A night or two ago there was a breeze at Lady Jersey’s between the Duke of Cumberland and Alava, and many stories made of it, more than were true. The Duke, who had frequently taunted him before, was again attacking him about his expedition and Spanish affairs generally, when Alava got into a fury and said to him, ‘Monseigneur, Don Carlos peut être roi d’Espagne, mais il ne sera jamais le roi du général Alava.’ This Lord Jersey told me, and that the other things he is reported to have said to the Duke are not true.
July 7th, 1835
I can’t deny that many persons have shown a very kind disposition to assist me in this business of my Jamaica place, of different political persuasions, and with most of whom I have but a very slight personal acquaintance, among these none more than Mr. Gladstone and Lord Lincoln, neither of whom did I know to speak to till I put myself into communication with them on this business. On the other hand Charles Wood, who is against me in his opinion, has been the channel of communication with Baring and shown generally a good will towards me. These demonstrations are agreeable enough, and contribute to put one in harmony with mankind, but it is after all a humiliating position, and I feel unutterable disgust, and something akin to shame, at being compelled to solicit the protection of one set of men, and the friendly offices of another, in order to be maintained in the possession of that which is in itself obnoxious to public feeling and opinion. A placeman is in these days an odious animal, and as a double placeman I am doubly odious, and I have a secret kind of whispering sensation that these very people who good-naturedly enough assist me must be a little shocked at the cause they advocate. All that can be said in my favour is not obvious, nor can it be properly or conveniently brought forward, and all that can be said against me lies on the surface, and is universally evident. The funds from which I draw my means do not somehow seem a pure source; formerly those things were tolerated, now they are not, and my prospects were formed and destiny determined at a remote period, while I incur all the odium and encounter all the risks consequent upon the altered state of public feeling on the subject.
July 15th, 1835
Sefton told me that a correspondence has taken place between Lord Glenelg and Sir Herbert Taylor about that speech of the King’s at the Council on Wednesday se’nnight. Glenelg felt himself called upon to enquire whether the blow was aimed at him, and it was evident from the tenor of the reply that it was. I heard from Stephen a day or two afterwards the real truth of this matter. It was Lord Glenelg that the King intended to allude to in his speech. Lord Melbourne spoke to his Majesty on the subject, remonstrated, and said it was impossible to carry on the government if he did such things. He said that he was greatly irritated, and had acted under strong feelings in consequence of what Glenelg had said to him. Melbourne rejoined, ‘Your Majesty must have mistaken Lord Glenelg.’ ‘Not at all,’ said the King, and he then went into a dispute they had had about the old constitution of Canada—I forget what, but something the King asserted which Glenelg contradicted. He repaired to the Colonial Office and told Stephen, who informed him that the King was right and he was wrong. (The King, in fact, had got it up, and had the thing at his fingers’ ends.) This was awkward; however, it ended in the King’s making a sort of apology and crying peccavi for the violence of his language, THE KING AND HIS MINISTERS. and this will probably be somewhat of a lesson to him, though it will not diminish the bitterness of his sentiments towards his Ministers.
I expressed my astonishment that any man could consent to stay in office after receiving such an insult as this was, to which Stephen replied that they were all thoroughly aware of their position relatively to the King and of his feelings towards them; but they had undertaken the task and were resolved under all circumstances to go through with it, and, whatever he might say or do, they should not suffer themselves to be influenced or shaken. This is the truth; they do not look upon themselves as his Ministers, and perhaps they cannot do otherwise as things now are. It is, however, a very melancholy and mischievous state of affairs, and does more to degrade the Monarchy than anything that has ever occurred: to exhibit the King publicly to the world as a cypher, and something less than a cypher, as an unsuccessful competitor in a political squabble, is to take from the Crown all the dignity with which it is invested by that theoretical attribute of perfection that has been so conveniently ascribed to it. Both King and Ministers have been greatly to blame, the one for the egregious folly which made him rush into this sea of trouble and mortification without calculation or foresight; the other for the unrelenting severity with which they resolved to gratify their revenge and ambition, without considering that they could not punish him without degrading the throne of which he is the occupant, and that the principle involved in his impunity was of more consequence in its great and permanent results than any success of theirs. But it would have required more virtue, self-denial, wisdom, and philosophy than falls to the lot of any public man individually in these days to have embraced all these considerations, and it would have been a miracle if a great mob of men calling themselves a party could have been made to act under the influence of such moral restraints. The King’s present behaviour only makes matters worse. When he found himself compelled to take these people back, and to surrender himself a prisoner into their hands, he should have swallowed the bitter pill and digested it, and not kept rolling it in his mouth and making wry faces. He should have made a very bad business as tolerable as he could, by yielding himself with a good grace; and had he treated them with that sort of courtesy which one gentleman may and ought to show to all those with whom he is unavoidably brought into contact, and which implies nothing as to feeling and inclination, he would have received from them that respect and attention which it would have been equally their interest and their desire to show. This would have rendered their relations mutually much more tolerable, a decent veil would have been thrown over all that was humiliating and painful, and the public service must have gained by the tacit compromise; but extreme folly, great violence in those about the King, and hopes of emancipation secretly cherished, together with the intensity of his hatred of his Ministers, have conspired to keep his Majesty in his present unwise, irksome, and degrading posture.
The night before last there was a great concert on the staircase at Stafford House, the most magnificent assembly I ever saw, and such as I think no crowned head in Europe could display, so grand and picturesque. The appearance of the hall was exactly like one of Paul Veronese’s pictures, and only wanted some tapestry to be hung over the balustrades. Such prodigious space, so cool, so blazing with light; everybody was comfortable even, and the concert combined the greatest talents in Europe all together—Grisi, Malibran, Tamburini, Lablache, Rubini, and Ivanhoff. The splendour, the profusion, and the perfect ease of it all were really admirable.
Dined yesterday with the Vice-Chancellor; sixteen people whom I never saw before, almost all lawyers and lawyeresses. He told me that he believed Melbourne had no intention as long as he was Minister of changing the present arrangement with regard to the Great Seal,[12] that he DECISION OF THE WEST INDIA COMMITTEE. was of opinion that a Chancellor was of no use, and that it was more convenient to keep in his own hands the law patronage of the Great Seal, that this obviated the disputes between Ministers and Chancellors, which have generally been very violent, as between Thurlow and Pitt, and still more between Eldon and Liverpool, which were incessant, and that nothing could exceed the hatred Eldon had for Lord Liverpool, as he knew.
[12] [The Great Seal was still in Commission.]
Tavistock told me a day or two ago that his Majesty’s Ministers are intolerably disgusted at his behaviour to them and his studied incivility to everybody connected with them. The other day the Speaker was treated by him with shocking rudeness at the drawing-room. He not only took no notice of him, but studiously overlooked him while he was standing opposite, and called up Manners Sutton and somebody else to mark the difference by extreme graciousness to the latter. Seymour, who was with him as Serjeant-at-Arms, said he had never seen a Speaker so used in the five-and-twenty years he had been there, and that it was most painful. The Speaker asked him if he had ever seen a man in his situation so received at Court. Since he has been Speaker the King has never taken the slightest notice of him. It is monstrous, equally undignified and foolish.