I was interrupted while writing, and since I began, the division of eighty in favour of the Irish Corporation Bill appears to have settled that question, and at the same time those of dissolution and change. At the beginning of the Session the Tories were (as they are always ready to be) in high spirits, and the Government people in no small alarm. The elections had generally gone against them, and there were various symptoms of a reaction. In Scotland the Renfrewshire election was attributed to Peel’s visit and speech, and old Lauderdale wrote word that it was the most remarkable proof of a change there which had occurred since the Reform Bill. Nothing was talked of but a dissolution, of Peel’s taking office, and many people confidently predicted that new elections would produce a Tory majority. Besides, it was argued that the same spirit which turned out Peel in 1835 could not be roused again, and that VIOLENT SCENE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. several moderate Whigs would give him their support if he endeavoured to go on with this Parliament. In the midst of all these speculations this debate came on. It was exceedingly feeble on the part of the Opposition. Stanley, Graham, and Peel successively spoke, and none of them well; the latter was unusually heavy. The best speeches on the other side were Charles Buller’s and Roebuck’s (Radicals), and Howick’s. Sheil made a grand declamatory tirade, chiefly remarkable for the scene it produced, which was unexampled in the House, and for its credit may be hoped such as never will occur again. There was a blackguard ferocity in it which would have disgraced the National Convention or the Jacobin Club. Lyndhurst was sitting under the gallery, and Sheil, turning to him as he said it, uttered one of his vehement sentences against the celebrated and unlucky expression of ‘aliens.’ The attack was direct, and it was taken up by his adherents, already excited by his speech. Then arose a din and tumultuous and vociferous cheering, such as the walls never echoed to before; they stood up, all turning to Lyndhurst, and they hooted and shouted at him with every possible gesture and intonation of insult. It lasted ten minutes, the Speaker in vain endeavouring to moderate the clamour. All this time Lyndhurst sat totally unmoved; he neither attempted to stir, nor changed a muscle of his countenance. At length they divided, and there was a majority of eighty; sixteen more than on the same question last year.
The next morning (yesterday) Wharncliffe called on me, and I found that they were prodigiously depressed at this defeat. He said that they had suffered from many unusual casualties, sicknesses, and deaths, and that their people could not be made to attend. He instanced three cases of lukewarmness and indifference. Sir G. Noel remained in the House till twelve o’clock, and then went to bed; Lord John Scott went out of town in the morning of the division, because he was engaged to dine somewhere; and young Lefroy, who had paired with Sheil until this question, set off with him to embark for England from Dublin, and turned back from the steamboat because it blew hard, and he said his mother would be alarmed for his safety. Wharncliffe told me that Peel is very much disgusted at such coolness, and that, while he is slaving body and mind in the cause, he cannot even depend upon the corporeal presence of his idle and luxurious followers, who will sacrifice none of their amusements for the cause which they pretend to think is in such danger. On the other hand, the rash and foolish (no small proportion) are dissatisfied with his caution, and the prudence which they call timidity; they are always for doing something desperate. Lyndhurst last year in the House of Lords was the man after their own hearts, and they were quite willing to depose the Duke from his leadership of the party, and put themselves under the guidance of Lyndhurst. When we recollect who and what Lyndhurst was and is, it is curious to see the aristocracy of England adopting him for their chief; scarcely an Englishman (for his father was an American painter[5]), a lawyer of fortune, in the sense in which, we say a soldier of fortune, without any fixed principles, and only conspicuous for his extraordinary capacity, he has no interest but what centres in himself, and is utterly destitute of those associations which naturally belong to an aristocracy. There is probably not a man of the party who is not fully aware of Lyndhurst’s character, and they have already experienced the results of his political daring in his famous attempt to interrupt the Reform Bill by the postponement of Schedule A; and with this knowledge and experience they follow him blindly, lead them where he will. Wharncliffe owned to me that he saw no alternative but the compromise, but that he did not know whether his party would be brought to consent to it. I told him that they could not help themselves, and must consent; besides that, if the Tithe Bill is passed they will have got the security for the Church which they require, and the ground of objection to the Corporation Bill would be cut THE BISHOPS IN A FERMENT. from under their feet. It is remarkable, and rather amusing to a neutral like me, to hear what each party says of the concessions of the other. I see in the ‘Examiner’ this day that ‘the Lords cannot now pass the Bill if they would, without disgracing their party in the House of Commons,’ and Wharncliffe said that ‘the Government could not give up the appropriation clause in the Tithe Bill without covering themselves with disgrace.’ In my opinion the disgrace is not in making concessions which reason and expediency demand, and which are indispensable to the peace and tranquillity of the country, but in ever having pledged themselves to measures for party purposes, or to accomplish particular ends, without calculating the consequences of such pledges, or estimating the degree of power that they would possess of giving effect to the principles they avowed. This applies more strongly a great deal to the Whigs about the Tithe Bill than to the Tories about the Corporations; but it does apply to both, and it is a national misfortune when two great parties so commit themselves that no adjustment of the question at issue between them is possible without some detriment to the credit and character of both.
[5] [He was entirely an Englishman, for he was born at Boston before America was separated from England, and his whole family came to this country when the war broke out.]
March 18th, 1837
Three weeks, and nothing written. The dejection of the Tories at the division on the Corporation Bill has been since relieved by that on the Church-rates, which they consider equivalent to a victory; and so it is, for the probability is that the Bill will not pass the House of Commons. The debates have been good upon both these matters. Just before the question came on, the Bishops made a grand flare-up in the House of Lords. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Howley), with as much venom as so mild a man can muster, attacked the Bill. Melbourne replied with some asperity, and the Bishop of London (Blomfield) retorted fiercely upon him. The Tories lauded and the Whigs abused the Bishops, both vehemently. I don’t admire their conduct, either as to temper or discretion. The Church had better not be militant, and to see the Bench of Bishops in direct and angry collision with the King’s Prime Minister is a sorry sight.
