Yesterday a levee and Council and Recorder’s report. Clanricarde and Robert Grosvenor[1] sworn in.
[1] [Afterwards Lord Ebury.]
The Liverpool election, which is just over, was, considering the present state of things, a remarkable contest. It is said to have cost near 100,000ℓ. to the two parties, and to have exhibited a scene of bribery and corruption perfectly unparalleled; no concealment or even semblance of decency was observed; the price of tallies and of votes rose, like stock, as the demand increased, and single votes fetched from 15ℓ. to 100ℓ. apiece. They voted by tallies; as each tally voted for one or the other candidate they were furnished with a receipt for their votes, with which they went to the committee, when through a hole in the wall the receipt was handed in, and through another the stipulated sum handed out; and this scene of iniquity has been exhibited at a period when the cry for Reform is echoed from one end of the country to the other, and in the case of a man (Denison) who stood on the principle of Reform. Nobody yet knows whence the money for Denison comes (the Ewarts are enormously rich), but it will be still more remarkable if he should pay it himself, when he is poor, careful of money, and was going to India the other day in order to save 12,000ℓ. or 15,000ℓ. If anybody had gone down at the eleventh hour and polled one good vote, he would have beaten both candidates and disfranchised the borough. As it is, it is probable the matter will be taken up and the borough disfranchised. The right of voting is as bad as possible in the freemen, who are the lowest rabble of the town and, as it appears, a parcel of venal wretches. Here comes the difficulty of Reform, for how is it possible to reform the electors?
December 5th, 1830
The country is getting quieter, but though the immediate panic is passing away men’s minds are not the less disquieted as to our future prospects. Not a soul knows what plan of Reform the Ministers will propose, nor how far they are disposed to go. The Duke of Devonshire has begun in his own person by announcing to the Knaresborough people that he will never again interfere with that borough. Then the Black Book, as it is called, in which all places and pensions are exhibited, has struck terror into all who are named and virtuous indignation into all who are not. Nothing can be more mal à propos than the appearance of this book at such a season, when there is such discontent about our institutions and such unceasing endeavours to bring them into contempt. The history of the book is this:—Graham moved last year for a return of all Privy Councillors who had more than 1,000ℓ. a year, and Goulburn chose to give him a return of all persons who had more than 1,000ℓ. a year, because he thought the former return would be invidious to Privy Councillors; so he caused that to be published, which will remove no obloquy from those he meant to save, but draw down a great deal on hundreds of others, and on the Government under which such things exist. I speak feelingly, for ‘quorum pars magna sum.’
The Duke of Wellington gave a great dinner yesterday to all the people who had gone out of office (about fifty), so that it is clear they mean to keep together. Whether he looks forward to be Prime Minister again it is impossible to say, but his real friends would prefer his taking the command of the army, whatever his fools and flatterers may do. Lord Lyndhurst, who loses everything by the fall of the late Government, cannot get over it, particularly as he feels that the Duke’s obstinacy brought it about, and that by timely concessions and good management he might have had Lord Grey, Palmerston, and all that are worth having. Peel, on the contrary, is delighted; he wants leisure, is glad to get out of such a firm, and will have time to form his own plans and avail himself of circumstances, which, according to every probability, must turn out in his favour. His youth (for a public man), experience, and real capacity for business will inevitably make him Minister hereafter. The Duke of Wellington’s fall,[2] if the causes of it are dispassionately traced and considered, affords a great political lesson. His POLITICAL CHARACTER OF WELLINGTON. is one of those mixed characters which it is difficult to praise or blame without the risk of doing them more or less than justice. He has talents which the event has proved to be sufficient to make him the second (and, now that Napoleon is gone, the first general) of the age, but which could not make him a tolerable Minister. Confident, presumptuous, and dictatorial, but frank, open, and good-humoured, he contrived to rule in the Cabinet without mortifying his colleagues, and he has brought it to ruin without forfeiting their regard. Choosing with a very slender stock of knowledge to take upon himself the sole direction of every department of Government, he completely sank under the burden. Originally imbued with the principles of Lord Castlereagh and the Holy Alliance, he brought all those predilections with him into office. Incapable of foreseeing the mighty events with which the future was big, and of comprehending the prodigious alterations which the moral character of Europe had undergone, he pitted himself against Canning in the Cabinet, and stood up as the assertor of maxims both of foreign and domestic policy which that great statesman saw were no longer fitted for the times we live in. With a flexibility which was more remarkably exhibited at subsequent periods, when he found that the cause he advocated was lost, the Duke turned suddenly round, and surrendered his opinions at discretion; but in his heart he never forgave Mr. Canning, and from that time jealousy of him had a material influence on his political conduct, and was the primary motive of many of his subsequent resolutions. This flexibility has been the cause of great benefits to the country, but ultimately of his own downfall, for it has always proceeded from the pressure of circumstances and considerations of convenience to himself, and not from a rational adaptation of his opinions and conduct to the necessities and variations of the times. He has not been thoroughly true to any principle or any party; he contrived to disgust and alienate his old friends and adherents without conciliating