I replied that I would take him at his word, and that it must come to this, and he might immortalise himself by settling the question. It certainly would be a glorious field for a statesman to enter upon to brush away all the obstacles which deeply rooted prejudices and chimerical fears founded on false reasoning throw in his way, and bend all his energies to a direct and vigorous course of policy, at once firm and determined, looking the real evil in the face, and applying the real remedy to it. If I were Prime Minister I would rather fall in the attempt than work on through a succession of expedients none of which were satisfactory to myself, to hold language at variance with my opinions, and to truckle to difficulties which it is now time boldly to face. I am as satisfied as of my existence that if the heart’s core of Peel could be laid open, it would be found that he thinks so himself. His is not the conduct of conviction, and he has been led into contradictions and inconsistencies which must ever beset and entangle those who persist in the attempt to maintain positions which have ceased to be tenable.

[13] [Afterwards the second Lord Ashburton.]

Goodwood, July 29th, 1835

To Petworth on Saturday and here on Monday; a smaller party than usual, and no women on account of the Duchess of Argyll’s death; far better not to have women at a racing party. Tavistock told me that a man (he did not say who) had been to Lord John, evidently commissioned, though not avowedly, to tell him on the part of Peel and Lord Stanley that they would both support him if he would bring forward a proposition to pay the Irish Catholic clergy. John, however, ‘timet Danaos et dona ferentes,’ and hinted that his own popularity would be sacrificed if he did. This is curious, however. John also told him that he never saw Peel laugh so much as during Graham’s speech the other night, and he meant (but forgot it) to ask him why he laughed so. To Peel it is nuts to see Stanley and Graham drawing down unpopularity on themselves and every day widening the breach between them and their old friends; but I was somewhat struck with the apparent intimacy which was evinced in what John Russell said about Peel, and asked his brother if they were on very good personal terms. He said, ‘Oh, excellent’—a sort of House of Commons intimacy. Peel told John all he meant to do in the Committee on the Church Bill—that he should propose so and so, and when they came to the appropriation clauses he should make his bow and leave them. Tavistock remarked (which had escaped me) that Peel had in his last famous speech (certainly one of extraordinary ability) omitted all mention of the principle of appropriation, and confined himself to the proof that there was no surplus; but what is most remarkable perhaps of all is this: Peel said to John, ‘If you will appropriate, I will show you a much better plan than your own,’ and he accordingly did show him a plan by which there would be a considerably greater surplus, and John acknowledged that Peel’s plan would be better than his own. I wonder what the High Tories and the King would think of all this. While he is quarrelling with Johnny and his friends for Peel’s sake, and undergoing martyrdom in his social relations with them, there they are hand and glove, and almost concerting together the very measures which are the cause of all the animosities and all the political violence which agitate and divide the world. There is something extremely ludicrous in all this.

I hear to-day that Peel is going into the country for TORY PEERS AND THE CORPORATION BILL. good, and leaves the Lords to deal with the Bills. He probably expects them to commit some follies, and fancies he may as well be out of the way.

August 4th, 1835

Came to town on Sunday, having slept at Winchester on Saturday night to see the town and the cathedral, and hear the service in the latter, which was very moderate; the cathedral, however, is worth seeing. When I got to town I found the Tory Lords had been worked into a frenzy by Wetherell and Knight[14] at the bar of the House of Lords (the latter of whom is said to have made a very able speech), and Newcastle and Winchelsea bellowed and blustered in grand style. Lord Rosslyn had told me some time ago that the Duke would have great difficulty in managing his people, but that I think was à propos of the Church Bill. Yesterday at two o’clock there was a great assemblage of Peers at Apsley House to determine what was to be done, and amazed was I when I learnt at about five o’clock that they had resolved to move that evidence should be heard against the principle of the Municipal Corporation Bill, which was accordingly moved by Carnarvon last night. At dinner I met Stuart, to whom I expressed my astonishment at the course they had adopted, and he owned that it was ‘rather hazardous,’ and said that it was adopted at the suggestion of Lyndhurst, who had insisted upon it at Apsley House, and that the Duke had given way. He said that this had followed as a necessary consequence of Brougham proposing that counsel should be heard upon the details, as it appeared that the evidence on which the Bill was founded was not to be relied on. He owned that it was probable Peel would disapprove of the proceedings of the Lords, and a breach between him and them be the consequence. He told me that at a dinner on Saturday, at which the Dukes of Wellington and Cumberland, Peel, and Wetherell were present, the question had been argued; that Sir Charles Wetherell had urged all the leading arguments he had used in his speech, and Peel had contested every part and particle of his argument, while the Duke of Cumberland did not utter a word. Stuart added that he heard the Government meditated something very strong, and I repeated what Hobhouse had told me in the morning, when I met him in the Park—that Melbourne would probably adjourn the House, that there would be a call of the House of Commons, and some strong resolution proposed there. Some Whigs, however, who were present last night, suggested that it would be better to adjourn the House of Commons, and let the Lords go on with their evidence while they pleased to hear it, and then reassemble the Commons in case the Bill was sent back to them. Hobhouse said, ‘Depend upon it, it is the commencement de la fin’. It does certainly appear to me that these Tory Lords will never rest till they have accomplished the destruction of the House of Lords. They are resolved to bring about a collision with the House of Commons, and the majority in each House grows every day more rabid and more desperate. I am at a loss to comprehend the views by which Lyndhurst, the ablest of the party, is actuated, or how he can (if it be so, which from Stuart’s account is probable) fancy that any object is attainable which involves in it a breach or separation between Peel and the great body of the Tories. I would give much to see the recesses of his mind, and know what he really thinks of all these proceedings, and to what consequences he believes that they will lead.

[14] [Mr. Knight Bruce, afterwards Lord Justice in Equity.]

August 6th, 1835

Yesterday to Brighton, to see my horse Dacre run for the Brighton stake, which he won, and back at night. The day before I met the Vice-Chancellor[15] at Charing Cross, going down, to the House of Lords. ‘Well,’ said he, shrugging his shoulders, ‘here I am going to the House of Lords, after hearing evidence all the morning, to hear it again for the rest of the evening.’ ‘What is to happen?’ I asked him. ‘O Lord, it is the greatest bore; they have heard Coventry and Oxford; they got something of a case out of the first, but the other was beyond anything tiresome; THE KING AND LORD TORRINGTON. they are sick to death of it, and Brougham and Lyndhurst have agreed that it is all damned nonsense, and they will hear nothing more after Saturday next.’ So this is the end of all this hubbub, and here are these two great comedians thundering against each other in the House of Lords overnight with all imaginable vehemence and solemnity, only to meet together the next morning and agree that it is all damned nonsense. There is something very melancholy and very ludicrous in all this, and though that great bull calf the public does not care about such things, and is content to roar when he is bid, there are those on the alert who will turn such trilling and folly to account, and convert what is half ridiculous into something all serious. Winchelsea and Newcastle after all did not vote the other night; they said they wanted no evidence, that they would have no such Bill, and would not meddle with the discussion at all except to oppose it point-blank. Fools as they are, their folly is more tolerable and probably less mischievous than the folly of the wise ones.

[15] The Great Seal being in Commission, the Vice-Chancellor of England (Sir Lancelot Shadwell) sat as one of the Commissioners on the Woolsack.

August 9th, 1835

On Wednesday last at the levee the King made a scene with Lord Torrington, one of his Lords of the Bedchamber, and a very disgraceful scene. A card was put into Torrington’s hands of somebody who was presented, which he read, ‘So and so, Deputy-Governor.’ ‘Deputy-Governor?’ said the King, ‘Deputy-Governor of what? I cannot tell your Majesty,’ replied Torrington, ‘as it is not upon the card.’ ‘Hold your tongue, sir,’ said the King; ‘you had better go home and learn to read;’ and shortly after, when some bishop presented an address against (I believe) the Irish Tithe Bill, and the King was going as usual to hand over the papers to the Lord in waiting, he stopped and said to Lord Torrington, who advanced to take them, ‘No, Lord Torrington; these are not fit documents to be entrusted to your keeping.’ His habitual state of excitement will probably bring on sooner or later the malady of his family. Torrington is a young man in a difficult position, or he ought to have resigned instantly and as publicly as the insult was offered. The King cannot bridle his temper, and lets slip no opportunity of showing his dislike, impotent as it is, of the people who surround him. He admits none but Tories into his private society, wherever he goes Tories accompany him; at Windsor Tories only are his guests. This provokes his Ministers, but it necessarily makes them more indifferent to the cultivation of his favour, and accustoms them to consider themselves as the Ministers of the House of Commons and not of the Crown.

My brother writes me from Paris very interesting details of the funeral of the victims of the assassination plot,[16] which was an imposing and magnificent ceremony, admirably arranged, and as it has produced a burst of enthusiasm for the King, and has brought round the clergy to him, it will serve to strengthen his throne. His undaunted courage ingratiates him with the French.

[16] [The victims of the Fieschi conspiracy.]

