Yesterday morning the Duke of Wellington came here upon some private business, after discussing which he entered upon the state of the country. I told him my view of the condition of the Government and of the House of Commons, and he said, ‘You have hit the two points that I have myself always felt so strongly about. I told Lord Grey so DUKE OF WELLINGTON’S VIEW OF AFFAIRS. long ago, and asked him at the time how he expected to be able to carry on the Government of the country, to which he never could give any answer, except that it would all do very well. However, things are not a bit worse than I always thought they would be. As they are, I mean to support the Government—support them in every way. The first thing I have to look to is to keep my house over my head, and the alternative is between this Government and none at all. I am therefore for supporting the Government, but then there is so much passion, and prejudice, and folly, and vindictive feeling, that it is very difficult to get others to do the same. I hear Peel had only fifty people with him the other night on some question, though they say that there are 150 of that party in the House of Commons. He thinks as ill of the whole thing as possible. [While I am writing Poodle Byng is come in, who tells me what happened last night. Althorp made a very bad speech and a wretched statement; other people spoke, pert and disagreeable, and the debate looked ill till Stanley rose and made one of the finest speeches that were ever heard, pounding O’Connell to dust and attacking him for his ‘six hundred scoundrels,’ from which he endeavoured to escape by a miserable and abortive explanation. Stanley seems to have set the whole thing to rights, like a great man.]

I told the Duke what Macaulay had said to Denison: ‘that if he had had to legislate, he would, instead of this Bill, have suspended the laws for five years in Ireland, given the Lord-Lieutenant’s proclamation the force of law, and got the Duke of Wellington to go there.’ He seemed very well pleased at this, and said, ‘Well, that is the way I governed the provinces on the Garonne in the south of France. I desired the mayors to go on administering the law of the land, and when they asked me in whose name criminal suits should be carried on (which were ordinarily in the name of the Emperor), and if they should be in the name of the King, I said no, that we were treating with the Emperor at Chatillon, and if they put forth the King they would be in a scrape; neither should it be in the Emperor’s name, because we did not acknowledge him, but in that of the Allied Powers.’ In this I think he was wrong (par parenthèse), for Napoleon was acknowledged by all the Powers but us, and we were treating with him, and if he permitted the civil authorities to administer the law as usual, he should have allowed them to administer it in the usual legal form. Their civil administration could not affect any political questions in the slightest degree.

March 4th, 1833

Sir Thomas Hardy told my brother he thought the King would certainly go mad; he was so excitable, loathing his Ministers, particularly Graham, and dying to go to war. He has some of the cunning of madmen, who fawn upon their keepers when looked at by them, and grin at them and shake their fists when their backs are turned; so he is extravagantly civil when his Ministers are with him, and exhibits every mark of aversion when they are away. Peel made an admirable speech on Friday night; they expect a great majority.

March 13th, 1833

The second reading of the Coercive Bill has passed by a great majority after a dull debate, and the other night Althorp deeply offended Peel and the Tories by hurrying on the Church Reform Bill. It was to be printed one day, and the second reading taken two days after. They asked a delay of four or five days, and Althorp refused. He did very wrong; he is either bullied or cajoled into almost anything the Radicals want of this sort, but he is stout against the Tories. The delay is required by decency, but it ought to have been enough that Peel and the others asked it for him to concede it. He ought to soften the asperities which must long survive the battles of last year as much as he can, and avoid shocking what he may consider the prejudices of the vanquished party. It was worse than impolitic; it was stupid and uncourteous, and missing an opportunity of being gracious which he ought to have seized.

I have been again worried with a new edition of Brougham’s Privy Council Bill,[2] and the difficulty of getting LORD BROUGHAM’S PRIVY COUNCIL BILL. Lord Lansdowne to do anything. This is the way Brougham goes to work:—He resolves to alter; he does not condescend to communicate with the Privy Council, or to consult those who are conversant with its practice, or who have been in the habit of administering justice there; he has not time to think of it himself; he tosses to one of his numerous employés (for he has people without end working for him) his rough notion, and tells him to put it into shape; the satellite goes to work, always keeping in view the increase of the dignity, authority, and patronage of the Chancellor, and careless of the Council, the King, and the usages of the Constitution. What is called the Bill is then, for form’s sake, handed over to the Lord President (Lord Lansdowne), with injunctions to let nobody see it, as if he was conspiring against the Council, secure that if he meets with no resistance but what is engendered by Lord Lansdowne’s opposition he may enact anything he pleases. Lord Lansdowne sends it to me (a long Act of Parliament), with a request that I will return it ‘by the bearer,’ with any remarks I may have to make on it. The end is that I am left, quantum impar, to fight this with the Chancellor.

[2] [This was the Bill for the establishment of a Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which eventually became the Act 3 & 4 Will. IV., cap. 41, and definitively created that tribunal. Mr. Greville objected to several of the provisions of the measure, because he regarded them as an unnecessary interference of Parliament with the authority of the Sovereign in his Council. The Sovereign might undoubtedly have created a Committee of the judicial members of the Privy Council: but the Bill went further, and by extending and defining the power of the Judicial Committee as a Court of Appeal it undoubtedly proved a very useful and important measure.]

March 15th, 1833

Ministerial changes are going on; Durham is out, and to be made an earl. Yesterday his elevation was known, and it is amusing enough that the same day an incident should have occurred in the House of Lords exhibiting in a good light the worthiness of the subject, and how much he merits it at the hands of Lord Grey.