On Sunday at dinner at Lord Grey’s I sat next to Charles Grey, who talked of the House of Commons, and said that there could be no question of Peel’s superiority over everybody there, that Stanley had not done so well this session, had displayed so much want of judgment now, as well as formerly, that he was evidently not fit to be leader. He owned that Peel’s conduct was very fair as well as prudent, and said that if his father was to resign, he himself, and he believed many others, would be willing to support a Government headed by Peel. It is remarkable how men’s minds are gradually turning to Peel. I was amused yesterday ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. with Poulett Thomson, who told me that Peel had been very courteous to him, and that they had some important points of coincidence of opinion; that Peel did not like Graham, Palmerston, or Grant, but to the rest of the Government he was remarkably civil. I think he reckons without his host if he calculates upon Peel’s politeness extending to the offer of a place to our Vice-President in the event of his coming in.
March 29th, 1834
At the beginning of the week there was a discussion in the House of Commons which lasted for three mornings on the Cambridge petition. Spring Rice, O’Connell, Stanley, and Palmerston spoke for it; Goulburn, Inglis, and Peel against it. Old Cobbett made as mischievous a speech as he could to blow the coals between the parties. Peel spoke last, and as usual very well; but several people expected he would have supported it, and have abstained (from prudential motives) from saying anything likely to offend the Dissenters. I expected no such thing; he was not violent, and addressed his argument to the weak parts of his adversaries’ speeches rather than against the general principles of toleration; and I still think that when the great question of concessions to the Dissenters comes to be argued he will not be found in the ranks of their virulent and uncompromising opponents. It would have been an extraordinary thing indeed if he had all of a sudden stood forth in the character of an anti-Churchman, for such he especially would have been considered if he had united himself with the petitioners, and he would have disgusted and alienated all the High Churchmen and High Tories to a degree which must have made a fresh and irreconcilable breach between them. This would not have been judicious in his position, and I am satisfied that he took the most prudent course. I am the more satisfied of it from the circumstance that his speech by no means gave unalloyed pleasure to the ‘Standard,’ which is the organ of the High Church party. I feel it a strange thing to find myself the advocate and admirer of Peel; but there is such a dearth of talent, his superiority is so obvious, and it is so very desirable that something like strength should be infused into the Government, that I am compelled to overlook his faults without being the least blind to them. I ascribe to him no more elevation of character than I did before; but we must take what we can get and make use of the existing materials, and for this reason I watch with anxiety his conduct, because I am persuaded that he is under present circumstances our best and only refuge.
The Vice-Chancellor[1] called on me the other day, and talking over the business that had been done by Brougham, and the recent discussion about it, he said that he had taken the trouble to examine the returns of hearings, decrees, and orders, and he found that there was scarcely a shade of difference between what had been done severally by Eldon, Lyndhurst, and Brougham in equal spaces of time. (Eldon and Lyndhurst had the Bankruptcy business besides.) This is a clear case for the Chancellor, and it is only fair that it should be known. His friends think him much altered in spirits and appearance; he has never shaken off his unhappiness at his brother’s death, to whom he seems to have been tenderly attached. It is only justice to acknowledge his virtues in private life, which are unquestionably conspicuous. I am conscious of having often spoken of him with asperity, and it is some satisfaction to my conscience to do him this justice. When the greatest (I will not say the best) men are often influenced by pique or passion, by a hundred petty feelings which their philosophy cannot silence or their temperament obeys, it is no wonder that we poor wretches who are cast in less perfect moulds should be still more liable to these pernicious influences; and it is only by keeping an habitual watch over our own minds and thoughts, and steadily resolving never to be turned from considerations of justice and truth, that we can hope to walk through life with integrity and impartiality. I believe what I have said of Brougham to be correct in the main—that he is false, tricking, ambitious, and unprincipled, and as such I will show him up when PERSONAL REFLECTIONS. I can—but though I do not like him and he has offended me—that is, has wounded my vanity (the greatest of all offences)—I only feel it the more necessary on that account to be on my guard against my own impressions and prejudices, and to take every opportunity of exhibiting the favourable side of the picture, and render justice to the talents and virtues which cannot be denied him.