The angry debate which took place was not contemplated by the Bishops. It had been settled that the Archbishop should make his declaration against the measure in the name of his brethren, which he did in a speech (for him) remarkably good, for he is a miserable speaker at all times. Melbourne’s severe remarks provoked the Bishop of London (Blomfield), who had not intended to speak, and he said to the Archbishop, ‘I must answer this,’ who replied, ‘Do.’ His abrupt and animated exordium, ‘And so, my Lords,’ was very much admired.
This Church rate Bill, however, is a bad Bill; it gives little satisfaction to anybody except to the Dissenters, who have no right to require such a concession to what they absurdly call their scruples of conscience. One of the underwhippers of Government dropped the truth as to the real cause of such a measure, when he said that, ‘if they had proposed Althorp’s plan, they should have had all the Dissenters against them at the next elections.’ The question, originally one of considerable difficulty, is now doubly so, and its solution will not be easy, especially by this Government; but nothing can prevent its being settled. It is strange that no experience can open the eyes of inveterate Tories and High Churchmen, and that successive defeats have not demonstrated to them the futility of their expectations of being able to resist the passing of measures which great interests support, and which are congenial to public opinion. There is, however, something discreditable in the conduct of Government, and which shows the compromising, half-cunning, hand-to-mouth way in which they are compelled to scramble on. Upon the ballot the ‘Times’ published a list of at least twenty members of the Government who stayed away, leaving the Tories to fight the Radicals and make the majority, and such a measure as this Church-rate Bill is utterly inconsistent with Lord John Russell’s declarations last year. This division has again revived the question of dissolution and change of Government, and made a great deal of speculation. If the Lords dare throw out the Corporation Bill, the Government must APPROPRIATION CLAUSES ABANDONED. go out, though not else; but it is next to impossible they should venture on this.
March 31st, 1837
So I thought upon the 18th of March, but so I do not think now. In the first place, I hear from those who are well informed that the Lords have made up their minds to throw out this Bill. Lord John Russell has made up his to resign if they do, and in that case Peel has made up his to come in. It does not appear, however, that the great body of the Whigs are at all prepared to go out. Some doubt the Lords rejecting the Bill, others that the Tories would take office, or that Melbourne and his friends would so certainly resign it. Lord Spencer wrote to John Russell, and told him that if the Lords did throw out the Bill, he thought that (being still supported by a majority of the Commons) he ought not to resign, but Lord John wrote him back decisive and convincing reasons why his retention of office under such circumstances would be impossible. The fact is that there is a great change in the face of affairs. The small majority on the Church rate Bill, the unpopularity of the measure, and the discredit which attends our foreign relations (since Evans’s defeat in Spain more especially), have had a material effect upon the moral efficacy of the Government. It is now known that Government have abandoned the appropriation clauses in the Tithe Bill, and this has grievously offended many of their violent, thick and thin supporters, more especially as it was the particular question on which they turned Peel out; and the grand principle, therefore, on which the Government was bound in honour and consistency to stand. The Ministers none of them possess any public confidence in their individual or official capacities; the King detests them, the country does not care for them, and the House of Commons supports them in a lukewarm spirit. If they do resign there will be no repetition of the scenes of their former expulsion and triumphant return to power. The same enthusiasm could not be raised, nor the same union brought about. I hear men in office talk of Peel going on without a dissolution, and the most interested adherents of Government (Tavistock for example) of a fair trial, and of his having a better right to it now than he had on the former occasion. Peel’s undoubted fitness for office, his vast superiority to all the other public men of the day, will be more readily acknowledged, and I doubt very much whether he would experience any such factious and uncompromising opposition as would seriously obstruct the march of his Government, particularly if its composition should be tolerable, and his measures judicious and liberal. It is very remarkable that when he wanted to take in Stanley and Graham formerly, he desired them more particularly because they would have strengthened his hands in the establishment of liberal principles against the great body of his Tory supporters, and they refused upon the pretext that they had no security for his being liberal enough; and now, when of course he must and will place whatever offices they please at their disposal, so far from being of the same assistance to him, they only bring an addition of bigotry and illiberality which will perpetually cast difficulties and embarrassments in his way. It is a curious matter for speculation how he will go on with these men, how his coldness, prudence, and reserve will suit the intemperate and often injudicious vivacity of Stanley. With Graham there would not be so much difficulty, and his principles would not be found too inflexible. Nothing shocks his old Whig associates more than the contrast between his present conduct and opinions, and the extreme violence which he displayed at the period of his accession to office in 1831; he was in fact the most ultra Liberal of Lord Grey’s Cabinet, and now he is little better than a Tory.
The King, who is a thorough party man, will be overjoyed at any change; he never loses an opportunity of showing his antipathy to his confidential servants. The other day at the reception of the Bath, when Lord Aylmer was introduced, he made him a speech to which he gave that sort of dramatic effect which he is so fond of doing. Aylmer had been recalled from Canada by this Government, but when he approached the throne, the King called out to Lord Minto and Lord Palmerston (the only two Ministers who are THE KING’S ADDRESS TO LORD AYLMER. Knights of the Bath), and made them come up, and stand one on each side of Aylmer, that they might not lose a word of his oration, and then he began. He told them that he wished to take that, the most public opportunity he could find, of telling him that he approved most entirely of his conduct in Canada, that he had acted like a true and loyal subject towards a set of traitors and conspirators, and behaved as it became a British officer to do under such circumstances. I forget the exact expressions, but it was to this effect, to the unspeakable satisfaction of Aylmer, and to inflict all the mortification he could upon the Ministers whom he had lugged up to witness this ebullition.