CHAPTER XVII.
Opening of Parliament—State of Parties—The Duke of Wellington's health—The Duke's Correspondence with Lord Haddington—Constitution of the Judicial Committee—Debate on the state of Ireland—Lord Hertford's Will—A Pun of Jekyll's—Lord Melbourne—The Irish Church—The Privy Council Bill—Anecdote of Mr. Pitt's Peers—Cambridge—Lord Ellenborough's Recall—Lord Brougham's hostility—The Factory Bill—Lord Hardinge Governor-General of India—Lord Brougham on Lord Hertford's Case—The Emperor of Russia in London—Government Defeat on the Sugar Duties—Sir Robert Peel resolves to resign—The Opening of Letters at the Post Office—The Case of 'Running Rein'—Lord Brougham's Privy Council Bill—Summary of Events—The Tahiti Quarrel with France—The O'Connell Judgement—Lord Stanley goes to the Upper House.
London, February 2nd, 1844.—Parliament opened yesterday; as usual with a Speech saying nothing, the Government apparently pretty confident, and the Opposition bent on mischief.
February 8th.—The session has opened favourably enough for Ministers. The first night Peel made a decided speech, and he has taken a decided attitude. He declared that he did not mean to make any alteration at all in the present Corn Law, either as to duty or scale. This was such an agreeable announcement to his friends, that it put them at once into good humour, and they will now fight with him cordially and vigorously, and we shall at least have a clear line of demarcation, and good fair stand-up party contests. While he has made himself strong and his party united for the present, the Opposition have no unity of opinion, Howick and John Russell being evidently opposed to each other, and probably all of them entertaining all sorts of shades and gradations of opinion. Peel evidently means to give up the notion of appealing to the reason of the country, and the moderation which he hoped would help him through his juste milieu course, and thinks only of rallying the great Tory body round him, and exhibiting himself as the master of certain and willing majorities. As long as this Parliament lasts, it makes him as firm as a rock, after which, God knows what will happen. The Irish trials are almost over. O'Connell made a miserable speech; Sheil and Whiteside were very good, especially the latter. The episode of the Attorney-General's challenge came very opportunely for the first night's debate, and the Government stood by him gallantly, which they probably were right in doing, for no Government will be well and heartily served, unless it throws its shield over its people when they fall into difficulties.
DUKE OF WELLINGTON AT THE CABINET.
February 9th.—As everything is interesting that relates to the Duke of Wellington, it is so to hear the observations of those whose situation enables them to watch the descending course of this great luminary. Nobody has such opportunities as my brother. I was telling him yesterday what Lord Wharncliffe had said to me, that it was pleasant to see the extraordinary deference and attention which are shown to him by his colleagues at the Cabinet. He always sits in the same place, and each person who has anything to say or any subject to bring forward invariably goes and sits next to him, to enable him to hear better the material part of what is going forward, and the greatest respect is evinced to his opinions on all subjects. He told me that this was also very apparent in the correspondence of his colleagues, who addressed him in the most deferential manner, and often expressed their readiness to give up propositions which did not meet with his concurrence. But he said that he grew more and more irritable, and often expressed himself even to his colleagues with an asperity which was matter of great regret to him (Algernon Greville), and that frequently he felt the strongest desire to alter and soften the tone of his letters, but that this was quite impossible: nobody ever dared say anything to him, he could not, and it would be useless if he did, as it was not an accidental ebullition, but proceeded from the increased and increasing irritability of his mind. He instanced two cases lately, one of a letter to Sir Robert Peel, and another to Lord Haddington, not on very material subjects, but in which a tone of ruffled temper and something like pique was apparent, very unlike his old disposition. The only person who sees his letters is Arbuthnot, who never ventures to object, or to criticise them; and if he did, Algy much doubts whether the Duke would take the trouble to alter what he has once written. However, he is a wonder, be his infirmities what they may.
February 11th.—Yesterday Algy showed me the Duke's correspondence with Haddington,[75] which is a terrible rigmarole, lengthy, angry, mistaken, and altogether sadly demonstrative of a falling off in his great mind. The subject is so insignificant that it would be waste of time to say a word on it, if it were not for the interest which attaches to the great man to whom it relates. Admiral Parker wrote a warm panegyric on his nephew, Captain Wellesley, which he wound up by saying, he spoke cautiously and reservedly (or some such expression) for fear his motives should be misunderstood. The sentence was an awkward one, but the sense was clear, and could only mean that he was afraid it might be thought he praised the nephew in order to pay court to the uncle, and therefore he in reality said rather less than more than he deserved. The Duke chose to take it in an exactly opposite sense, and insisted that it could only mean that he was so obnoxious that even his relative was not to receive his just meed of praise—a thing not only quite improbable and absurd, but absolutely unmeaning. On this he descanted very angrily, and then went off on his own services, and that he never asked for anything for any of his belongings, and a great deal of very pitiful balderdash. Haddington seems to have tombé de son haut, at getting this extraordinary ebullition, and wrote back what he meant to be a soother, assuring the Duke that he had never thought of taking it in that sense, far from it, and he added all that was respectful and obliging of himself and his nephew, as well as what was reasonable and true; but the old hero's blood was up, he had got his head the wrong way, and the devil would not get it right again. He insisted on his own version of the Admiral's letter, declared nobody could possibly read it in any other sense (nobody could possibly see it in his), and fired back another sulky broadside upon the First Lord of the Admiralty.