[1] [Sir Lancelot Shadwell, Vice-Chancellor of England.]
April 3rd, 1834
Yesterday I was forty years old, an anniversary much too melancholy to think of; and when I reflect how intolerably these forty years have been wasted, how unprofitably spent, how little store laid up for the future, how few the pleasurable recollections of the past, a feeling of pain and humiliation comes across me that makes my cheeks tingle and burn as I write. It is very seldom that I indulge in moralising in this Journal of mine; if anybody ever reads it, what will they care for my feelings and regrets? It is no reason, they will think, that because I have wasted my time they should waste theirs in reading the record of follies which are nothing more than the great mass of the world are every day committing; idleness, vanity, and selfishness are our besetting sins, and we are perpetually whirled about by one or other of them. It is certainly more amusing, both to other people and to myself (when I look back at what I have written), to read the anecdotes and events of the day than all this moral stuff (by which I mean stuff as applied to me, not as being despicable in itself), but every now and then the fancy takes me, and I think I find relief by giving vent on paper to that which I cannot say to anybody. ‘Cela fait partie de cette doctrine intérieure qu’il ne faut jamais communiquer’ (Stendhal). Jam satis est, and I will go to other things—the foreign or domestic scraps I have picked up.
Parliament being en relâche, there are few people in town. William Ponsonby, whom I met the other evening, told me he had just returned from the assizes at Dorchester, where some men had been convicted of illegal association. On the event of this trial, he said, the lower and labouring classes had their eyes fixed, and the conviction was therefore of great consequence; any relaxation of the sentence would have been impossible under the circumstances, and though a great disposition was evinced, partly by the press, by petitions, and by some speeches in Parliament, to get them left off more easily, Melbourne very wisely did not wait for more manifestations, but packed them off, and they are gone. William Ponsonby told me that the demoralisation in that part of the country is very great—the distress not severe, no political disaffection, but a recklessness, a moral obtuseness, exceedingly disgusting. There was a certain trial, or rather case (for the grand jury could not find a bill), in which a woman had murdered a child, got by her son out of a girl who lodged in her cottage. The only evidence by which she could have been convicted would have been that of the son himself, and he refused to speak. The crime went unpunished; but I mention this to introduce what grew out of it. One of the lawyers said that in the course of the investigations which this case had occasioned it had been discovered (though not in a way which admitted of any proofs being adduced and any measures adopted upon it) that there was a woman whose trade was to get rid of bastard children, either by procuring abortions or destroying them when born, and that she had a regular price for either operation.[2] I don’t suppose that the average state of morals is much worse in one county than in another; but it is very remarkable that while education has been more widely diffused than heretofore, and there is a strong Puritanical spirit at work and vast talk about religious observances, there should be such a brutish manifestation of the moral condition of the lower classes, and that they should be apparently so little humanised and reclaimed by either education or religion. In this country all is contrast—contrast between wealth the most enormous and poverty the most wretched, between an excess of sanctity and an atrocity of crime.
[2] [The same thing was proved more than thirty years later, on the trial of Charlotte Winsor, who eventually escaped the fate she deserved on the ground of some legal technicality which was taken up to the House of Lords, and though it was decided against the prisoner, the Government refused, after a considerable lapse of time, to have her executed.]
OXFORD ADDRESS TO THE KING. George Villiers and Howard write equally bad accounts from their respective Courts, neither seeing any hope of the termination of the Peninsular contests, and each of them alike disgusted with the men they have to deal with. Howard says that we could put an end to the Portuguese affair whenever we chose, and that they would submit to British power without thinking it a degradation; that Miguel is not popular in Portugal, but that the priests have made a crusade against Pedro and Liberal principles, and that they drive the peasantry into the Miguelite ranks by the terrors of excommunication; that the only reason why Pedro’s military operations are successful is that he has got an English corps, against which the Portuguese will not fight.