All the people who have been at the Royal progress say there never was anything so grand as Chatsworth; and the Duke, albeit he would have willingly dispensed with this visit, treated the Queen right royally. He met her at the station and brought her in his own coach and six, with a coach and four following, and eight outriders. The finest sight was the illumination of the garden and the fountains; and after seeing the whole place covered with innumerable lamps and all the material of the illuminations, the guests were astonished and delighted when they got up the following morning not to find a vestige of them left, and the whole garden as trim and neat as if nothing had occurred. This was accomplished by Paxton, who got 200 men, set them to work, and worked with them the whole night till they had cleared away everything belonging to the exhibition of the preceding night. This was a great exploit in its way and produced a great effect. At Belvoir the Prince went hunting, and acquitted himself in the field very creditably. He was supposed to be a very poor performer in this line, and, as Englishmen love manliness and dexterity in field sports, it will have raised him considerably in public estimation to have rode well after the hounds in Leicestershire.
It is amusing to see the sensation which the article in the 'Times' a few days ago on the Duc de Bordeaux has made both here and in France. Every French newspaper copied it in extenso, and, considering the prodigious number of people who take their opinions ready made from that paper, there is little doubt that it will have put an extinguisher upon him here. Great effects these, and if the world could but see and know what the machinery is which produces them, how such crushing philippics are planned and executed, they would be surprised. The article was written by Henry Reeve, and when he was presented to the King shortly afterwards at the Tuileries, Louis Philippe, who had been told by M. Guizot that the article was written by Reeve, said to him, 'I regret, Mr. Reeve, that I cannot more fully express in this place the obligation which I feel for the service you have done us.' The English circle at the French Court looked on with amazement when this speech was made.
December 20th.—On Monday night I went to the Westminster Play, 'Phormio,' admirably acted by three of the boys. It was very amusing, much more than I thought possible on reading the play. It is the work of an accomplished playwright, full of good situations and replete with stage effect. They ought to leave off the vile custom of encoring the prologue and epilogue. We had to listen to ninety-six lines of the latter repeated twice over, when the audience was tired and, however well entertained, impatient to disperse.
LORD MELBOURNE AND THE COURT OF ROME.
Broadlands, December 29th.—I came here to-day, having passed the previous week at Brighton with the Granvilles; found nobody but Melbourne and the Beauvales; the former in pretty good force, more grave, more silent than formerly, but with intervals of talkativeness in his usual tone and manner. Things drop from him now and then, curious or interesting. We were talking about newspapers and their contributors, and he told us that the famous article in the 'Times' about bludgeons and brickbats during the rage of the Reform Bill was written by Lord Dover, and that nothing was too strong for him to put in a newspaper. I asked him about a thing he had once before told me, which is the connexion which subsisted between our Government and the Court of Rome, and a particular appointment which he had solicited the Pope not to confer. It was that of Dr. M'Hale as Archbishop of Tuam. Melbourne caused a request to be made to the Pope not to sanction it, but the Pope would not comply, and appointed M'Hale. He observed on that occasion, that ever since the Relief Bill had passed, the English Government never failed to interfere about every appointment as it fell vacant. On another occasion Melbourne begged the Pope to confer some piece of preferment on a priest, whose name I forget, who had supported the Government candidate very zealously in some election. This state of things and such communications between the Holy Father and the English Minister are curious. Palmerston said that there was nothing to prevent our sending a Minister to Rome; but they had not dared to do it, on account of their supposed Popish tendency; Peel might. Talking about the Corn Laws, Melbourne said he had prevented any measure being proposed for above three years, and that if he had done it sooner his Government would have fallen sooner. Many were earnest in favour of a proposition; John Russell particularly; Thomson, though the most strenuous free trader, was against it, foreseeing the consequences.
