July 18th, 1835

Yesterday I sat all day at my office wondering why I heard nothing of the Committee, till at half-past four o’clock Graham and Lord Lincoln came in with smiling countenances, that announced good news. They had had an angry debate of three hours’ duration. Baring moved that my holding the office of Secretary of Jamaica was against the spirit of the Act of Parliament. Graham moved that holding it with the leave of absence was in accordance with the Act, and the division was nine to seven. A teller on each side and Baring, who as chairman did not vote, made the numbers ten to nine. They told me that Baring and Vernon Smith were furious. The former endeavoured to turn off his defeat by proposing that the question should be reopened on framing the report; but even Grote opposed that, and he was forced to own that he was wrong in proposing it. I must say that Gladstone told me that Baring behaved very well after the division. I will not conceal the truth, much as I have reason to complain of the man. I owe this victory to the zealous assistance of the Conservatives, for not one Whig or Radical voted with me; some of the former stayed away, whether designedly or not I don’t know, except Stanley, Secretary to the Treasury, who told me he could not make up his mind to go and vote against me. The majority consisted of Herries, Fremantle (Sir Thomas), Gladstone, Nicholl, Graham, Lord Lincoln, Bethell, Fector, Bramstone, and Pringle; the minority, Baring, Vernon Smith, Pendarves, Ruthven, Scholefield, Evans, Grote, Hume, R. Stewart. I never had any intimacy with any one of those who supported me except with Graham, and we were friends, and very intimate friends, twenty years ago. He dropped me all of a sudden from caprice or calculation, and we have been on very decent but scarcely cordial terms ever since. On this occasion I whipped up the old friendship, and with great effect, for he has served me very zealously throughout the business. I scarcely knew any of the other before, Lord Lincoln and Gladstone only on this occasion, and Fector, Nicholl, Bramstone, Bethell, and Pringle I do not know now by sight. It is really amusing to see the joy with which the news of Baring’s defeat has been hailed by every member of his own family, and all others who have heard of it. The goodwill of the world (a very inert but rather satisfactory feeling) has been exhibited towards me, and there is mixed up with it in all who are acquainted with the surly reformer who is my adversary a lively pleasure at his being baffled and mortified.

July 23rd, 1835

Dined with Bingham Baring[13] yesterday, and met Whateley, Archbishop of Dublin, a very ordinary man in appearance and conversation, with something of pretension in his talk, and telling stories without point, which smelt of the Common room; nevertheless he is a very able man, and they told me that when he is with such men as Senior, and IRISH CHURCH BILL. those with whom he is very intimate, he shines. I was greatly disappointed with what I saw and heard of him. The Church Bill has been in the House of Commons these two nights. Peel introduced his motion for dividing the Bill in a very able speech, well adapted to the purpose, if anything was to be gained in such a House of Commons; but the fact is, both parties look beyond the immediate question: one wants to bolster up the present system, the other to overthrow it, and though I go along with Peel on his point, I go along with his opponents on their principle. He stated, however, very forcibly the dilemma in which his opponents are placed, and said, ‘Why don’t you make the Establishment Catholic at once, openly and avowedly, or abstain from doing what has that inevitable tendency?’ Melbourne said there was no escape from this, and I replied that I would take him at his word, and that it must come to this, and he might immortalise himself by settling the question. It certainly would be a glorious field for a statesman to enter upon to brush away all the obstacles which deeply rooted prejudices and chimerical fears founded on false reasoning throw in his way, and bend all his energies to a direct and vigorous course of policy, at once firm and determined, looking the real evil in the face, and applying the real remedy to it. If I were Prime Minister I would rather fall in the attempt than work on through a succession of expedients none of which were satisfactory to myself, to hold language at variance with my opinions, and to truckle to difficulties which it is now time boldly to face. I am as satisfied as of my existence that if the heart’s core of Peel could be laid open, it would be found that he thinks so himself. His is not the conduct of conviction, and he has been led into contradictions and inconsistencies which must ever beset and entangle those who persist in the attempt to maintain positions which have ceased to be tenable.

[13] [Afterwards the second Lord Ashburton.]