August 15th, 1835

On Wednesday the Lords commenced proceedings on the Corporation Bill. The Ministers were aware that they meant to throw it out, for Lord John Russell and Lord Lansdowne both told me at the levee that they had heard such was the intention of the Tories. However, they never had such a design, and the second reading passed without a division; on Thursday they went into Committee, and the freeman’s clause was carried against Government by a majority of 93—130 to 37—the debate being distinguished by divers sallies of intemperance from Brougham, who thundered, and menaced, and gesticulated in his finest style. When somebody cried, ‘Question,’ he burst out, ‘Do you think to put me down? I have stood against 300 of the House of Commons, and do you think I will give way to you?’ This was uttered with all imaginable rage and scorn.[17] This amendment was DEBATE ON THE CORPORATION BILL. always anticipated, and though the Government object to it, Lord Lansdowne told me that as the rate-paying clause had passed without opposition, he did not care for the other alterations, but the minority appeared to everybody bordering upon the ridiculous; a Minister who could only muster thirty-seven present, and who was in a minority of three to one, presented a novel spectacle. Nobody could account for the carelessness of their muster, for many Peers were absent who might easily have been there, and several who belong to Government by office or connexion. It did not, however, occur to anybody that they would feel themselves compelled to resign upon it, except perhaps to a few Tories, who hinted their notion that Melbourne could not go on with such a majority against him, which, however true it may be in the long run, signifies nothing as to any immediate change.

[17] Brougham had some reason to be angry. Lyndhurst did not reply to him on Wednesday, when he might have done so, pleading the fatigue of late hours and his own indisposition, and on Thursday he attacked him when he was absent; he therefore gave him good ground of complaint. Brougham’s insolence and violence have done great injury to the House of Lords by lowering the style and character of their debates and introducing coarseness and acrimony such as never were known there before. Hardly a night passes without some discreditable scene of squabbling and vituperation bandied between him and the High Tory Lords, one or other of them; their hatred of him and his scorn of them are everlastingly breaking out. He and Lyndhurst, though constantly pitted against each other, are great friends all the time, but with the others it is a rabid passion of hatred and contempt, mutually felt and continually expressed.

Last night the qualification clause was carried against Government by an equally large majority, or nearly so, and this time Government does not seem disposed to take it so patiently. It was well understood that a qualification would be imposed, and many of the supporters of the Bill said they did not object thereto, but they had no notion of such a qualification as Lyndhurst proposed and carried last night, and the Duke of Richmond (whom I met at Crockford’s) told me that it would be fatal to the Bill. He saw Lord John Russell after the division, who told him so, and that the Commons would never take the Bill with such an alteration as this. Richmond himself goes entirely with Government in this measure, and I was rather surprised to hear him say that ‘it had been urged that Lord Stanley was opposed to this part of the Bill, but that if this were so a man must judge for himself in so important a matter,’ which looks a little as if he meant to back out of the dilly, and I should not be very much surprised if he came into office again with these people, if they stay in. I asked him what in his opinion would happen, and he replied that he thought the House of Lords was nearly done for, that he expected the Commons would reject their amendments and pass some very strong resolutions; he should not be surprised if they refused to pass the Appropriation Bill. I said they would hardly do that, because it would be a measure against Government, and would compel these Ministers to resign. This he admitted, but he went on to say that he expected it would throw the House of Commons into a ferment, that they would adopt some violent course, and then there would be a ‘row royal.’ What astonishes me most in all this is that Lyndhurst, a man of great abilities, and certainly, if wishing for anything, wishing for the success of the party he belongs to, should urge these desperate courses. He it was who proposed the fatal postponement of Schedule A, which led to such utter ruin and confusion, and now it is he who manages this Bill, and who ventures to mutilate the Ministerial measure in such a manner as will in all probability bring down all the wrath of the Commons on him and his Conservative majority. I am not at all sure but that the Government is content to exhibit its paltry numbers in the House of Lords, in order that the world may see how essentially it is a Tory body, that it hardly fulfils the conditions of a great independent legislative assembly, but presents the appearance of a dominant party-faction which is too numerous to be affected by any constitutional process and too obstinate to be turned from its fixed purpose of opposing all the measures which have a tendency to diminish the influence of the Conservative party in the country. It is impossible to look at the disposition exhibited by this great majority and not admit that there is very small chance of its acting harmoniously with the present House of Commons, and that some change must take place in order to enable Government and legislation to go on at all. It is anything but clear that the nation desires the destruction of the House of Lords, nor is it clear that the nation cares for its preservation. It is, I think, exceedingly probable that a majority of those who return members to Parliament, and in whom collectively the supreme power really resides, though they might be content ENERGY OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS. to retain the House of Lords, if it could be made to act in harmony with, and therefore necessarily in subordination to, the House of Commons, would not hesitate for an instant to decree its downfall if it became clear that there was no other way of crushing the Tory faction which now rules triumphant in that House. At all events the Lords are playing a desperate game; if it succeeds, they who direct the energies of the party are great and wise men; but what if it fail? They seem to have no answer to this but that if they

Screw their courage to the sticking place,
It will not fail.

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CHAPTER XXIX.

Resistance of the Lords — Duke of Richmond — Happiness — Struggle between Lords and Commons — Peel keeps aloof — Inconsistency of the Whigs on the Irish Church Bill — Violent Language in the Lords — Lord John Russell and Peel pass the Corporation Bill — Dissolution of the Tory Party foreseen — Meeting of Peers to consider the Amendments — King’s Speech in Council on the Militia — Lord Howick’s Bitterness against the Lords — Lord Lyndhurst’s Opinion of the Corporation Bill — The King’s Language on the Regency — Talleyrand’s View of the English Alliance — Comparison of Burke and Macintosh — The St. Leger — Visit of Princess Victoria to Burghley — O’Connell’s Progress through Scotland — Mackintosh’s Life.

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August 19th, 1835

Yesterday the Lords finished the Committee on the Corporation Bill. Their last amendment (which I do not very well understand at present), by which certain aldermen elected for life are to be taken in the first instance from the present aldermen, has disgusted the authors of the Bill more than all the rest. In the morning I met Duncannon and Howick, both open-mouthed against the amendments, and this in particular, and declaring that though the others might have been stomached, this could not go down, as it was in direct opposition to the principle of the Bill. Howick talked of ‘the Lords being swept away like chaff’ and of ‘the serious times that were approaching.’ Duncannon said there would be a conference, and if the Lords insisted on these amendments the Bill would be lost. I asked if a compromise was not feasible, the Lords abandoning this and the Commons taking the other amendments, which he said would not be undesirable, but difficult to effect. The continual discussions about this Bill have made me perforce understand something of it towards the end of them. I am too ignorant of the details and of the tendency of the MUNICIPAL CORPORATION BILL. Bill to have an opinion of the comparative merits of its present and its original shape, but I am sure the Lords are bound in prudence not to mutilate it more than is absolutely necessary to make it a safe measure, and to have a good, and moreover a popular, case to go to the country with, if eventually such an appeal is to be made. On the other hand the House of Commons, powerful as it is, must not assert its power too peremptorily, and before the Ministers determine to resign, for the purpose of making their resignation instrumental to the consolidation of their power and the destruction of the House of Lords; they also must have a good case, and be able to show that the amendments made by the Lords are incompatible with the object proposed, that they were made in a factious spirit and for the express purpose of thwarting the principle contended for, and that their conduct in this matter forms part of a general system, which can only be counteracted by some fundamental change in the constitution of the Upper House itself. These are violent conclusions to come to, and when one reflects calmly upon the possible and probable consequences of a collision, and the manner in which the interests of the antagonistic parties collectively and individually are blended together, it is difficult to believe that both will not pause on the brink of the precipice and be influenced by a simultaneous desire to come to a decent and practicable compromise. This would probably be easy if both parties were actuated by a sincere desire to enact a law to reform corporations in the safest, best, and most satisfactory manner; but the reformation of the corporations is not the first object in the minds of either. One wants to save as much as possible of the Tory influence, which is menaced by the Bill, and the other wants to court the democratic spirit, which vivifies its party, and erect a new and auxiliary influence on the ruins of the ancient establishments. Any mere looker-on must perceive through all their wranglings that these are the arrière-pensées of the two antagonistic parties.

Brougham made a very clever speech (I am told) on Monday night, and the contest between him and Lyndhurst through the whole Committee has been remarkable for talent and for a striking display of the different qualities of the two men. The Duke of Richmond had a squabble with Lyndhurst last night, ‘impar congressus,’ and he has wriggled himself almost back among the Whigs; nothing but the appropriation clause in the Church Bill prevents his being First Lord of the Admiralty, and he may be considered as having dropped off the dilly with so many others. The Whigs are dying to have him back among them. I must confess I do not see why, but it is impossible to deny that he contrives to make himself desired by those with whom he has acted, and as they must know best what they are about and what he is capable of, it is reasonable to suppose that he has some talents or some qualities which are developed in the graver affairs of life, but which do not appear in its ordinary relations and habitudes. I thought what he said to me the other night looked like a severance of his Stanley connexion, and his strenuous support of this Bill and his pettish attacks upon Lyndhurst show that he at least is not likely to ally himself with the Conservatives.

August 21st, 1835

Yesterday I fell in with Lyndhurst, just getting out of his carriage at his door in George Street. He asked me to come in and look at his house, which I did. I asked him what would happen about the Bill. He said, ‘Oh, they will take it. What can they do? If they choose to throw it out, let them do so, I don’t care whether they do or not. But they will take it, because they know it does their business, though not so completely as they desire.’ He said he would alter the qualification, though he did not think it objectionable. I told him I hoped there might be some compromise, and that he and his friends would give way on some of their amendments, and that the Commons would take the rest. Even the ‘Times,’ which goes the whole hog with the Opposition, won’t swallow this (the aldermen), and suggests that it should be withdrawn. Nothing ever was like the outrageous indecency of the attacks upon the House of Lords in the Ministerial papers, and it is not clear that they WHAT IS HAPPINESS? won’t overdo the thing; this kind of fury generally defeats its own object.

