A ridiculous thing happened the other day. The Speaker came to the Council Office in a great stew about the attacks on him, and wanted to look at the register of the names of those who had attended at the different Councils. Though I think he is a pauvre sire, he has a very tolerable case here, and I wrote a letter to the ‘Times’ in his defence, and signed it ‘Onslow,’ happening to think of Speaker Onslow. The next day appeared a letter from Lord Onslow, declaring that he was not the author of a letter which had appeared in his name. The ‘Times’ published it, adding they thought he could hardly be serious. Munster told me the day before yesterday that he was told of the Queen’s being with child on the day of the Lord Mayor’s dinner; that she is now between two and three months gone. Of course there will be plenty of scandal. Alvanley proposes that the psalm ‘Lord, how wonderful are thy works’ should be sung. It so happens, however, that Howe has not been with the Court for a considerable time.
January 27th, 1835
There is a Committee sitting at my office to arrange the Church Bill—Rosslyn, Wharncliffe, Ellenborough, and Herries. It is generally believed they mean to bring forward some very extensive measures. Allen says, ‘The honest Whigs cannot oppose it with honour, nor the Tories support it without infamy,’ that all the honest Whigs would support it, the honest Tories oppose it, the dishonest Tories would support, and the dishonest Whigs oppose it. He told me an anecdote at the same time which shows what the supineness and sense of security of the Church were twenty years ago. An architect built a chapel on Lord Holland’s land, near Holland House, and wished it to be appropriated to the service of the Church of England, and served by a curate. The rector objected and refused his consent. There was no remedy against him, and all that could be done was to make it a Methodist meeting-house, or a Roman Catholic chapel, either of which by taking out a licence, the builder could do. However, he got Lord Holland to speak to the Archbishop of Canterbury (Sutton), to tell him the difficulty, and request his interference with the rector to suffer this chapel to be opened to an Orthodox congregation. After some delay the Archbishop told Holland that he had better advise his friend to take out a licence, and make it a Catholic or Dissenting chapel, as he thought best. The builder could not afford to lose the capital he had expended, and acted upon the advice of the Primate. The chapel is a meeting-house to this day. I shall be very glad if this reform of the Church is well done and gives satisfaction, and I do not know that any of the present Ministers are pledged against a measure which improves the discipline without diminishing the revenues of the Church, but certainly reforms, and especially ecclesiastical reforms, do come with a bad grace from them. It is ludicrous to see the ‘Standard’ writing Church reform articles; and the other day I looked back at Knatchbull’s speech at the Kentish meeting, a week after the dissolution of the late Government, in which he expressed an earnest hope that he might leave this country ‘without any change in Church or State.’ He has been Anti-everything during his whole life, and now he is come into office to carry into effect ‘safe and necessary reforms,’ which he never could perceive the slightest occasion for while he was out. All these things are disgusting; they disgust one with political life, they lower the characters of public men. One strains one’s eyes in vain to catch a sight of sincerity, straightforwardness, disinterestedness, consistency; each party we have constantly acting with a view to its own INSECURITY OF THE TORIES. interests as a party, and always disregarding consequences with miserable shortsightedness.
February 2nd, 1835
The elections are over, and still each side claims a majority. It will turn out probably that the Government have about 270 thick and thin men. Since the Lancashire election, the Whigs have certainly not been so elated, though they still expect to succeed. They begin with the Speakership, and put up Abercromby, who is probably the best candidate they could select; he is a dull, grave man, sensible and hard-headed I fancy, but it has always been matter of astonishment to me that they should make so much of him as they do. The Duke of Wellington is constantly regretting that he did not abstain from taking office, as he wished to do, and I hear that Peel now thinks it would have been better: but he thinks so because he fancies that Stanley would have joined if the Duke had not been there, which is after all very doubtful. Stanley has preserved the strictest neutrality through the late contest, and been very guarded and cautious in his language—so much so, that the Whigs think he will vote for Abercromby against Manners Sutton, which I don’t believe. The Church Reform is in active preparation; I know nothing of its details.
Pozzo di Borgo is coming here, and the Emperor sends him partly to save time and, Madame de Lieven writes me word, ‘to prove his goodwill, by sending his ablest and most confidential diplomatist.’ Old Talleyrand would very likely have been glad enough to come back too (while the Duke is in office), but he is gone to Richecote. A great mystery is still made about the Queen’s grossesse; the medical men believe it, though they think it no certainty.
February 8th, 1834
On Monday last we had the Sheriffs’ dinner at Lord Rosslyn’s,[7] where I met for the first time all the new men. Murray did not come, for since his defeat in Perthshire he no longer considers himself of the Cabinet. Before dinner Peel told me he had offered the vacant Lordship of the Treasury to Charles Canning,[8] in a letter to Lady Canning, saying it would give him great pleasure to introduce her son into public life, and that he should be glad to treat him with confidence, and do all that lay in him to promote his success. Lady Canning wrote a very gracious answer, saying that she preferred his being in Parliament some time before he took office, but neither he nor she was indisposed to support him and his Government. At this dinner the Duke talked to me about Spain, and said that the affair at the Post Office at Madrid, in which Canterac was killed, was the most lamentable thing that had happened, and the most discreditable to the Government; that if the Carlists did not rise upon it all over Spain, it was clear there were none; that it was a most extraordinary war, in which the Carlists had the superiority in the field, but possessed no fortified and even no open town; and that, notwithstanding all the plunder and devastation incidental to such a state of things, all the farmers in the disturbed provinces regularly paid their rents.
[7] [The Lord President’s annual dinner to the Cabinet, at which the Sheriffs for the ensuing year are selected, to be appointed by the King at the next Council.]
[8] [Afterwards Viscount Canning and Governor-General of India in 1856.]