We have had Brougham every day at the Council Office, more busy writing a review of Lady Charlotte Bury’s book than with the matter before the Judicial Committee. He writes this with inconceivable rapidity, seldom corrects, and never reads over what he has written, but packs it up and despatches it rough from his pen to Macvey Napier. He is in exuberant spirits and full of talk, and certainly marvellously agreeable. His talk (for conversation is not the word for it) is totally unlike that of anybody else I ever heard. It comes forth without the slightest effort, provided he is in spirits and disposed to talk at all. It is the spontaneous outpouring of one of the most fertile and restless of minds, easy, familiar, abundant, and discursive. The qualities and peculiarities of mind which mar his oratorical, give zest and effect to his conversational, powers; for the perpetual bubbling up of fresh ideas, by incapacitating him from condensing his speeches, often makes them tediously digressive and long; but in society he treads the ground with so elastic a step, he touches everything so lightly and so adorns all that he touches, his turns and his breaks are so various, unexpected, and pungent, that he not only interests and amuses, but always exhilarates his audience so as to render weariness and satiety impossible. He is now coquetting a little with the Tories, and especially professes great deference and profound respect for the Duke of Wellington; his sole object in politics, for the moment, is to badger, twit, and torment the Ministry, and in this he cannot contain himself within the bounds of common civility, as he exemplified the other night when he talked of ‘Lord John this and Mr. Spring that’ (on Thursday night), which, however contemptuous, was too undignified to be effective. He calls this ‘the Thomson Government’ from its least considerable member.
February 25th, 1838
Lord John Russell made a very paltry exhibition on Friday night, quite unworthy of the fame he had acquired and of the situation he holds. When Lord Maidstone threatened to bring before the House the language which O’Connell had used (about the perjury in Committees) in a speech at the ‘Crown and Anchor,’[8] and gave notice of a motion for that purpose, John jumped up and said, if he persevered in this motion he would call the attention of the House to an imputation against the Catholic members contained in a charge of the Bishop of Exeter with reference to the oath required of them by the Relief O’CONNELL AT THE CROWN AND ANCHOR. Bill. Whether this was a sally of passion I know not, but it was puerile, imprudent, and undignified. This charge was delivered in 1836, and ought to have been animadverted upon at the time, if at all. It either is, or is not, a proper matter to bring before the House, but that propriety cannot be contingent upon some other proceeding of another person, quite unconnected with it. It was a poor tu quoque which has got him into a scrape, and will contribute to the downhill impulsion of the Government; it is a fresh bit of discredit thrown upon them. John Russell too has been a personal antagonist of the Bishop of Exeter, and should have been the last man to attack him in this irregular way. Out of all this will spring much violence and personality, and that is what interests the members of the House of Commons more than any great political question.
[8] [O’Connell had asserted, at the ‘Crown and Anchor’ tavern, that ‘foul perjury was committed by the Tory Election Committees.’]
February 27th, 1838
It is difficult to conceive a greater quantity of folly crammed into a short space of time than has been displayed by all parties in the last three or four days, and which reached the climax last night in the House of Commons. It began with O’Connell’s speech at the ‘Crown and Anchor,’ when he denounced the perjury of the Tory Election Committees in such terms as he usually employs. To recommend moderate language to O’Connell would, however, be about as reasonable as to advise him to drop his brogue; but as he had ample notice that the matter was coming before the House of Commons, he might have been persuaded, and there should have been somewhere sense and prudence enough to persuade him, to soften his tone, and to make one of those explanations, partly exculpatory and partly apologetic, which are always accepted as a sufficient atonement for rash and violent language; instead of which he brazened it out, and then John Russell came to his rescue in that foolish and unbecoming notice of his which compromised his dignity, committed his party,[9] and complicated all the difficulties in which the House itself was placed. The fools of his party (and on both sides they predominate in noise and numbers) vociferously cheered this ill-judged sally, and lauded it as a fine spirited retort. Not so, however, the more prudent of his friends, who perceived the dilemma in which he had placed himself. Nobody in the meantime had any clear notion of what would be done, what motions would be made or withdrawn, and how the whole thing was to end. But as the debate promised a great deal of personality, it was exceedingly attractive, and 517 members[10] went down to the House. Lord Maidstone moved that O’Connell’s speech was a scandalous libel, and Lord Howick moved the order of the day. O’Connell made a very good speech and then retired; John Russell spoke on one side, and Peel and Follett on the other, and on the division the Tories carried the question by nine: 263 to 254. They were of course in a state of uproarious triumph; the Government people exceedingly mortified, and the tail in a frenzy. The scene which ensued appears to have been something like that which a meeting of Bedlam or Billingsgate might produce. All was uproar, gesticulation, and confusion. The Irishmen started up one after another and proclaimed their participation in O’Connell’s sentiments, and claimed to be joined in his condemnation. They were all the more furious when they found that the conquerors only meant to have him reprimanded by the Speaker, and that there was no chance of his or their being sent to Newgate or the Tower. At last ‘le combat finit faute de combattants,’ for John Russell and his colleagues first, and subsequently Peel and his followers, severally made their exits something like rival potentates and their trains in a tragedy, and when the bellowers found nobody left to bellow to, they too were obliged to move off.
[9] The notice was that if Lord Maidstone persisted in his motion, he would call the attention of the Crown to a charge delivered by the Bishop of Exeter (nearly two years ago), in which he had accused the Catholic members of perjury and treachery.
[10] Many more, I am told, for 517 voted, and several went away who would not vote.
In the House of Lords there had been an early, but very smart skirmish between Melbourne and Lyndhurst,[11] in which LORD LYNDHURST AND LORD MELBOURNE. the former drew a contrast between what would have been the conduct of the Duke (who was absent) and that of Lyndhurst, and said that the Duke was a man of honour and a gentleman in a tone which implied that Lyndhurst was neither. Brougham stepped in and aggravated matters as much as he could by joining Lyndhurst and taunting Melbourne; but when Lyndhurst rose again to call Melbourne to account for his expressions, Brougham held him down with friendly violence, and (as he asseverates) was entirely the cause of preventing a fight between them, first by not letting Lyndhurst proceed to extremities,[12] and next by giving Melbourne time for reflection. However this may be, when Lyndhurst asked him, ‘if he meant to say he was not a man of honour,’ Melbourne made as ample a retractation of the offensive expressions as Lyndhurst could desire, and there the matter ended, not certainly much to the credit or satisfaction of the Ministers in either House. I think, however, that the Opposition have obtained a very mischievous and inconvenient triumph, and that they would have done much better to leave the question alone. O’Connell and John Russell made better speeches than Peel and Follett, and the latter seemed to be oppressed by a consciousness of the narrow, vindictive, and merely party, if not personal grounds on which the question was raised. They have dragged the House of Commons into a vote, which, if it acts consistently, it ought to follow up by an indiscriminate exercise of its authority and resentment upon all the writers and speakers who have denounced the Committee system, and they have procured a resolution declaratory of that being libellous and scandalous which the public universally believes, and every member of the House well knows to be true.
[11] The discussion arose out of a question Lyndhurst put about some young children who had been confined in the penitentiary, in solitary confinement, &c., without notice. Melbourne fired up at this in a very unnecessary rage, though Lyndhurst was clearly wrong in not giving notice. Much more was made of this omission than need have been.