August 25th, 1835

At Hillingdon from Saturday till Monday last; began the Life of Mackintosh, and was delighted with Sydney Smith’s letter which is prefixed to it; read and walked all day on Sunday—the two things I do least, viz. exercise my mind and body; therefore both grow gross and heavy. Shakespeare says fat paunches make lean pates, but this is taken from a Greek proverb. I admire this family of Cox’s at Hillingdon, and after casting my eyes in every direction, and thinking much and often of the theory of happiness, I am convinced that it is principally to be found in contented mediocrity, accompanied with an equable temperament and warm though not excitable feelings. When I read such books as Mackintosh’s Life, and see what other men have done, how they have read and thought, a sort of despair comes over me, a deep and bitter sensation of regret ‘for time misspent and talents misapplied,’ not the less bitter from being coupled with a hopelessness of remedial industry and of doing better things. Nor do I know that such men as these were happy; that they possessed sources of enjoyment inaccessible to less gifted minds is not to be doubted, but whether knowledge and conscious ability and superiority generally bring with them content of mind and the sunshine of self-satisfaction to the possessors is anything but certain. I wonder the inductive process has not been more systematically applied to the solution of this great philosophical problem, what is happiness, and in what it consists, for the practical purpose of directing the human mind into the right road for reaching this goal of all human wishes. Why are not innumerable instances collected, examined, analysed, and the results expanded, explained, and reasoned upon for the benefit and instruction of mankind? Who can tell but what these results may lead at last to some simple conclusions such as it requires no vast range of intellect to discover, no subtle philosophy to teach—conclusions mortifying to the pride and vanity of man, but calculated to mitigate the evils of life by softening mutual asperities, and by the establishment of the doctrine of humility, from which all charity, forbearance, toleration, and benevolence must flow as from their source? These simple conclusions may amount to no more than a simple maxim that happiness is to be found ‘in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue.’

Semita certe
Tranquillæ per virtutem patet unica vitæ.

The end of the tenth Satire of Juvenal (which is one of the finest sermons that ever was composed, and worth all the homilies of all the Fathers of the Church) teaches us what to pray for—

Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.

Healthy body, healthy appetite, healthy feelings, though accompanied by mediocrity of talent, unadorned with wit and imagination, and unpolished by learning and science, will outstrip in the race for happiness the splendid irregularities of genius and the most dazzling successes of ambition. At the same time this general view of the probabilities of happiness must be qualified by the admission that mere vegetation scarcely deserves the name of happiness, and that the highest enjoyment which humanity is capable of may be said to consist in the pleasures of reason and imagination—of a mind expatiating among the wonders of nature, and ranging through all the ‘changes of many-coloured life,’ without being shaken from its equilibrium by the disturbing causes of jealousy, envy, and the evil passions of our nature. The most galling of all conditions is that of him whose conscience and consciousness whisper to him perpetual reproaches, who reflects on what he might have been and who feels and sees what he is. When such a man as Macintosh, fraught with all learning, whose mind, if not kindled into a steady blaze, is perpetually throwing out sparks and coruscations of exceeding brightness, is stung with these self-upbraidings, what must be the reflections of those, the utmost reach of whose industry is far below the value of his most self-accused idleness, who have no self-consolation, STATE OF PARTIES. are plunged in entire darkness, and have not only to lament the years of omission, but those of commission, not only the opportunities neglected, but the positive mischief done by the debasement of the faculties, the deterioration of the understanding, the impairing of the power of exertion consequent upon a long devotion to low, despicable, unprofitable habits and pursuits?

August 27th, 1835

Melbourne has thrown up the Tithe Bill in the Lords, because the Opposition expunged the appropriation clauses. In the Corporation Bill Lyndhurst made still further alterations, such as the Commons will not take (the town clerks and the exclusion of Dissenters from the disposal of ecclesiastical patronage), and as it is the general opinion that they will make no compromise and surrender none of their amendments, that Bill will probably be lost too. What then? asks everybody, and nobody can tell what then, but there is a sort of vague apprehension that something must come of it, and that this collision (for collision it is) between the Lords and the Commons will not be terminated without some violent measures or important changes; if such do take place, they will have been most wantonly and wickedly brought about, but it is a lamentable thing to see the two great parties in the country, equally possessed of wealth and influence, and having the same interest in general tranquillity, tearing each other to pieces while the Radicals stand laughing and chuckling by, only waiting for the proper moment to avail themselves of these senseless divisions. There is something inconceivable, a sort of political absurdity, in the notion of a country like this being on the eve of a convulsion, when it is tranquil, prosperous, and without any grievance; universal liberty prevails, every man’s property and person are safe, the laws are well administered and duly obeyed; so far from there being any unredressed grievances, the imagination of man cannot devise the fiction or semblance of a grievance without there being a rush to correct it. The only real evil is that the rage for correction is too violent, and sweeps all before it. What is it, then, which menaces the existence of the constitution we live under? It is the fury of parties, it is the broad line of separation which the Reform Bill has drawn, the antagonist positions into which the two Houses of Parliament have been thrown, and the Whigs having identified themselves with the democratic principle in one House, in order to preserve their places, and the Conservative principle having taken refuge in the other House, where it is really endangered by the obstinate and frantic violence of its supporters. What was the loud and eternal cry of the Lords, and of all the Conservatives, when the Reform Bill was in agitation? That it was a revolution, that it would place all political power in the hands of the people, that it would establish an irresistible democratic force; and the great body of them justified their refusal to go into Committee on the ground that the Bill was so vicious in principle, so irremediably mischievous, that no alterations could diminish its evil tendency. It is now as clear as daylight that if they had gone into Committee and amended the Bill, they might have obviated all or nearly all the evils they apprehended, for even after the passing of the ‘whole Bill,’ with all its clauses perfect and untouched, parties are so nearly balanced that the smallest difference would turn the scale the other way. They would, however, listen to nothing, and now they feel the consequences of their ruat cœlum policy; but what I complain of is, that after the verification of their predictions, and the realisation of their fears, in the establishment of a democratic power of formidable strength, they do not act consistently with their own declared opinions; for if it be true, as they assert, that their legitimate authority and influence have been transferred to other hands, and that the just equilibrium of the Constitution has been shaken, it is mad and preposterous in them to act just as if no such disturbing causes had occurred, as if they were still in the plenitude of their constitutional power, and to provoke a collision which, if their own assertions be true, they are no longer in a condition to sustain. The answer to such arguments as this invariably is, Are the Lords, then, to be content to yield everything, and must they pass every Bill which the SECLUSION OF SIR R. PEEL. House of Commons thinks fit to send to them purely and simply? Certainly they are not; no such thing is expected of them by any man or any set of men, but common prudence and a sense of their own condition and their own relative strength under the new dispensation demand that they should exercise their undoubted rights with circumspection and calmness, desisting from all opposition for opposition’s sake, standing out firmly on questions involving great and important principles, and yielding with a good grace, without ill-humour, and without subserviency on minor points. They ought, for example, to have followed in the footsteps of Peel in this Irish Corporation Bill, and to have satisfied themselves with making those amendments which he strove for without success in the House of Commons, and no more. As it is, he wholly disapproves of the course they have taken, and so I believe did the Duke of Wellington in the beginning of the discussions, but Lyndhurst took the lead with the violent party, overruled the Duke, neglected Peel, and dealt with the Bill in the slashing manner we have seen.

I was talking to Lord John Russell yesterday at Court on this subject, and he said that he had no doubt Peel highly disapproved of their proceedings, and that it was evident he did not pretend to guide them; for one day in the House of Commons he went over to Peel, and said that he meant to recommit (or some such thing, no matter what the particular course was) the Bill that night, and he supposed he would not object. Peel said, ‘Oh, no, I don’t object,’ and as he was going away Peel called him back and said, ‘Remember I speak only for myself; I can answer for no other individual in the House.’ He went out of town about a fortnight ago, has never returned, and will not; his own friends think he ought, but it is evident that he prefers to wash his hands of the matter. He knows well enough that the Conservatives hate him in their hearts; besides having never cordially forgiven him for his conduct on the Catholic question, they are indignant at his Liberal views and opinions, and when they adopted him as their leader it was in the fond hope that he would restore the good old days of Tory Government, than which nothing could be farther from his thoughts. John Russell said of him yesterday ‘that he was, in fact, a great lover of changes and innovations;’ and so he is. It often occurs to me that he would not care very much if the House of Lords did go to the wall, and that though he is the acknowledged head of the Conservative party, he doesn’t in his heart care much for Conservative principles. He may possibly calculate that no change can take place in this country by which property will be menaced; that personally he is safe, and politically his vast superiority in all the requisites for public life must, under all possible circumstances, make him the most eminent performer on the great stage. I do not know that he has any such thoughts as these, but it appears to me far from improbable, and the more so from his keeping aloof at this moment and abstaining (as far as we know) from any attempt to restrain the indiscretion and impetuosity of his party.