Goodwood, July 29th, 1835

To Petworth on Saturday and here on Monday; a smaller party than usual, and no women on account of the Duchess of Argyll’s death; far better not to have women at a racing party. Tavistock told me that a man (he did not say who) had been to Lord John, evidently commissioned, though not avowedly, to tell him on the part of Peel and Lord Stanley that they would both support him if he would bring forward a proposition to pay the Irish Catholic clergy. John, however, ‘timet Danaos et dona ferentes,’ and hinted that his own popularity would be sacrificed if he did. This is curious, however. John also told him that he never saw Peel laugh so much as during Graham’s speech the other night, and he meant (but forgot it) to ask him why he laughed so. To Peel it is nuts to see Stanley and Graham drawing down unpopularity on themselves and every day widening the breach between them and their old friends; but I was somewhat struck with the apparent intimacy which was evinced in what John Russell said about Peel, and asked his brother if they were on very good personal terms. He said, ‘Oh, excellent’—a sort of House of Commons intimacy. Peel told John all he meant to do in the Committee on the Church Bill—that he should propose so and so, and when they came to the appropriation clauses he should make his bow and leave them. Tavistock remarked (which had escaped me) that Peel had in his last famous speech (certainly one of extraordinary ability) omitted all mention of the principle of appropriation, and confined himself to the proof that there was no surplus; but what is most remarkable perhaps of all is this: Peel said to John, ‘If you will appropriate, I will show you a much better plan than your own,’ and he accordingly did show him a plan by which there would be a considerably greater surplus, and John acknowledged that Peel’s plan would be better than his own. I wonder what the High Tories and the King would think of all this. While he is quarrelling with Johnny and his friends for Peel’s sake, and undergoing martyrdom in his social relations with them, there they are hand and glove, and almost concerting together the very measures which are the cause of all the animosities and all the political violence which agitate and divide the world. There is something extremely ludicrous in all this.

I hear to-day that Peel is going into the country for TORY PEERS AND THE CORPORATION BILL. good, and leaves the Lords to deal with the Bills. He probably expects them to commit some follies, and fancies he may as well be out of the way.

August 4th, 1835

Came to town on Sunday, having slept at Winchester on Saturday night to see the town and the cathedral, and hear the service in the latter, which was very moderate; the cathedral, however, is worth seeing. When I got to town I found the Tory Lords had been worked into a frenzy by Wetherell and Knight[14] at the bar of the House of Lords (the latter of whom is said to have made a very able speech), and Newcastle and Winchelsea bellowed and blustered in grand style. Lord Rosslyn had told me some time ago that the Duke would have great difficulty in managing his people, but that I think was à propos of the Church Bill. Yesterday at two o’clock there was a great assemblage of Peers at Apsley House to determine what was to be done, and amazed was I when I learnt at about five o’clock that they had resolved to move that evidence should be heard against the principle of the Municipal Corporation Bill, which was accordingly moved by Carnarvon last night. At dinner I met Stuart, to whom I expressed my astonishment at the course they had adopted, and he owned that it was ‘rather hazardous,’ and said that it was adopted at the suggestion of Lyndhurst, who had insisted upon it at Apsley House, and that the Duke had given way. He said that this had followed as a necessary consequence of Brougham proposing that counsel should be heard upon the details, as it appeared that the evidence on which the Bill was founded was not to be relied on. He owned that it was probable Peel would disapprove of the proceedings of the Lords, and a breach between him and them be the consequence. He told me that at a dinner on Saturday, at which the Dukes of Wellington and Cumberland, Peel, and Wetherell were present, the question had been argued; that Sir Charles Wetherell had urged all the leading arguments he had used in his speech, and Peel had contested every part and particle of his argument, while the Duke of Cumberland did not utter a word. Stuart added that he heard the Government meditated something very strong, and I repeated what Hobhouse had told me in the morning, when I met him in the Park—that Melbourne would probably adjourn the House, that there would be a call of the House of Commons, and some strong resolution proposed there. Some Whigs, however, who were present last night, suggested that it would be better to adjourn the House of Commons, and let the Lords go on with their evidence while they pleased to hear it, and then reassemble the Commons in case the Bill was sent back to them. Hobhouse said, ‘Depend upon it, it is the commencement de la fin’. It does certainly appear to me that these Tory Lords will never rest till they have accomplished the destruction of the House of Lords. They are resolved to bring about a collision with the House of Commons, and the majority in each House grows every day more rabid and more desperate. I am at a loss to comprehend the views by which Lyndhurst, the ablest of the party, is actuated, or how he can (if it be so, which from Stuart’s account is probable) fancy that any object is attainable which involves in it a breach or separation between Peel and the great body of the Tories. I would give much to see the recesses of his mind, and know what he really thinks of all these proceedings, and to what consequences he believes that they will lead.