LORD BROUGHAM'S JUDICIAL COMMITTEE BILL.
The night before last Brougham came down to the House of Lords and announced a bill which he is going to bring in to amend! the working of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, or, as he called it, to 'remedy its imperfections.' Yesterday Wharncliffe gave me the history of this transaction, which, if he is allowed successfully to carry on, will be one of the most impudent jobs that ever was perpetrated, and assuredly the Government must be strong which can afford to be a consenting party to it. In the state of incessant activity he has long been in he has, it seems, an ardent longing to do something for himself. Money I do not believe he cares about, though probably not averse to be well furnished with the means of feasting his numerous clients, and the noble, honourable, learned and fashionable friends with whom he cultivates or affects intimacies in all ranks and all parties; but he wants some distinction, and something which at least may give him the air of having authority somewhere and a kind of official right to be still more meddling and intrusive and dictatorial than he already is. Who knows, too, whether his excursive mind does not look to the possibility of his making any official or quasi-official situation a stepping-stone to the Woolsack, under certain circumstances or contingencies, which may glimmer to his mind's eye in the distant future? Be this as it may he has been pestering the Chancellor to make him Vice-President of the Judicial Committee. The Chancellor, who is very anxious to retain him in his service, has already committed himself to an opinion expressed in the House of Lords that it would be a good thing to give the Judicial Committee a vice-president (i.e. a judicial head), and he has also said that those who come and work there ought to be paid for their services, and without such pay nobody ought to be required or expected to attend. This last dictum was purely selfish and to excuse himself from giving his own services during the many years he was out of office and doing nothing. When the Judicial Committee was first constituted Brougham intended to make a job of it, and framed several provisions accordingly; but meeting with some resistance (which I contrived to spirit up Lord Lansdowne to make), and finding that if there was any patronage the disposal of it would not be allotted to him (then Chancellor), he became indifferent on that score, and no provision was made for the payment of any members of the committee not deriving emoluments from other sources. For many years accordingly the clause which empowered the Queen to appoint certain persons who had not held judicial offices in England to be members was not acted upon at all. By arrangements made from time to time a quorum was always secured consisting of persons either in office or holding judicial pensions. These arrangements were not free from difficulties and objections, still with a little trouble and occasional obstacles the business went on pretty well; latterly, however, in consequence of certain new duties which have been imposed on the Common Law judges, we have in great measure lost the services of those of the judges who are members of our Court. On the other hand, as soon as Campbell relinquished the Great Seal in Ireland, he consented to be appointed a judge in the Privy Council (though having no pension), and he has ever since attended as a volunteer, punctually, generously, and efficiently. His aid has been the principal support of the Court, and it has lately obtained the equally important aid of Pemberton Leigh, who was made a Privy Councillor when he was appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Cornwall on the express condition of his sitting in the Judicial Committee, which he declared his readiness to do, and he was appointed accordingly. There never was any question of Pemberton's receiving a salary; indeed, if it had been contemplated that whoever was named to the vacant seat in the Judicial Committee should be paid, Peel would probably have looked for some man to whom the salary would have been an object, and to whom it would have been an object to him to give it, instead of throwing away a lucrative office on one who is so rich that he has no occasion for it. However, Brougham was resolved to get himself made Vice-President, which is, in fact, President of this Court; but he was aware that it would be by no means palatable to some of the other members, especially Campbell, and probably Pemberton, that he should put himself over their heads, and as there is not the slightest occasion for any such change, and no reason to believe that either of the two volunteers desires or expects any salary, the matter was not very easy. Still he made such a bother about it that the Chancellor had a meeting with Lord Wharncliffe, the Duke, and Peel, to consider of it. The Duke said if there was any honorary appointment which would gratify him, and which they could, not improperly, confer on him, he thought, considering the way he worked for them, it would be as well to let him have it; but they agreed that they could not propose anything in the way of emolument, and at last it was settled that he should be made Vice-President. It occurred to them, however, that as the Judicial Committee was a Parliamentary creation it was not quite certain that the Queen had power to make the appointment, and that it would be right to consult the Attorney and Solicitor-General thereupon. The law officers said they would not assert that the Queen had not the power, but as it was in the nature of a change they thought it would be safer to do it by Act of Parliament. The Ministers therefore told Brougham they could not do it, and they declined bringing in any Bill; on which he said, with some reflexions on their want of spirit, that he would himself bring in a Bill, and accordingly he gave this notice the other night. I have not yet seen the Bill, and I don't know whether he has communicated with any of his colleagues on the subject, and in what light they regard the matter; but I am exceedingly desirous of defeating such a job, as it appears to be, if I can, and most assuredly I will endeavour to do so.