January 14th, 1844.—Everybody is full of the trial of O'Connell in Dublin—this unhappy trial, which has been one continual course of blunders and mismanagement from first to last. There is now an immense uproar about the jury list, and, as if fate had determined that the worst appearance should be given to the whole proceeding, Shaw the Recorder is implicated in a manner which can easily be made to look very suspicious. The Sheriff sent a list of some seventy-eight names to the Recorder; instead of remaining in Dublin, as he ought to have done, he must needs come to England to visit Lord Talbot. He went over for one day to Drayton, and it happened that on the same day he received the Sheriff's list; he returned it, but by some mistake did not return two slips, as they are called, containing sixty and odd names. The list, therefore, from which the jury was taken was an imperfect list, and they will say, and all the Irish will believe, that the mutilation was a concerted affair between Peel and Shaw. They also affirm that the excluded were mostly Catholics, which is, I believe, the reverse of the truth. This was an accident, but it was an awkward blunder to add to the long list of those already committed. Then the striking off all the Catholics from the jury is inveighed against here as an act of madness, there as of intolerable injustice and insult. It does appear to me an enormous blunder, and none of the excuses made for it seems even plausible. The Government ought to look far beyond the event of this trial. It would be a thousand times better to have O'Connell acquitted by a mixed jury than convicted by one all Protestant. I do not know whether such an acquittal would not be on the whole the best result; if he should be convicted, the whole process would be considered as a monstrous outrage against justice, and Government will be terribly puzzled to know how to deal with him. His conviction would produce the worst possible effect in Ireland, and render the exasperation and hatred of the people more bitter and unappeasable. If he is acquitted by a Protestant jury the triumph of the Catholics will be much greater, their resentment not less, and in England his acquittal by a jury formed of both persuasions would only be attributed to the determination of the Catholics not to convict him; supposing that a strong case is really made out, and Ministers should appear to be justified in requiring any fresh powers they thought necessary, they would find it difficult to ask for any if he was acquitted by a Protestant jury—in short, it is an inextricable mess, and how they will get out of it, God only knows. They have missed the great opportunity that was afforded them of giving a convincing proof to the Irish people that they wish O'Connell to have a fair trial. If they had begun by doing this, and then exhibited to the world a good case, they might have felt easy enough as to the result. If the Catholic jurors had cast their mantles over him, it would soon have been known; the Irish might have sung universal jubilations and lit bonfires on every hill; but it would have been no real triumph, and the value of a moral conviction in the eyes of the people of England would have been unappreciable. All this has been overlooked in a stupid, narrow-minded, shortsighted, professional eagerness to ensure a conviction.
O'CONNELL'S TRIAL.
Yesterday Lord Wharncliffe showed me a despatch from Lord Ellenborough to Lord Ripon, on the subject of his position with respect to the Secret Committee of the Directors, which is admirable, both in sentiment and expression. I knew already that the Court and the Government were at variance about his Indian policy, and that the Duke of Wellington not only strongly supported him, but wrote to him (I saw one of his letters) in cordial terms of approval and encouragement; but I did not know that the differences between Ellenborough and the Court were so serious as it appears they were, and I suppose are. The Secret Committee passed a resolution condemnatory of his proceedings in Scinde, couched in very strong and even offensive language, and to this resolution he responds in terms full of dignity and determination. He tells them that ever since he took the Government in India, which was at a time of unparalleled difficulty, they had thrown every obstacle in his way, and embarrassed his course by their want of co-operation and encouragement. He asks why, if such was their opinion, they did not exercise the power with which they are invested, censure and recall him; that he should not be provoked to resign, because he believed that his doing so at this moment would be productive of more evil than his endeavouring to administer the Government with such crippled means as they left to him, and he should therefore cast upon them the whole responsibility of withdrawing him if they pleased, and continue to discharge his duty, fully relying upon his possessing the confidence of the Crown, though he might not possess theirs. I believe he is doing well in India now. How, by the by, in all his letters, the Duke of Wellington inveighs against 'the licentious Press' both in India and here! He hates the press everywhere, but he knows that here it is, if an evil, a necessary and unavoidable evil; but in such a country as India, he cannot forgive those who introduced the pernicious anomaly of a free press, and in this I entirely agree with him. It was done by Sir Charles Metcalfe, a man of extraordinary ability, and considered as one of the greatest authorities, if not the greatest, on Indian affairs.
O'CONNELL'S ADVICE ON IRELAND.
January 26th.—At Hatchford for three or four days. O'Connell's trial moves heavily along; nobody takes much interest in it, or expects any serious result from it. The Opposition mean to begin the session with an attack on the Government de rebus Hibernicis—rather dangerous warfare. Charles Buller wrote to O'Connell in his own name and Hawes's, asking him if anything could be done, and what. He wrote a very civil answer, saying he was happy to communicate with them, though it was quite useless; he could not give up Repeal, and England hated Ireland with too much intensity to render her real justice, especially John Russell, who was the bitterest enemy of the Catholic religion, his hatred to which he had proved on innumerable occasions. However, he said, he would never do anything to obstruct any practical results, if they were possible, and he would tell them how his influence might be annulled and his political power put an end to. He then told him some half-dozen, items of 'justice,' the principal one of which was the Church. He said that the Irish never would be satisfied as long as the Protestant Church stood in all its predominance amongst them, a badge of their servitude and oppression, hateful, offensive, and mortifying to the Irish people; that what they wanted was perfect religious equality, and this could only be obtained by sweeping away all Church establishments, and paying neither. The rest of his recommendations were pretty much the same as when he has been in the habit of holding forth in his speeches and writings. There was nothing new in his letter, and nothing to lay hold of; he passed over the real evils which weigh down the people, and their causes—poverty, hunger, nakedness, no employment, no capital flowing there to set them to work. We shall have plenty of wrangling and violence, but no good will come of it all. The Irish question is a mighty maze, it is a vast babel of conflicting opinions, and hostile passions and prejudices. In the great divisions of party there are innumerable sub-divisions upon all Irish matters; there are vast masses of opinions, jostling with other masses, intermingling in a confused conflict, not arranged in one compact body against another compact body, with one distinguishing banner over each; and out of all this confusion it is impossible to look for any satisfactory and reasonable solution of all the difficult questions that are afloat.