But if on the one hand the conduct of the Tories with respect to the Corporation Bill has been violent and rash, that of the Government with respect to the Tithe Bill has been unspeakably wicked. I cannot recollect an instance of so complete a sacrifice of the interests of others, of their own principles, and of national tranquillity to mere party objects, and the more I reflect upon the course they have taken the more profligate and disgraceful it appears. These Ministers have recorded their opinion that the question of appropriation ought not to be mixed up with that of commutation; that they are essentially distinct, and ought to remain so. At the beginning of this session the united Whigs and Radicals considered only one thing—how to drive Peel out, and though they had a choice of means to accomplish this end, the famous resolution about appropriation was the one which they finally selected for the purpose. In so doing they were altogether regardless of future consequences,[1] and never stopped to calculate what would be the THE WHIGS’ TITHE BILL. effect of saddling the measure of relief (in which all parties concurred) with this impossible condition. Now how stands the case? They declare that Ireland (as all the world knows) is a scene of disorder and bloodshed, of which the Tithe system is the principal cause, and that the Tithe Bill will afford an effectual remedy to the evil. It is therefore their imperative and paramount duty, as it ought to be their earnest and engrossing desire, to secure the application of their remedy, and, whether in office or out of office (with the expectation and intention of coming in), to take care that nothing should be mixed up with it by which it can be endangered, and that it should be proposed merely for what it is, and not made subservient to any object but that for which it has been professedly framed. Having committed the first error of employing this resolution to drive out the Government, they then considered themselves obliged to adopt it as an integral part of the Bill, and accordingly they did so, with a full knowledge that by so doing they should ensure the rejection of the Bill itself and that Ireland would continue in the same state of anarchy and confusion, only aggravated by the furious contests of parties here and by the failure of all schemes of remedial legislation. Nothing can be more certain than this, that if the state of Ireland had been taken into consideration with the simple, straightforward view of tranquillising the country, and that no party object had been mixed up with it, the framers of the Tithe Bill would sedulously have avoided introducing the appropriation clause; but during the great battle with Peel the establishment of this principle (not only the principle of appropriation, but that no relief should be afforded without its recognition) was made the condition of Radical support and the bond of Radical connection, and having as the result of this compact pledged the House of Commons to the principle, they refuse to retrace their steps, and offer the House of Lords the alternative of its recognition (knowing that they cannot in sincerity, honour, or conscience recognise it) or that of an irreparable injury to the Irish Church, which it is the grand object of the Lords to uphold. But the question must not be considered as one merely affecting the interests of the clergy of Ireland. If that were all, there might be no such great harm in these proceedings. Entertaining very strong (and as I think very sound) opinions with respect to the expediency of dealing with its revenues, and for purposes ultimately to be effected which they cannot yet venture to avow, they might be justified, or think themselves justified, in coping with the difficulties which embarrass this question in the best mode that is open to them, and deem it better that the Irish clergy should suffer the temporary privations they undergo than that the final settlement of the ecclesiastical question should be indefinitely postponed. But they do not pretend to be actuated by any such considerations; their declared object is to restore peace to Ireland, to terminate the Tithe quarrel, to raise the Protestant clergy from their fallen state, and to assert the authority of the law by taking away the inducements which now exist for setting the law at defiance. Those who undertake to govern the country are above all things bound to see that the laws are obeyed, and they do not deserve the name of a Government if they submit to, much less if they connive at, a permanent state of anarchy in any part of the country. They know that the law in Ireland is a dead letter, that neither to statute nor common law do the lower orders of Irish Catholics (the bulk of the nation) pay the slightest obedience, and that they are countenanced and urged on in their disobedience by those agitators with whom the Government act in political fellowship, and in deference to whom their measures have been shaped. Granting that after the adoption of the resolution by the House of Commons they were bound to insert it in their Bill, what justification is there for their refusal to receive the Bill back from the Lords with no other alteration than the omission of the appropriation clause? In so refusing they destroy their own measure; they publish to the world that it is the principle of appropriation, and not the Tithe composition, that they really care for; and in thus strangling their own Bill, because they cannot tack that principle on to it, they make THE WHIGS' TITHE BILL. themselves accomplices of the outrages and violence which are perpetrated in the Tithe warfare, and abettors of the regular and systematic violation of the law. The King’s Government exhibits itself in a conspiracy with Catholic agitators and Protestant republicans against the clergy of the Established Church and against the laws of the land. If they are sincere in their own statements and declarations they must of necessity deem no object commensurate with this in point of urgency and importance; and what is the object to which this is postponed? That of maintaining their own consistency; because they turned the late Government out on this question they must now adhere to it with desperate tenacity; their interests as a party demand that they should; O’Connell and the Radicals will not forgive them if they give it up. They might if they would declare their unchanged opinion in favour of the principle of appropriation, and their determination to press the adoption of it at all times and by all means, and never to desist till they had accomplished its recognition, but at the same time announce that the perilous state of Ireland—the magnitude of the evil resulting from the Tithe system—would not allow them to reject the Tithe Bill though denuded of the appropriation clauses, as all the rest of its provisions (all those by which the Tithe system was to be determined) had been passed by the Lords. I cannot conceive how a conscientious Minister can take upon himself the responsibility of quashing this measure, and contentedly look forward to the probability—almost certainty—of a fresh course of outrage and disorder, and a new catalogue of miseries and privations, which he all the time believes it is in his power to avert. But these Ministers think that they could not avert these evils (by accepting the Bill) without giving umbrage to their task-masters and allies, and they do not scruple to sacrifice the mighty interests at stake in Ireland to the paltry and ephemeral interests of their party—interests which cannot outlive the present hour and party, which the slightest change in the political atmosphere may sweep away in an instant. There is also another reason by which they are determined; they cannot face the accusation of inconsistency—the question that would be put, Why did you turn out Peel’s Government? You turned him out on this very principle which you are now ready to abandon. There is no doubt that this question would be put with a very triumphant air by their opponents, but they might easily answer it, without admitting in so many words—what everybody well knows without any admission—that the resolution was brought forward for the express purpose of turning Peel out. They might say that they moved that resolution because it is a principle that they wished to establish, and that they still think ought to be established; that Peel’s resignation on that particular question was of his own choice, and that if they are not irrevocably bound by the resolution itself, they are not the more bound by that circumstance; that they sent the Bill to the House of Lords in what they consider the best form, but that after the Lords had agreed to the whole measure, with the exception of the appropriation clauses, it was their duty to take the matter again into their serious consideration, and to determine whether it was on the whole more advantageous to Ireland and to the Empire that the Bill should be rejected (with all the consequences of its rejection apparent) or that it should be passed without these clauses. There was no necessity for their abandonment of any opinion or principle, nor any obstacle to the appropriation clauses being brought forward again and again in a substantive independent shape. Besides this, it is not pretended that these clauses were to produce any immediate perhaps not even any remote, effect, and they not only acknowledge that the state of Ireland calls for an immediate remedy, but they assert that unless the remedy is applied without loss of time it will come too late; that the Tithe Bill, which this year would accomplish its object, will in all probability next year be wholly inoperative. To my mind this reasoning is so conclusive that I can come to no other than the harsh judgment which I have passed upon their conduct, and I think I have made good my charges against both Whigs and Tories.

[1] The Whigs were not, probably, the Radicals. O’Connell, without doubt, had very good reasons for pinning the Government to this, and foresaw all the consequences of the compact by which he bound them.

August 29th, 1835

ALTERCATION IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS. The House of Lords has become a beargarden since Brougham has been in it; there is no night that is not distinguished by some violent squabble between him and the Tories. Lord Winchelsea directly accused him of cowardice the night before last, to which he replied, ‘As to my being afraid to say elsewhere what I say here, oh, that is too absurd to require an answer.’ It is nevertheless true. Melbourne does very well; his memory served him happily on this night. Brougham had lashed the Lords into a fury by calling them a mob, and Melbourne quoted Lord Chesterfield, who said that all deliberative assemblies were mobs. The other day Lord Howick was inveighing passionately against the Lords for their mutilations of the Corporation Bill, when Melbourne said, with his characteristic nonchalance, ‘Why, what does it matter? We have gone on tolerably well for 500 years with these corporations, and we may contrive to go on with them for another year or so.’

On the King’s birthday his Majesty had Lord Lansdowne and Lord Melbourne to dine with him at Windsor, and he made some extraordinary speeches, of which various versions are about the town. By-the-bye, I was turning over the ‘Annual Register’ the other day, and hit upon his speech last year to the bishops, and I was astonished at the eloquence of it. It is said that Phillpotts composed it for him, but there are some internal marks of its emanating from himself. It is certainly remarkably good of the kind, and I think it more probable that he spoke what he thought and felt, and that Phillpotts reported it and made the best of it.

