December 24th, 1838
Went on Friday to Battersea to hear Robert Eden deliver a lecture in the school-room—one of a course he is delivering upon anatomy, or rather upon different parts of the human body—and demonstrating the utility of cleanliness, the danger of drunkenness, and mixing precept with information for the benefit of as mixed an audience as ever was assembled, but who seemed much interested and very attentive. There were many of the gentry of Battersea, male and female, the tradespeople, workmen, the boys of the school, and a rough, ragged set of urchins, labourers on the railroad—in all about 300 people. The lecture, which was upon the arm, was very fluently given; the lecturer is not sufficiently master of his subject to make his explanations very lucid and perfectly intelligible, but he conveys good general notions, and introduces such a mixture of anecdote and illustration as makes it sufficiently entertaining. The undertaking is highly laudable; it is carried on with great zeal and spirit, very considerable ability, and, as far as it has gone, with complete success.
Dined yesterday at the Hollands’: Normanby, Melbourne, and Luttrell; pretty good talk. Melbourne, rather paradoxical, asserted that ‘men with quick feelings were always the worst men; that he could not work out the proposition metaphysically then, but that he should do.’ It was the assertion of Brougham’s having quick feelings which elicited the saying, though certainly Brougham is not the worst of men: far from it, nor did he mean to say so. Brougham denies this pamphlet, and says he cannot be the author for this reason: the pamphlet reasserts something about Melbourne which he had asserted in one of his articles in the ‘Edinburgh Review.’ Melbourne, when he read that article, wrote to Brougham, and told him that as he was sure he did not wish to misrepresent him, he informed him that he had never entertained the opinions nor given the vote there ascribed to him. Brougham replied, admitting his error, and promising to correct it, offering to do so at Melbourne’s option in another number of the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ or in some other work (I forget what). Melbourne wrote back, in rather a jocular strain, that he thought it would be preferable to have the correction in the same publication as the statement, to which Brougham sent a good-humoured answer, and there it ended. After this, he says that he could not by possibility repeat the very same thing in another work that he had already engaged to recall, and this is certainly strong. At the same time there are things in it which no other man could have written. Just before it came out he was preparing something for the printer, for he came into my room with a parcel of proof-sheets in his hand, which I fancied were for me to frank to Macvey Napier, and I said so; when ANECDOTES OF CURRAN. he replied, ‘Oh no, they are going to the printer here.’ It is after all not improbable that it was a joint production—his and Roebuck’s—Roebuck making the pudding, and Brougham putting in the plums. Melbourne was talking of Brougham’s indignation and mortification at being deprived of his pre-eminence in the House of Lords, and of a letter he wrote in great bitterness of spirit, in which he said, ‘Do you mean to deprive me of my lead in the House of Lords? Why don’t you say as you did when you took the Great Seal from me, ‘God damn you, I tell you I can’t give you the Great Seal, and there’s an end of it’?’
They spoke of Curran, his wit, and of his quarrel with Ponsonby. When the Whigs came in in 1806, Ponsonby was made Irish Chancellor.[8] There had been some previous communication with Curran, who had assented to Ponsonby’s being promoted to the highest place; but he expressed his expectation that he should have the next, and he wanted to be Attorney-General. Fox was very desirous of making him Attorney, but Lord Grenville would not hear of it; he had been so concerned with the rebels that it was thought impossible, besides that it led directly to the Bench, for which he was disqualified by temper and character. When Ponsonby became Chancellor, Curran wrote to him to know if he was to be Attorney; and Ponsonby sent him a pompous answer, that ‘his lips were sealed with the seals of office;’ which affronted Curran. Eventually, they determined to buy out the Master of the Rolls and put Curran in his place, and they arranged with the Master that he should have 600ℓ. a year out of the place (a monstrous job). Accordingly Curran was informed that he was to be the Master of the Rolls, but after this notification (as he asserted), it was intimated to him that he was to have this rider upon his place. He said, he had been no party to such an agreement and he would not pay it, nor did he. Ponsonby was highly indignant, said Curran was a great rogue, and never would speak to him again; and he paid the 600ℓ. a year out of his own pocket as long as Curran lived. As a specimen of Curran’s wit, one day when Lord Moira had been making a speech in his usual style full of sounding phrases and long words, Curran said, ‘Upon my word his lordship has been airing his vocabulary in a very pretty style to-day.’