or attaching those whose measures he at the eleventh hour undertook to carry into execution. Through the whole course of his political conduct selfish considerations have never been out of sight. His opposition to Canning’s Corn Bill was too gross to admit of excuse. It was the old spite bursting forth, sharpened by Canning’s behaviour to him in forming his Administration, which, if it was not contumelious, certainly was not courteous. When at his death the Duke assumed the Government, his disclaiming speech was thrown in his teeth, but without much justice, for such expressions are never to be taken literally, and in the subsequent quarrel with Huskisson, though it is probably true that he was aiming at domination, he was persuaded that Huskisson and his party were endeavouring to form a cabal in the Cabinet, and his expulsion of them is not, therefore, altogether without excuse. On the question of the Test Act it was evident he was guided by no principle, probably by no opinion, and that he only thought of turning it as best he might to his own advantage. Throughout the Catholic question self was always apparent, not that he was careless of the safety, or indifferent to the prosperity of the country, but that he cared as much for his own credit and power, and never considered the first except in their connection with the second. The business of Emancipation he certainly conducted with considerable judgment, boldly trusting to the baseness of many of his old friends, and showing that he had not mistaken their characters; exercising that habitual influence he had acquired over the mind of the King; preserving impenetrable secresy; using without scruple every artifice that could forward his object; and contriving to make tools or dupes of all his colleagues and adherents, and getting the whole merit to himself. From the passing of the Catholic question his conduct has exhibited a series of blunders which have at length terminated in his fall. The position in which he then stood was this:—He had a Government composed of men who were for the most part incompetent, but perfectly subservient to him. He had a considerable body of adherents in both Houses. The Whigs, whose support (enthusiastically given) had carried him triumphantly through the great contest, were willing to unite with him; the Tories, exasperated POLITICAL CHARACTER OF WELLINGTON. and indignant, feeling insulted and betrayed, vowed nothing but vengeance. Intoxicated with his victory, he was resolved to neglect the Whigs, to whom he was so much indebted, and to regain the affections of the Tories, whom he considered as his natural supporters, and whom he thought identity of opinion and interest would bring back to his standard. By all sorts of slights and affronting insinuations that they wanted place, but that he could do without them, he offended the Whigs, but none of his cajoleries and advances had the least effect on the sulky Tories. It was in vain that he endeavoured to adapt his foreign policy to their worst prejudices by opposing with undeviating hostility that of Mr. Canning (the great object of their detestation), and disseminating throughout all Europe the belief of his attachment to ultra-monarchical principles. He opposed the spirit of the age, he brought England into contempt, but he did not conciliate the Tories. Having succeeded in uniting two powerful parties (acting separately) in opposition to his Government, and having nobody but Peel to defend his measures in the House of Commons, and nobody in the House of Lords, he manifested his sense of his own weakness by overtures and negotiations, and evinced his obstinate tenacity of power by never offering terms which could be accepted, or extending his invitations to those whose authority he thought might cope with his own. With his Government falling every day in public opinion, and his enemies growing more numerous and confident, with questions of vast importance rising up with a vigour and celerity of growth which astonished the world, he met a new Parliament (constituted more unfavourably than the last, which he had found himself unable to manage) without any support but in his own confidence and the encouraging adulation of a little knot of devotees. There still lingered round him some of that popularity which had once been so great, and which the recollection of his victories would not suffer to be altogether extinguished. By a judicious accommodation of his conduct to that public opinion which was running with an uncontrollable tide, by a frank invitation to all who were well disposed to strengthen his Government, he might have raised those embers of popularity into a flame once more, have saved himself, and still done good service to the State; but it was decreed that he should fall. He appeared bereft of all judgment and discretion, and after a King’s Speech which gave great, and I think unnecessary offence, he delivered the famous philippic against Reform which sealed his fate. From that moment it was not doubtful, and he was hurled from the seat of power amidst universal acclamations.
[2] [The following passage will no doubt be read with surprise, for in later years Mr. Greville became and remained one of the Duke’s most steady admirers, and as he has himself stated in the memorandum written nineteen years afterwards, which is inserted at the end of it, the opinion he entertained of him at this time was unjust. But he at the same time decided ‘to leave it as it is, because it is of the essence of these Memoirs not to soften or tone down judgments by the light of altered convictions, but to leave them standing as contemporary evidence of what was thought at the time they were written.’ These are his own words.]
[Memorandum added by Mr. Greville in April 1850.]
N.B.—I leave this as it is, though it is unjust to the Duke of Wellington; but such as my impressions were at the time they shall remain, to be corrected afterwards when necessary. It would be very wrong to impute selfishness to him in the ordinary sense of the term. He coveted power, but he was perfectly disinterested, a great patriot if ever there was one, and he was always animated by a strong and abiding sense of duty. I have done him justice in other places, and there is after all a great deal of truth in what I have said here.