September 1st, 1835

Lord John Russell assembled his Whigs and Radicals at the Foreign Office yesterday morning, and announced to them the course he proposed to adopt with regard to the Corporation Bill, the amendments he would accept, those he would modify, and those he would decline. Hume made a violent speech, deprecating any concessions, but O’Connell made a very moderate one, recommending a compromise, and saying that great alarm prevailed among many well-meaning and conscientious persons lest Reform should proceed too far; that it was highly expedient to quiet these apprehensions, and upon every account therefore he recommended a moderate and conciliatory course. There were between two and three hundred present at this meeting. Accordingly in the afternoon John Russell stated over again in the House of Commons pretty much what he had said in the morning, and made a very temperate and conciliatory speech. Peel, who had arrived suddenly and unexpectedly in town,[2] rose after him, and, as everybody said (some with joy, others with rage), ‘threw over the Lords.’ He declared his concurrence in those amendments which John Russell agreed to, and his acquiescence in most of the other provisions without the amendments of the Lords; to the aldermen for life he objected, and to some other particulars, as his speech shows. The only amendment to which he subscribed (and that was objected to by Government) was the exclusion of Dissenters from the disposal of Church patronage, and I was very much surprised to hear him stand out for this upon (as I think) very insufficient grounds. Nothing could exceed the dismay and the rage (though suppressed) of the Conservatives at his speech. He was not a bit cheered by those behind him, but very heartily by those opposite. One silly, noisy fellow, whose principal vocation in the House of Commons is to bellow, came near me under the gallery, and I asked him why they did not cheer, when he sulkily answered, ‘he was so well cheered by the other side that it was not necessary.’ Lord Harrowby was under the gallery. I asked him what he said to Peel’s speech. ‘I did not hear it,’ he tartly replied, ‘but he seems to have given up the aldermen. I have a great affection for the aldermen.’ At the ‘Travellers’ I met Strangford, and asked him the same question. He said, ‘I say, Not content.’ ‘But,’ said I, ‘you must take the Bill.’ ‘Not I, for one; the Lords cannot take it, and if we are to be ruined I think we had better be ruined by real Radicals PEEL’S CONCILIATORY CONDUCT. than by sham Tories.’ Afterwards I saw Lord Londonderry, who talked in the same strain, not denying that the Duke of Wellington had unwillingly come into the measures which Lyndhurst had adopted, but talking of Lyndhurst’s Conservative scruples as a constitutional lawyer, and such stuff as this. The manner in which the Duke has been ousted from the leadership, and the alacrity with which the Lords have followed Lyndhurst, because he led them into violent courses, is not the least curious part of this business. (It seems they only meant to make Lyndhurst their leader pro hac vice.)

[2] Peel gave no notice of his intention to come to town. Hardinge, who is more intimate with him than most of his political associates, was so sure he would not come that he told Bradshaw, who asked him, that he certainly would not be here, and that he (Bradshaw) might go into the country when he pleased.

Bingham Baring and I walked away together, and I went with him to Lord Ashburton’s house, who was not a little astonished at what we told him, and asserted that Peel was quite wrong about the aldermen. The violent Whigs were rather provoked at the turn things took, and Howick, whom I saw under the gallery, said with great bitterness (mixed with pleasure at Peel’s abandonment of the Lords) that he, for one, ‘only consented to these alterations, which made the Bill so much worse, with a view to obtain future compensation, and with interest.’ The English Radicals were very indignant, and Hume, Grote, and Roebuck spoke one after another against the Government concessions, but there was no disposition to listen to them, and an evident satisfaction at the prospect of an amicable termination of the rising dispute. Nobody apprehends any other termination, for though the Lords will bluster, and fume, and fret, and there will be no small fermentation of mortified pride and vanity, there must be some difference of opinion at least, and the Duke of Wellington is quite sure to exert his influence to bring the majority to adopt Peel’s views. It has always been considered by the Tories an object of paramount importance to keep their party together (this was the pretext of Wharncliffe and Harrowby for joining in that fatal postponement of Schedule A), and if after Peel’s speech they were to refuse to accept the fair compromise which is tendered to them, it is impossible to suppose that he would consider himself as belonging to them, or that they could pretend to acknowledge him as their leader, and the Tory party would by this schism be effectually broken up.

I have long considered the breaking up of the Tory party as a grand desideratum, and though I earnestly desire to see a powerful Conservative party in the country and in Parliament, it must be one reconstructed out of materials more various and more Liberal than that which now calls itself Conservative, but which in its heart clings to the narrow notions and loves the exclusive system of bygone days. The dissolution of the Tory party in the House of Lords, by a division of them into a high and a low section, would in itself be a reform of that House, and it is to such a dissolution and fresh modification of parties that we must look for a reform, which without any violent change will redress the balance and enable the machine of government to move without obstruction. I sat next to Senior in the House of Lords, and he was talking of the necessity of a reform of the House of Peers, and he said, ‘I can see the steps of it very plainly.’ ‘What, by making Peers for life, as you suggest in your pamphlet?’ ‘No, it is too late for that now, but by the election of representatives. When Scotland was united she sent representative Peers elected from the body; Ireland the same. Now fifty years of Tory rule have given such a preponderance to the Tory interest in the House of Lords, that the balance cannot be redressed but by a creation which would make the House of Peers too numerous for a legislative assembly. I would therefore begin by creating, in order to equalise the strength of the opposite parties, and then the Peers should elect representatives.’ I said, ‘All this will be unnecessary, for the Tory party will be broken up, and without a change so startling and extensive the balance will be quietly redressed, and in the natural order of things.’ The Duc de Nemours was under the gallery in the House of Commons, but he soon went away, and in the middle of Peel’s speech.

September 3rd, 1835

Nothing could be better than the temper and disposition of the House on Tuesday night, as well as on Monday, nothing more flattering to Peel. John Russell said ‘he was anxious that the clause (I forget which) should RECONCILIATION. go forth with the sanction of the right honourable baronet’s approbation.’ Peel said he spoke only for himself; Lord John said that made no difference, indicating in fact that his opinion was worth more than those of all his followers put together. The Lords in the meantime are tremendously sulky, and though it is impossible to believe they will have the frantic folly to refuse the accommodation that by God’s mercy is offered to them, it is not quite safe, and they are now in grand conclave at Apsley House to determine upon their course. Lord Lansdowne told me at Court yesterday that the day before he went up to Lyndhurst in the House of Lords, to speak to him about some Bill, when Lyndhurst said, ‘I was in hopes you were coming to speak to me about the amendments.’ ‘No; it will be time enough to talk about them when they are again before the House.’ ‘Well, and what do they say now?’ ‘They say that the lives of your aldermen are not at a premium.’ ‘Do they? But they will rise in the market to-morrow, I can tell you.’ What satisfies me most in all this is the conduct of the Government, and even that of many of the Radicals—of Hume, for instance—and the general temper and disposition evinced by the House, symptomatic of a more healthy feeling than I ever expected to see displayed. In the division the Radical numbers were contemptible, showing that the Conservative interest, if not broken up by party divisions, and if ever it was roused and connected by the acknowledgment of a common danger, would crush the Radical force in an instant. These are valuable manifestations, and worth a hundred clauses in the Corporation Bill; for what matters it whether aldermen and town clerks are perpetuated or suppressed? and it really is grotesque to fight for these puerilities as if it was a contest pro aris et focis, and to hesitate one instant whether a collision should be provoked between the two Houses of Parliament, and the advantages both direct and collateral flowing from Peel’s mediation be thrown away, for the sake of maintaining these secondary and questionable objects.

September 6th, 1835

On Thursday there was a great meeting at Apsley House; eighty Peers present, and four hours’ deliberation. They kept their resolutions a profound secret, but as I knew what they were on Friday morning, I went to Melbourne and told him, in order that the Government might be prepared, and turn over in their minds how matters might be accommodated. The Tories adhered to the justices and wards, and abandoned the rest. I found Melbourne and Lord John together; the latter said there would be no difficulty about the justices, but the amendment about the wards was impossible.

The debate at night was carried on with extraordinary temper and calmness; Brougham complimented Lyndhurst in very glowing terms. The matter now stands over till Monday, when the Commons must determine whether to accept the Bill with these alterations or reject it on account of them. There is great division of opinion as to the result, but I cannot bring myself to believe that they will let the Bill drop for such trifles. I asked Wharncliffe last night to explain to me in what manner these things would operate politically, and he owned that he thought their political importance was greatly overrated, but that the division proposed by Government gave greater influence to numbers, while that substituted by the Peers gave more to property, and that the constitution of the town councils, whether they were more or less Radical or Conservative, would have a political effect in this way; that in every borough little democracies would be established, which would be continually exercising a democratic influence and extending democratic principles, and that the greater the infusion of Conservative interest you could make in these new bodies the more that tendency would be counteracted. In my opinion a fallacy lurks under this argument; they assume the certain democratic, even revolutionary, character of the new town councils without any sufficient reason, but if this be so, and if they are correct in their anticipations, I doubt whether the guards and drawbacks with which they are endeavouring to counteract the pernicious influence they dread will be found efficacious. I do not despair of the EFFECTS OF MUNICIPAL REFORM. prevalence of sound Conservative principles upon a Liberal basis, and it appears to me that the Peers have committed a great blunder in expressing such violent suspicion and distrust of the new corporations; that nothing is so likely to make them Radical as to insist that they must and will be so, or to render them inimical to the aristocracy and to aristocratic institutions as to exhibit a violent hostility on the part of the aristocracy towards them. I apply this observation generally to their way of dealing with the question rather than to the particular words of the disputed clause, which is probably on the whole fairer and better as the Peers amended it than as the Commons framed it, so much so that I do not understand the tenacity with which the Government cling to it. One thing is very clear, that neither for this nor for the justices clause is it worth while (to either party) that the prevailing harmony should be broken and the Bill be lost. If both parties were sincerely desirous of an accommodation, and there was any common interest, any common ground on which they could meet, there would be no difficulty in an adjustment; but this is not the case. Not only are the interests and wishes of the two parties at variance, but the desires of the moderate and the violent in each party are so too. The moderate in both probably do wish for an accommodation. The Bill is the Bill of the Whigs, and with all the amendments it does in point of fact accomplish their object, though not, as Lyndhurst said, so completely as without them. They wish the Bill to pass, therefore, but the Tories detest the Bill even as it is, and it is no concern of theirs quoad Bill that it should pass; on the contrary, they would rejoice at its failure, but its failure would place the two Houses in a state of collision, and though each party would throw the blame on the other (on very plausible grounds either way), it is more the interest of the Lords than of the Commons to avert this, because the danger of collision attaches exclusively to the Lords. The violent of the Commons would rather like it; the violent of the Lords would doggedly encounter it. There are many who desire that the dispute should not be settled, in order to push matters to extremities and involve the Houses in a contest, in order to extirpate the House of Lords. What renders it more desirable on account of the Lords that the Bill should not be lost, and a cry got up against them, is the circumstance of their having thrown out so many other Bills, and some on very unjustifiable grounds—the Dublin Police Bill, for example. Not a word was said against its merits; on the contrary, it was not denied that the case was urgent, and it was only thrown out because the Lord Mayor and Corporation of Dublin had not been consulted. Now it might have been very proper to consult these functionaries; it may even be a culpable omission to have neglected them; but this is not a time, nor is the House of Lords in circumstances, to be so fastidious and to stickle for such formalities. Their character with the nation is at stake, and it is of far greater consequence that they should do nothing calculated to throw suspicion on their motives, or odium on their proceedings, than to provide for a punctilious observance of respect and deference to the Dublin Corporation. They seem to me to have made a great mistake in throwing out this Bill, and I am much deceived if they do not hear more of it hereafter.