[8] [Right Hon. George Ponsonby, who resigned the office in the following year. Curran held the office of Master of the Rolls in Ireland from 1806 to 1814, when he retired on a pension of 3,000ℓ. a year. He died in 1817.]
Lord Holland gave me an account of Fox’s death, with all the details of the operations (he was thrice tapped), and his behaviour; and till then I was not entirely aware that Fox was no believer in religion. Mrs. Fox was very anxious to have prayers read, to which he consented, but paid little attention to the ceremony, remaining quiescent merely, not liking, as Lord Holland said, to refuse any wish of hers, nor to pretend any sentiments he did not entertain.
January 1st, 1839
Another year gone, taking along with it some particles of health, strength, and spirits, but it is to be hoped making us something wiser and better, and giving an increased power of passive resistance to bear up against the accumulating ills or sorrows of life. But I will not—here at least—plunge into a moralising strain. As to public matters the year opens in no small gloom and uncertainty. On the surface all is bright and smooth enough: the country is powerful, peaceful, and prosperous, and all the elements of wealth and power are increasing; but the mind of the mass is disturbed and discontented, and there is a continual fermentation going on, and separate and unconnected causes of agitation and disquiet are in incessant operation, which create great alarm, but which there seems to exist no power of checking or subduing. The Government is in a wretched state of weakness, utterly ignorant whether it can scramble through the session, unable to assume a dignified attitude, to investigate with calm deliberation the moral and political condition of the country, and to act upon its convictions with firmness and resolution, tottering and staggering between one great party and one fierce faction, and just able to keep on its legs because both are, for different reasons, willing to wound but afraid to strike. It does not fulfil the purpose of a Government, and brings the function itself into contempt DISTURBED STATE OF THE COUNTRY. by accustoming men to look at it without any feeling of attachment or respect. Wild notions of political grievances and political rights have been widely disseminated among the masses, and these are not engendered or fostered by the prevalence of distress or that want of employment which not unnaturally turns the thoughts of the idle and unoccupied to the most desperate expedients for bettering their condition, but they are the mere aspirings of a fierce democracy who have been gradually but deeply impregnated with sentiments of hatred and jealousy of the upper classes, and with a determination to ‘level’ all political distinctions and privileges, and when this is accomplished to proceed to a more equal distribution of property, to an agrarian experiment; for it is idle to suppose that men of this stamp care anything for abstract political theories, or have any definite object but that of procuring the means of working less, and eating and drinking more. The accounts of the Chartists (as they are called), at and about Manchester, represent them to be collected in vast bodies, associations of prodigious numbers, meeting in all the public-houses, collecting arms universally, and constantly practising by firing at a mark, openly threatening, if their demands are not complied with, to enforce them by violence. In the mean time there is no military force in the country at all adequate to meet these menacing demonstrations; the yeomanry have been reduced, and the magistracy are worse than useless, without consideration, resolution, or judgement. There is every reason to suppose that they have got into a scrape with their arrest of Stephens, the great Chartist orator, and that there is no case against him sufficient for a conviction.[9] The magistrates completely lost their heads, and between their fears and their folly have blundered and bothered their proceedings miserably, and so as to afford an ultimate triumph to this mischievous fellow and his followers.
[9] [One Stephens, formerly a Wesleyan preacher, and one of the most violent agitators against the New Poor Law, was apprehended near Manchester on December 27. He had used most incendiary language, but was liberated on bail, and soon afterwards addressed a meeting of 5,000 people at Ashton-under-Lyne. There seems to have been no case against him.]