Si titulos, annosque tuos numerare velimus,
Facta premant annos. Pro te, fortissime, vota
Publica suscipimus, Bacchi tibi sumimus haustus.

It turned out a complete Tory celebration. There was an almost unmixed array of Tory names at the banquet, and one Whig lord (Poltimore), who happened to be at Dover declined attending.

[1] [A great entertainment was given to the Duke of Wellington as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports on the 30th August. Lord Brougham attended it, and delivered an oration of the most hyperbolical panegyric.]

September 5th, 1839

Among other bad signs of these times, one is the decay of loyalty in the Tory party; the Tory principle is completely destroyed by party rage. No Opposition was ever more rabid than this is, no people ever treated or spoke of the Sovereign with such marked disrespect. They seem not to care one straw for the Crown, its dignity, or its authority, because the head on which it is placed does not nod with benignity to them. An example of this took place the other day, when at a dinner at Shrewsbury the company refused to drink the health of the new Lord Lieutenant, the Duke of Sutherland (a man not personally obnoxious), because the Duchess of Sutherland is at the head of the Queen’s female household. This reproach does not apply to the leaders of the party, who are too wise and too decorous to hold such language or to approve of such conduct;[2] but is the animus which distinguishes the tail and the body, and they take no pains to conceal it.

[2] This was before the Bradshaw and Roby exhibitions.

September 7th, 1839

The result of the Cambridge and Manchester elections proves (if any proof was wanting), how utterly the cause of Government is lost in the country, and fully confirms the report of their universal unpopularity: Cambridge lost by one hundred, and Manchester barely won. Poulett Thomson told me just before that the Liberals had a certain majority (for any candidate) of several hundreds.

September 14th, 1839

Brougham has sent to the press a letter to the Duke of Bedford on Education, of which he thus speaks in a letter to Lord Tavistock:... ‘I have sent my letter to BROUGHAM’S LETTER ON EDUCATION. the Duke to the press at Edinburgh. I wrote it in eight and a half hours the day I came here; but if I am to judge, who should not, it is by far the best thing I ever did, and the only eloquent. My whole heart was in it, both from affection to your excellent father, and to the subject. I hope it will do good, for the time is going away under me, and I shall be called to my great account before I have done any good on earth. Therefore I must make a new attempt at having something to show.’ The production will be probably very good in its way and very eloquent, but the note is characteristic—a mixture of pride and humility, humbugging and self-deceitful. What cares he for the Duke of Bedford, whom he scarcely sees from one end of the year to the other, and why should he care? They have very little in common—neither the idem velle nor idem nolle; and a more uninteresting, weak-minded, selfish character does not exist than the Duke of Bedford.[3] He is a good-natured, plausible man, without enemies, and really (though he does not think so) without friends; and naturally enough he does not think so, because there are many who pretend, like Brougham, a strong affection for him, and some who imagine they feel it. Vast property, rank, influence, and station always attract a sentiment which is dignified with the name of friendship, which assumes all its outward appearance, complies with its conditions, but which is really hollow and unsubstantial. The Duke of Bedford thinks of nothing but his own personal enjoyments, and it has long been a part of his system not to allow himself to be disturbed by the necessities of others, or be ruffled by the slightest self-denial. He is affable, bland, and of easy intercourse, making rather a favourable impression on superficial observers; caring little, if at all, for the wants or wishes of others, but grudging nobody anything that does not interfere with his own pursuits, and seeing with complacency those who surround him lap up the superfluities which may chance to bubble over from his cup of pleasure and happiness. It is a farce to talk of friendship with such a man, on whom, if he were not Duke of Bedford, Brougham would never waste a thought.