September 8th, 1835

Lord John called another meeting at the Foreign Office yesterday morning, when he proposed, and they agreed to take the Lords’ amendments and finish the business; so this famous Corporation Bill has got through at last. O’Connell and Warburton concurred in accepting it. The only man who violently opposed its being accepted was Tom Duncombe, who made a furious harangue, and boldly asserted that he knew to a positive certainty that if the Commons would hold out the Peers would abandon the justices and wards, and he offered privately to give John Russell a list of Peers sufficient to carry this, and who, he would answer for it, were ready to make the concession. Lord John, however, was too wise to listen to such impudent nonsense, and, though very reluctantly, it was settled that the Commons should give way. Both parties probably overrate the value of the disputed clauses, and it is to be regretted that the two Houses will not part amicably. Government THE KING’S HARANGUE ON THE MILITIA. takes the Bill under a sort of engagement to consider it as an instalment, and that they shall try and get the difference next year. This is mere humbug, and a poor sop thrown to the Radicals, but as it answers the immediate purpose it is very well.

September 9th, 1835

To-day at Court, when his Majesty made one of his most extraordinary harangues, and much more lengthy than usual. It was evidently got up with great care and previous determination. The last article on the Council list was one for the reduction of the militia, and it was upon this that he descanted with great vehemence. He gave a historical account of the militia from the year 1756, when he said it was increased against the inclination of George II., who was not so well acquainted with the country as his successors have been, ‘when there was a Whig Administration, as there is now.’ He declared his conviction that the safety of the country demanded a numerous and effective militia, that nothing should have induced him to consent to the present reduction but the necessity of making some changes which had become indispensable owing to the culpable conduct of colonels of the militia who had neglected their duty, but whose names he would not expose; that agitators in Ireland and political economists here wished to reduce this force, in order, under the pretext of economy, to leave the country defenceless; but he never would consent to this, and only agreed to the present measure upon a clear understanding that early in the next session the matter was to be brought forward in Parliament with a view to render the militia more efficient; that nothing but the militia justified the smallness of our military establishments as compared with those of other nations; and he finished by saying that the state of our relations with Russia made the maintenance of this force of paramount importance, as it was impossible to say what dangers we might not be menaced with from that quarter, or how soon we might be called upon to face them, and that the advisers of the Crown would incur a deep responsibility if any mischief arose from the undue reduction of this force. He ended a very long speech (of which I can only put down an outline) with this strange denunciation against Russia, and then said, ‘One word more. I have spoken thus in the presence of many Lords who are connected with the militia, either immediately or through their friends, because I wish that my sentiments should be thoroughly and extensively promulgated.’ This is a very brief outline of his oration, which was delivered with great energy.

At the levee I had some talk with Hobhouse, who expressed himself well satisfied with the termination of the Corporation contest; he said that the King was delighted, and added (in which I think he flatters himself) that he was in high good-humour in consequence, and that though he disliked them politically, he liked them very well personally, and that if the Irish Church question could be arranged, he would be quite content with them, and they should be excellent friends.

Lord Howick, who is the bitterest of all that party, and expresses himself with astonishing acrimony, talked in his usual strain, and I could not refrain from giving him a bit of my mind. He talked of ‘the Lords having played their last trump,’ of ‘the impossibility of their going on, of the hostility towards them in the country, and the manner in which suggestions of reforming the House of Lords were received in the House of Commons,’ and expressed his conviction that ‘that House as an institution was in imminent danger.’ I told him I did not believe that such sentiments pervaded the country, that I had not yet seen sufficient evidence of it, and asked if such a spirit really was in activity, did he not think he was bound to set about resisting and counteracting it? He talked of ‘its not being resistible;’ he said that ‘the Lords must give way or a collision would be the consequence,’ and ‘he knew who would go to the wall.’ I said that ‘it was such sentiments as those, uttered by such men as himself, which most contributed to create the danger the existence of which he deplored.’ To this he made no answer; but who can feel secure when a Minister of the Crown, in the palace of the King, within three yards of his THE KING AND THE DUCHESS OF KENT. person, while he is there present exercising the functions of royalty, holds language the most revolutionary, and such as might more naturally be uttered at some low meeting in St. Giles’s or St. Pancras’ than in such a place? In spite of my disposition to be sanguine, it is impossible to shake off all alarm when I hear the opinions of men of different parties (opinions founded on different data and biassed by opposite wishes) meeting at the same point, and arriving by different roads at the same conclusion.

Lyndhurst (who called on me the day before yesterday about some business) talked over the Corporation Bill, which he considers to be nearly as important as the Reform Bill. He says it must give them all the corporate boroughs, for he assumes as an undoubted fact that the new councils will be Radical, and that their influence will radicalise the boroughs. He said there was no chance of the House of Lords surviving ten years, that power must reside in the House of Commons, as it always had, and that the House of Commons would not endure the independent authority of the other House; so that Howick and Lyndhurst are not far apart in their calculations. It is certainly true, what Lyndhurst said to me the other day in George Street, that ‘they know the Bill accomplishes their purpose.’ Melbourne said to me at Court that ‘it was a great bouleversement, a great experiment, and we must see how it worked.’ I met him in St. James’s Park afterwards, and walked with him to the Palace. He told me the King was in a state of great excitement, especially about this militia question, but that the thing which affected him most was the conduct of the Duchess of Kent—her popularity-hunting, her progresses, and above all the addresses which she received and replied to. He told me what the King had said at dinner on his birthday about her. ‘I cannot expect to live very long, but I hope that my successor may be of full age when she mounts the throne. I have great respect for the person upon whom, in the event of my death, the Regency would devolve, but I have great distrust of the persons by whom she is surrounded. I know that everything which falls from my lips is reported again, and I say this thus candidly and publicly because it is my desire and intention that these my sentiments should be made known.’ Melbourne told me that he believed Lord Durham is not in favour with the Duchess of Kent, who has discovered that he had made use of her for his own ends, and she has now withdrawn her confidence from him. I asked him who her confidants were, but he either did not know or would not tell me.

Doncaster, September 15th, 1835

Left London on Saturday morning with Matuscewitz; I had a good deal of conversation with him about the state and prospects of this country, in the course of which he told me that Louis Philippe had consulted Talleyrand about the maintenance of his intimate connection with England, and that Talleyrand had replied, ‘When you came to the throne four years ago, I advised you to cultivate your relations with England as the best security you could obtain. I now advise you to relinquish that connection, for in the present state of English politics it can only be productive of danger or embarrassment to you.’ Having omitted to put it down at the time, I can’t recollect the exact words, but this was the sense, and I think Matuscewitz said that Louis Philippe had told him this himself.

We dined at Burghley on the way, and got here at two on Sunday; read Mackintosh’s Life in the carriage, which made me dreadfully disgusted with my racing métier. What a life as compared with mine!—passed among great and wise men, and intent on high thoughts and honourable aspirations, existing amidst interests far more pungent even than those which engage me, and of the futility of which I am for ever reminded. I am struck with the coincidence of the tastes and dispositions of Burke and Mackintosh, and of something in the mind of the one which bears an affinity to that of the other; but their characters—how different! their abilities—how unequal! yet both, how superior, even the weakest of the two, to almost all other men, and the success of each so little corresponding with his powers, neither having ever attained any object of ambition beyond that of fame. All their talents, therefore, and all their requirements, did not PRINCESS VICTORIA AT BURGHLEY. procure them content, and probably Burke was a very unhappy, and Mackintosh not a very happy, man. The suavity, the indolent temperament, the ‘mitis sapientia’ of Mackintosh may have warded off sorrow and mitigated disappointment, but the stern and vindictive energies of Burke must have kept up a storm of conflicting passions in his breast. But I turn from Mackintosh and Burke to all that is vilest and foolishest on earth, and among such I now pass my unprofitable hours. There seems to me less gaiety and bustle here than formerly, but as much villany as ever. From want of money or of enterprise, or from greater distrust and a paucity of spectators, there is very little betting, and what there is, spiritless and dull. There are vast crowds of people to see the Princess Victoria, who comes over from Wentworth to-day, and the Due de Nemours is here. I am going to run for the St. Leger, which I shall probably not win, and though I am nervous and excited, I shall not care much if I lose, and I doubt whether I should care very much if I won; but this latter sensation will probably be for ever doubtful. There is something in it all which displeases me, and I often wish I was well out of it.

