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

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

January 31st, 1831

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

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

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

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

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

February 6th, 1831

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