September 22nd.—Peel is going on skirmishing in the House of Commons, where a Whig or a Radical every now and then fires a little shot at the new Government. John Russell is gone into the country. The grand topic of complaint is the refusal of Government to bring forward any measures of relief to the suffering interests, and any financial projects, before the usual period of meeting next year. But the Opposition have made no case, though perhaps Peel would have done wisely to call Parliament together again in November. The appointments are most of them completed, except the diplomatic posts, which are still uncertain, and the Governor-Generalship of India. This was offered to Haddington, who refused it, and it is a curious circumstance that a man so unimportant, so destitute not only of shining but of plausible qualities, without interest or influence, should by a mere combination of accidental circumstances have had at his disposal three of the greatest and most important offices under the Crown, having actually occupied two of them, and rejected the greatest and most brilliant of all. He has been Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, he refuses to be Governor General of India, and he is First Lord of the Admiralty. To the list of the discontented I find one may be added in the person of Chief Justice Burke, who came over here to bargain for his retirement and solicit a peerage. He has held on that a Conservative Government might dispose of his office, and he thinks he has a good claim to be made a peer. But he has not only not got what he wants, but complains that Peel has been wanting in courtesy in not having any personal communication with him. He expected Peel would send for him, but he did not, and the Chief is gone back to Ireland with a strong sense of neglect and ill-usage.
A POLITICAL FORECAST.
September 27th.—Went on Friday to Woburn, and returned yesterday. Nobody there but Sir George Seymour and his wife, and old Lord Lynedoch, who is ninety-six, and just going to Italy for the winter. Not much talk on politics, but, with reference to the sanguine expectations of Palmerston of a speedy restoration to office, the Duke confirmed what I before thought, that, even if the road was again open, the old Government never could be reconstituted, and that, whatever others might do, Lord John never would consent to its restoration tale quale, for example, with Melbourne at its head, with all his vacillation and weakness. But as the Queen has no notion of a Whig Government except that of Melbourne, and cares for nobody else, it would not at all meet her wishes and expectations to propose the formation of a Cabinet with any other Chief. I suspect Lord John would agree to no plan which did not make himself Prime Minister, and he would be quite right. Palmerston would agree to anything which took him back to the Foreign Office; but he would find the Foreign Office under Lord John a very different thing from the Foreign Office under Melbourne; and as the vindictive nature of Palmerston will never forgive Lord John for the part he took in the Eastern business, and as Lord John, though with a strange facility he became reconciled to Palmerston, has no confidence in him, I do not see how they could possibly go on.[10] It is very pleasant to be at Woburn, with or without society, a house abounding in every sort of luxury and comfort, and with inexhaustible resources for every taste—a capital library, all the most curious and costly books, pictures, prints, interesting portraits, gallery of sculpture, garden with the rarest exotics, collected and maintained at a vast expense—in short, everything that wealth and refined taste can supply.
I read there a Diary of John Duke of Bedford (Junius's Duke), which is not at all interesting, but it affords strong evidence to show the injustice of Junius, and that he was a very good sort of man instead of being the monster that Junius represents him. The Duke told me that the intimacy in which Sir Philip Francis had lived with his uncle, and his having been an habitual guest at Woburn, was quite enough to account for his concealing and denying that he was the author. It would certainly have drawn a host of enemies upon him, as all the Russells and Fitzroys would have felt in duty bound to resent the fierce and savage attacks of Junius upon their grandfather and father. He had every motive for concealment, and none for disclosure, and as to his vanity, that must have been amply gratified by the general suspicion and acknowledgement (implied by the suspicion) that he was capable of writing Junius. I never had a doubt that Francis was Junius, and that belief is growing very general.
Nothing new in politics. Lord John is gone to Endsleigh, but Palmerston sticks to his place in the House of Commons. There is a good deal of skirmishing, and Peel's opponents have done him great service by making very feeble and ineffective attacks on him, which just enabled him to make good speeches in reply, and to put forth his case to the country, for the course he is pursuing, in the manner most likely to make an impression. His answer last Friday to a pert speech of Patrick Stewart's was excellent.
September 29th.—Mellish gave me an account, last night, of Palmerston's last doings at the Foreign Office. He created five new paid attachés without the smallest necessity, and all within a few days of his retirement. This was done to provide for a Howard, an Elliot, and a Duff, and a son of Sir Augustus Poster, whose provision was made part of the conditions of another job, the retirement of Sir Augustus to make way for Abercromby, Lord Minto's son-in-law,—all foul jobbing at the public expense, and to all this useless waste the austere and immaculate Francis Baring, Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Cerberus who growls at every claimant on the Treasury, no matter how just his claims may be, gave his consent, complacent to his daring and unscrupulous colleague. Mellish told me another anecdote of Palmerston, that eleven thousand pounds (I put it in letters, because in figures some error might have been suspected) had been spent in one year, at the Foreign Office, in chaises and four conveying messengers to overtake the mail with his private letters, which never were ready in time. Nothing ever equalled the detestation in which he is regarded at that Office; still, they do justice to his ability and to his indefatigable industry, and they say that any change of Government which would take place must include him in the new arrangement.
WEAKNESS OF THE LATE GOVERNMENT.
Last night Charles Buller told me he did not think Peel's Government would last, because he did not go the way to make it last, but that he thought Peel himself had done admirably well in every respect; and he must own the Government, as far as they had gone, had behaved properly and handsomely, especially about the Poor Laws and Canada—better than the late would have done as to the last. It is remarkable that the very people belonging to the late Government had no respect for it and no confidence in it. He owned to me that it was time such a miserable apology for a Government as the late Cabinet was (these were my words, not his) should come to an end: a government of departments, absolutely without a chief, hating, distrusting, despising one another, having no principles and no plans, living from hand to mouth, able to do nothing, and indifferent whether they did anything or not, proposing measures without the hope or expectation of carrying them, and clinging to their places for no other reason than because they had bound themselves to the Queen, who insisted on their continuance in spite of their feelings of conscious humiliation and admitted impotence, merely because she loved to have Melbourne domesticated at Windsor Castle, and she could not have him there on any other terms.
November 8th.—Above a month since I have written anything in this book. I left London the second week in October; went to Burghley, thence to Newmarket, to Thornhill's; Newmarket again, Charles Drummond's, and London this day week. In this interval my history is very brief and uninteresting. The principal events consist of the affair at Canton, and the failure of the Spanish Christina plot, the Exchequer Bill business, the burning of the Tower, and now we are occupied with the approaching delivery of the Queen, and the probable death of the Queen Dowager.
Elliot[11] is expected home any day. There is a mighty clamour against him, but he confidently asserts, and his friends fondly hope, that he will be able to make his case good. The Government will treat him impartially, for Lord Wharncliffe said to me the other day that he was not at all sure it would not turn out that Elliot was quite right in what he had done at Canton; but the disappointment, and disapprobation of the General and the Admiral have naturally damaged him in public opinion here, and people are so sick of this silly, inglorious, but mischievous war, that they are exasperated at any opportunity having been lost of terminating it by a decisive blow.