Burghley, September 21st, 1835

I did lose the St. Leger, and did not care; idled on at Doncaster to the end of the week, and came here on Saturday to meet the Duchess of Kent. They arrived from Belvoir at three o’clock in a heavy rain, the civic authorities having turned out at Stamford to escort them, and a procession of different people all very loyal. When they had lunched, and the Mayor and his brethren had got dry, the Duchess received the address, which was read by Lord Exeter as Recorder. It talked of the Princess as ‘destined to mount the throne of these realms.’ Conroy handed the answer, just as the Prime Minister does to the King. They are splendidly lodged, and great preparations have been made for their reception.

London, September 27th, 1835

The dinner at Burghley was very handsome; hall well lit; and all went off well, except that a pail of ice was landed in the Duchess’s lap, which made a great bustle. Three hundred people at the ball, which was opened by Lord Exeter and the Princess, who, after dancing one dance, went to bed. They appeared at breakfast the next morning at nine o’clock, and at ten set off to Holkham. Went to Newmarket on Tuesday and came to town on Wednesday; found it very empty and no news. Lord Chatham died the day before yesterday, which is of no other importance than that of giving some honours and emoluments to Melbourne to distribute.

The papers are full of nothing but O’Connell’s progress in Scotland, where he is received with unbounded enthusiasm by enormous crowds, but by no people of rank, property, or character. It is a rabble triumph altogether, but it is made the most of by all the Ministerial papers. The Opposition papers pour torrents of invective upon him, and he in his speeches is not behindhand with the most virulent and scurrilous of them; he is exalted to the bad eminence at which he has arrived more by the assaults of his enemies than by the efforts of his friends. It is the Tories who are ever insisting upon the immensity of his power, and whose excess of hatred and fear make him of such vast account that ‘he draws the rabble after him as a monster makes a show.’ However mean may be his audiences in Scotland, he has numbers to boast of, and that will serve his purpose; he will no doubt render this reception instrumental to the increase of his authority in Ireland. He now avows that he has abandoned Repeal, and all other projects, in order to devote himself to the great task of reforming the House of Lords.

I have finished Mackintosh’s Life with great delight, and many painful sensations, together with wonder and amazement. His account of his reading is utterly incomprehensible to me; he must have been endowed with some superhuman faculty of transferring the contents of books to his own mind. He talks in his journals of reading volumes in a few hours which would seem to demand many days even from the most rapid reader. I have heard of Southey, who would read a book through as he stood in a bookseller’s shop; that is, his eye would glance down the page, and by a process SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. partly mechanical, partly intellectual, formed by long habit, he would extract in his synoptical passage all that he required to know. (Macaulay was, and George Lewis is, just as wonderful in this respect.) Some of the books that Mackintosh talks of, philosophical and metaphysical works, could not be so disposed of, and I should like much to know what his system or his secret was. I met Sydney Smith yesterday, and asked him why more of the journals had not been given. He said because the editors had been ill advised, but that in another edition more should be given; that Mackintosh was the most agreeable man he had ever known, that he had been shamefully used by his friends, and by none more than by Brougham. So, I said, it would appear by what you say in your letter. ‘Oh no,’ he said, laughing and chuckling, and shaking his great belly, ‘you don’t really think I meant to allude to Brougham?’ ‘Mackintosh’s son,’ he said ‘is a man of no talents, the composition (what there is of it) belongs to Erskine, his son-in-law, a sensible man.’ To be sure there are some strange things said by Mackintosh here and there; among others, that Lord Holland only wanted voice—not to be impeded in his utterance—to be a greater orator than Canning or Brougham! If he had not been a man ‘whom no sense of wrongs could rouse to vengeance,’ he would have flung the India Board in Lord Grey’s face when he was insulted with the offer of it.[3] What are we to think of the necessary connection between intellectual superiority and official eminence, when we have seen the Duke of Richmond invited to be a member of the Cabinet, while Mackintosh was thrust into an obscure and subordinate office—Mackintosh placed under the orders of Charles Grant! Well might he regret that he had not been a professor, and, ‘with safer pride content,’ adorned with unusual glory some academical chair. Then while he was instructing and delighting the world, there would have been many regrets and lamentations that such mighty talents were confined to such a narrow sphere, and innumerable speculations of the greatness he would have achieved in political life, and how the irresistible force of his genius and his eloquence must have raised him to the pinnacle of Parliamentary fame and political power. Perhaps he would have partaken in this delusion, and have bitterly lamented the success which had deprived him of a more brilliant fortune and a loftier fame; for it may reasonably be doubted whether all his laborious investigations of the deepest recesses of the human mind, and his extensive acquaintance with the theory of mental phenomena, would have enabled him accurately to ascertain the practical capabilities of his own mind, and to arrive at those just conclusions which should indicate to him that path of life on which it was most expedient for him to travel, with reference to the strength of his understanding, and the softness, not to say feebleness, of his character.

[3] Sir James Mackintosh was a member of the Board of Control under Lord Grey’s Government. He never held any other office in England.

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CHAPTER XXX.

Emperor Nicholas’s Speech at Warsaw — His respect for opinion in England — Burdett proposes the expulsion of O’Connell from Brookes’s — Club law — George Villiers at Madrid — Lord Segrave Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire — Dispute between France and America — Allen’s account of Mackintosh and Melbourne — Prolongation of a Patent — Should Dr. Arnold be made a Bishop? — Frederic Elliot — O’Connell’s mischievous influence — Bretby — Chesterfield MSS. — The Portfolio — Lord Cottenham and Lord Langdale — Opening of Parliament — The Judicial Committee — Poulett Thomson at the Board of Trade — Mr. Perceval’s interviews with the Ministers — Prospects of the Tories — Lord Stanley’s relations to them — Holland House Anecdotes — Mischievous Effects of the division on his Address — The youth of Macaulay — Brougham and Macaulay — Lord William Bentinck — Review of Sir R. Peel’s conduct — Dr. Hampden’s appointment — The Orange Lodges.

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November 17th, 1835

Since I have been in London, on my return from the Newmarket meetings, I have had nothing to note. The O’Connell and Raphael wrangle goes on, and will probably come before Parliament. It appears to make a greater sensation at Paris than here; there, however, all other sensations are absorbed in that which the Emperor of Russia’s speech at Warsaw has produced, and which indicates an excitement, or ferocity, very like insanity.[1] Melbourne mentioned at dinner on Sunday that it was not only quite correctly reported—rather understated—but that after he had so delivered himself, he met the English Consul in the street, took him by the arm, walked about with him for an hour, and begged him not to be too hard upon him in his report to his Government. I was not present, but Henry de Ros was, who told it me. I am thus particular from, as it seems to me, the exceeding curiosity of the anecdote, evincing on the part of the autocrat, in the midst of the insolence of unbridled power, a sort of consciousness of responsibility to European opinion, and a deferential dread of that of England in particular.

[1] [This was the first time the Emperor Nicholas had visited Poland since the Revolution of 1830, and he took the opportunity to express himself in language of excessive severity to the municipality of Warsaw, threatening to lay the city in ruins if the Poles rebelled again.]

November 22nd, 1835

My brother Algy showed me a few days ago a letter from the Duke of Wellington to the Duke of Cumberland—a gossiping letter about nothing, but in which there was this which struck me as odd. He said that he was informed that the English who had been to the reviews at Kalisch had been very ill received, and that even those to whom he had given letters of introduction had experienced nothing but incivility, and that he regretted having had the presumption to imagine that any recommendation of his would be attended to by the Sovereigns or their Ministers—a curious exhibition of pique, for what I believe to be an imaginary incivility. It is a strange thing that he is very sensitive, and yet has no strong feelings; but this is after all only one of the forms of selfishness.

Burdett has written a letter to the managers of Brooks’s, to propose the expulsion of O’Connell. It will do no good; these abortive attempts do nothing towards plucking him down from his bad eminence, and their failure gives him a triumph. So it was in Alvanley’s case; there a great deal of very proper indignation was thrown away, and O’Connell had the satisfaction of baffling his antagonists, and obtaining a sort of recognition of his assumed right to act as he does. It is a case which admits of a good argument either way. On the one side is the perilous example of any club taking cognizance of acts of its members, private or political, which do not concern the club, or have no local reference to it—a principle, if once admitted, of which it would be next to impossible to regulate and control the application, and probably be productive of greater evils than those it would be intended to remedy. On the other hand, the case of O’Connell is altogether peculiar; it is such a one as can hardly ever occur SOCIAL LAW. again, and therefore may be treated as deserving an exception from ordinary rules, because it not only cannot be drawn into a precedent, but the very circumstance of its being so treated must prevent the possibility of its recurrence. There exists a code of social law, which is universally subscribed to, as necessary and indispensable for the preservation of social harmony and decorum. One man has given public notice that he is self-emancipated from its obligations; that he acknowledges none of the restraints, and will submit to none of the penalties, by which the intercourse of society is regulated and kept in order; and having thus surrounded himself with all the immunities of irresponsibility, ‘out of the reach of danger he is bold, out of the reach of shame he is confident.’ Instead of feeling that he is specially bound to guard his language with the most scrupulous care, and to abstain religiously from every offensive expression, he mounts into regions of scurrility and abuse inaccessible to all other men, and he riots in invective and insult with a scornful and ostentatious exhibition of his invulnerability, which renders him an object of execration to all those who cherish the principles and the feelings of honour.

