November 22nd, 1835
My brother Algy showed me a few days ago a letter from the Duke of Wellington to the Duke of Cumberland—a gossiping letter about nothing, but in which there was this which struck me as odd. He said that he was informed that the English who had been to the reviews at Kalisch had been very ill received, and that even those to whom he had given letters of introduction had experienced nothing but incivility, and that he regretted having had the presumption to imagine that any recommendation of his would be attended to by the Sovereigns or their Ministers—a curious exhibition of pique, for what I believe to be an imaginary incivility. It is a strange thing that he is very sensitive, and yet has no strong feelings; but this is after all only one of the forms of selfishness.
Burdett has written a letter to the managers of Brooks’s, to propose the expulsion of O’Connell. It will do no good; these abortive attempts do nothing towards plucking him down from his bad eminence, and their failure gives him a triumph. So it was in Alvanley’s case; there a great deal of very proper indignation was thrown away, and O’Connell had the satisfaction of baffling his antagonists, and obtaining a sort of recognition of his assumed right to act as he does. It is a case which admits of a good argument either way. On the one side is the perilous example of any club taking cognizance of acts of its members, private or political, which do not concern the club, or have no local reference to it—a principle, if once admitted, of which it would be next to impossible to regulate and control the application, and probably be productive of greater evils than those it would be intended to remedy. On the other hand, the case of O’Connell is altogether peculiar; it is such a one as can hardly ever occur SOCIAL LAW. again, and therefore may be treated as deserving an exception from ordinary rules, because it not only cannot be drawn into a precedent, but the very circumstance of its being so treated must prevent the possibility of its recurrence. There exists a code of social law, which is universally subscribed to, as necessary and indispensable for the preservation of social harmony and decorum. One man has given public notice that he is self-emancipated from its obligations; that he acknowledges none of the restraints, and will submit to none of the penalties, by which the intercourse of society is regulated and kept in order; and having thus surrounded himself with all the immunities of irresponsibility, ‘out of the reach of danger he is bold, out of the reach of shame he is confident.’ Instead of feeling that he is specially bound to guard his language with the most scrupulous care, and to abstain religiously from every offensive expression, he mounts into regions of scurrility and abuse inaccessible to all other men, and he riots in invective and insult with a scornful and ostentatious exhibition of his invulnerability, which renders him an object of execration to all those who cherish the principles and the feelings of honour.
November 29th, 1835
There are gloomy letters from George Villiers at Madrid; he attributes the Spanish difficulties more to the conduct of Louis Philippe than anything else, who, he says, is playing false diabolically. Mendizabal is very able, but ill surrounded; no other public man of any merit. Parties are violent and individuals foolish, mischievous, and corrupt; the country poor, depopulated, ignorant—out of such elements what good can come? His letters (to his mother and brothers) are very interesting, very well written, clever, lively; he seems a little carried away by the vanity and the excitement of the part he plays, and I observe a want of steadiness in his opinions and a disposition to waver in his views from day to day; whereas it does not appear to me as if the state of Spain depended upon diurnal circumstances and events, but more upon the workings of great causes interwoven with, and deeply seated in, the positive state of society and the moral and political condition of the nation.
December 4th, 1835
A letter I wrote the other day about O’Connell appeared on Tuesday in the ‘Times.’ It rather took, for the evening (Tory) papers all copied it, and I heard it was talked of. Yesterday there appeared an answer of O’Connell’s to Burdett’s letter—very short, but very clever; and those who know Burdett say, well calculated to mortify and annoy him. I called on Stanley yesterday, who said that he thought the Raphael case ought to and would be made something of in the House of Commons, and that Spring Rice, whom he had lately seen, had told him he thought it a clear case of bribery. Lord Segrave has got the Gloucestershire Lieutenancy, and this appointment, disgraceful in itself, exhibits all the most objectionable features of the old boroughmongering system, which was supposed to be swept away. (He turned out a good Lord-Lieutenant.) He was in London as soon as the breath was out of the Duke of Beaufort’s body, went to Melbourne, and claimed this appointment on the score of having three members, which was more than any other man in England now returned. ‘My brothers,’ he said, ‘the electors do not know by sight; it is my influence which returns them.’ The appeal was irresistible, and ‘We are three’ was as imperative with Melbourne as ‘We are seven’ was with the Duke of Newcastle. The scarcity of the commodity enhances its value, and now that nominations are swept away, the few who are still fortunate enough to possess some remnants are great men; and Segrave’s three brothers, thrown (as they would without scruple have been) into the opposite scale, would have nearly turned it. There is a very respectable Whig (Lord Ducie) in the county, whom everybody pointed out as the fittest successor to the late Duke; but he has not three members, and if he had, he would not shake them in terrorem over Melbourne’s head.
December 10th and 11th, 1835
Our Government are in a great alarm lest this dispute between the French and Americans should produce a war, and the way in which we should be AMERICA AND FRANCE. affected by it is this:[2]—Our immense manufacturing population is dependent upon America for a supply of cotton, and in case of any obstruction to that supply, multitudes would be thrown out of employment, and incalculable distress would follow. They think that the French would blockade the American ports, and then such obstruction would be inevitable. A system like ours, which resembles a vast piece of machinery, no part of which can be disordered without danger to the whole, must be always liable to interruption or injury from causes over which we have no control; and this danger must always attend the extension of our manufacturing system to the prejudice of other interests; so that in case of a stoppage or serious interruption to the current in which it flows the consequences would be appalling; nor is there in all probability a nation on the Continent (our good ally Louis Philippe included) that would not gladly contribute to the humiliation of the power and diminution of the wealth of this country.
[2] [This dispute arose from the detention of American ships by the Emperor Napoleon under the Continental system. The Americans claimed large damages, and the negotiation lasted twenty years. At length General Jackson, the American President, insisted on payment, and the French Government settled the matter for twenty-five millions of francs; but the question led to a change in the French Ministry.]