November 29th, 1835

There are gloomy letters from George Villiers at Madrid; he attributes the Spanish difficulties more to the conduct of Louis Philippe than anything else, who, he says, is playing false diabolically. Mendizabal is very able, but ill surrounded; no other public man of any merit. Parties are violent and individuals foolish, mischievous, and corrupt; the country poor, depopulated, ignorant—out of such elements what good can come? His letters (to his mother and brothers) are very interesting, very well written, clever, lively; he seems a little carried away by the vanity and the excitement of the part he plays, and I observe a want of steadiness in his opinions and a disposition to waver in his views from day to day; whereas it does not appear to me as if the state of Spain depended upon diurnal circumstances and events, but more upon the workings of great causes interwoven with, and deeply seated in, the positive state of society and the moral and political condition of the nation.

December 4th, 1835

A letter I wrote the other day about O’Connell appeared on Tuesday in the ‘Times.’ It rather took, for the evening (Tory) papers all copied it, and I heard it was talked of. Yesterday there appeared an answer of O’Connell’s to Burdett’s letter—very short, but very clever; and those who know Burdett say, well calculated to mortify and annoy him. I called on Stanley yesterday, who said that he thought the Raphael case ought to and would be made something of in the House of Commons, and that Spring Rice, whom he had lately seen, had told him he thought it a clear case of bribery. Lord Segrave has got the Gloucestershire Lieutenancy, and this appointment, disgraceful in itself, exhibits all the most objectionable features of the old boroughmongering system, which was supposed to be swept away. (He turned out a good Lord-Lieutenant.) He was in London as soon as the breath was out of the Duke of Beaufort’s body, went to Melbourne, and claimed this appointment on the score of having three members, which was more than any other man in England now returned. ‘My brothers,’ he said, ‘the electors do not know by sight; it is my influence which returns them.’ The appeal was irresistible, and ‘We are three’ was as imperative with Melbourne as ‘We are seven’ was with the Duke of Newcastle. The scarcity of the commodity enhances its value, and now that nominations are swept away, the few who are still fortunate enough to possess some remnants are great men; and Segrave’s three brothers, thrown (as they would without scruple have been) into the opposite scale, would have nearly turned it. There is a very respectable Whig (Lord Ducie) in the county, whom everybody pointed out as the fittest successor to the late Duke; but he has not three members, and if he had, he would not shake them in terrorem over Melbourne’s head.

December 10th and 11th, 1835

Our Government are in a great alarm lest this dispute between the French and Americans should produce a war, and the way in which we should be AMERICA AND FRANCE. affected by it is this:[2]—Our immense manufacturing population is dependent upon America for a supply of cotton, and in case of any obstruction to that supply, multitudes would be thrown out of employment, and incalculable distress would follow. They think that the French would blockade the American ports, and then such obstruction would be inevitable. A system like ours, which resembles a vast piece of machinery, no part of which can be disordered without danger to the whole, must be always liable to interruption or injury from causes over which we have no control; and this danger must always attend the extension of our manufacturing system to the prejudice of other interests; so that in case of a stoppage or serious interruption to the current in which it flows the consequences would be appalling; nor is there in all probability a nation on the Continent (our good ally Louis Philippe included) that would not gladly contribute to the humiliation of the power and diminution of the wealth of this country.

[2] [This dispute arose from the detention of American ships by the Emperor Napoleon under the Continental system. The Americans claimed large damages, and the negotiation lasted twenty years. At length General Jackson, the American President, insisted on payment, and the French Government settled the matter for twenty-five millions of francs; but the question led to a change in the French Ministry.]

December 16th, 1835

Dined with Sefton the day before yesterday to meet the Hollands; sat between Allen and Luttrell. Melbourne was there in roaring spirits; met me very cordially, and after dinner said, ‘Well, how are you? I had a great deal to say to you, but I forget what it was now.’ To which I replied, ‘Oh, never mind now; we are here to amuse ourselves, and we won’t talk of other things.’ I could not have settled anything with him there, so there was no use in beginning; and this put him at his ease, instead of making him hate the sight of me, and fancying wherever he met me that I should begin badgering him about my affairs.[3] In the world men must be dealt with according to what they are, and not to what they ought to be; and the great art of life is to find out what they are, and act with them accordingly.

[3] [This referred to some private affairs of Mr. Greville’s which were then under discussion, and on which Lord Melbourne’s influence was important.]

Allen talked of Mackintosh, and of his declaration of religious belief on his deathbed, when he had never believed at all during his life. He said that Mackintosh was not very deeply read in theology. Melbourne, on the contrary, is, and being a very good Greek scholar (which Mackintosh was not), has compared the Evidences and all modern theological works with the writings of the Fathers. He did not believe that Melbourne entertained any doubts, or that his mind was at all distracted and perplexed with much thinking and much reading on the subject, but that his studies and reflections have led him to a perfect conviction of unbelief.[4] He thought if Mackintosh had lived much with Christians he would have been one too. We talked of Middleton, and Allen said that he believed he really died a Christian, but that he was rapidly ceasing to be one, and if he had lived would probably have continued the argument of his free enquiry up to the Apostles themselves. He urged me to read Lardner; said he had never read Paley nor the more recent Evidences, the materials of all of which are, however, taken from Lardner’s work. Luttrell was talking of Moore and Rogers—the poetry of the former so licentious, that of the latter so pure; much of its popularity owing to its being so carefully weeded of everything approaching to indelicacy; and the contrast between the lives and the works of the two men—the former a pattern of conjugal and domestic regularity, the latter of all the men he had ever known the greatest sensualist.

[4] [John Allen was himself so fierce an unbeliever, and so bitter an enemy to the Christian religion, that he was very fond of asserting that other men believed as little as himself. It was almost always Allen who gave an irreligious turn to the conversation at Holland House when these subjects were discussed there.]

Yesterday Lyndhurst and Brougham both came to the Council Office to hear the first application for the renewal of a patent, and though there was no opposition, they scrutinised the petition and evidence with the utmost jealousy, which they did in order to intimate that the granting a prolongation FREDERIC ELLIOT. of the patent, even when unopposed, was not to be a matter of course. It was a pianoforte invention, and the instrument was introduced into the Council Chamber, and played upon by Madame Dülcken for the edification of their Lordships.

December 18th, 1835

Melbourne told me (the other night at Sefton’s) that he had been down to Oatlands to consult F. and H. about Dr. Arnold (of Rugby), and to ascertain if he could properly make him a bishop; but they did not encourage him, which I was surprised at, recollecting the religious correspondence which formerly passed between them and him. Arnold, however, shocks the High Churchmen, and is not considered orthodox; and Melbourne said it would make a great uproar to put him on the Bench, and was out of the question. He had been reading his sermons, which he thought very able.

December 20th, 1835

The Treasury have sent a proposed draft of a minute in my case. When it is over I shall not much care, for I have long since abandoned all expectation of being rich, and there are none of my expensive pursuits which I could not resign very cheerfully. Up to a certain point riches contribute largely to the happiness of life, but no farther. To be free from the necessity of daily self-denial and continual calculation is indispensable to happiness, but the major luxuries—ostentatious superfluities—contribute little or nothing to rational enjoyment. I have just seen an excellent letter from Frederic Elliot to Taylor, with a description of the state of parties and politics in Lower Canada, which has been shown to the Ministers, who think it the ablest exposé on those heads that has been transmitted from thence. I have very little doubt that he will go far; he has an admirable talent for business, a clear head, liberal and unprejudiced opinions, and he writes remarkably well.[5]

[5] [This prediction was fulfilled. Mr. Frederic Elliot was the youngest son of the Rt. Hon. Hugh Elliot, and nephew of the first Earl of Minto. He went to Canada in 1835 with Lord Gosford, entered the Colonial Office on his return to England, rose to be Assistant-Under-Secretary in that department, and is now (1873) Sir T. Frederic Elliot, K.S.M.G.]

December 24th, 1835

The Northamptonshire election has greatly elevated the spirits of the Conservatives, and though the Whigs affect to hold it cheap, they are not a little disconcerted by the magnitude of the majority, so unexpected by both parties. Impartial moderate men (such, for example, as the judges who sit in my Court) attribute it to a strong prevailing feeling against O’Connell; and it would appear to be so, because Hanbury, and even Vernon Smith, were compelled to hold language very adverse to him on the hustings. This O’Connell connection will, after all, probably end in destroying the Government; his last letter against the Peers is a very despicable performance, and he will be more injured by his own than by Burdett’s productions.

December 26th, 1835

The adherents of Government are certainly alarmed at the present aspect of things. Lord William Bentinck, who is as Radical as need be, wrote to his wife at Paris, ‘Tory matters are certainly looking up here; that senseless cry against O’Connell has produced a great effect.’ Nevertheless they affect at Brooks’s to hold it all very cheap.

December 30th, 1835

Wednesday at Roehampton—since Monday; for the first time since Lord Dover’s death. Luttrell, Poodle Byng, Baring Wall; Lady Dover still in weeds. Lord Clifden not a jot altered from his usual gaiety; such is the difference between the feelings of youth and age.

The exultation of the Tories at the Northamptonshire election has been woefully damped by the result of the Corporation elections, nine out of ten of which have gone for the Radicals, and in many places all the persons elected are of that persuasion. The constituency is certainly different, and a desire to make maison nette of these dens of corruption is not unnatural; but it affords a plausible subject for triumph on the Radical side, and has a formidable appearance.

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