LORD MELBOURNE ON O'CONNELL'S TRIAL.
I dined at Palmerston's yesterday; Melbourne was there. He could not say O'Connell had not had a fair trial; and Luttrell said, which seemed to hit off Melbourne's own notion, that he had had a fairish trial. Melbourne said an odd thing which showed that he has not abandoned all idea of taking office again, though I hardly think he would if it came to the point. It was this, 'There is not much chance of the House of Commons coming to a vote against Government; but still such a thing is possible, and I was kept awake half the night thinking, suppose such a thing did occur, and I was sent for to Windsor, what advice I should give the Queen'—'it kept me long awake,' he repeated, 'and I determined that I would advise her not to let Mr. O'Connell be brought up for judgement.' It was very strange, and everybody looked amazed. He has been a very curious man all his life, and he is as strange as ever now, in the sort of make-believe with which he tries to delude himself and others. Whilst all indicates the decay of his powers, and his own consciousness of it, he assumes an air and language as if he was the same man, and ready to act his old part on any stage and at any time. His friends are, I think, vexed and pained, and think it, as it is, a rather melancholy spectacle.
March 9th.—During the last fortnight there has been a great deal of discussion about the great debate, and there is a general impression that it will prove productive of good. Peel's speech is much commented on, and considered to signify his own opinion that the Irish Church must be dealt with sooner or later, but also his resolution to have no hand in the arrangement. At all events it is thought that his sentiments, as set forth in his speech, are very different from Stanley's, and even from Graham's. Some days ago John Russell called on me, and talked the thing over. He said this about Peel, whom he so dislikes that whatever he says of him is always rather tinged with bitterness; and with regard to his own notions, he said that he was not opposed to the establishment of the Catholic religion, provided the Protestant was preserved. He is in fact prepared to go farther than I was aware of.
Last night Brougham brought in his Privy Council Bill. I dined at Lansdowne House. Lord Lansdowne had been at the beginning of the discussion, and Melbourne and Normanby came in later, having stayed it out. They all thought it was impossible such a Bill could pass. Cottenham made a very good speech. The only point on which there seemed any agreement was on the expediency of naming a President of the Court, and Lyndhurst, who was appealed to, limited his opinion to this alone. Brougham pretended that the precedence he claimed was only intended to be in the Court—which was a mere pretence, because by putting in the Lord Privy Seal, who is not a member of the Court, he showed what he wanted. It is to be hoped that his trickery will fail altogether and the Bill be thrown out.
LORD BROUGHAM'S GAIETY.
March 16th.—Brougham has been outdoing himself about his Bill. He begins by naming a committee, very numerous, but containing hardly any of the Whigs or of those who would be likely to oppose him, none at least that he could possibly help naming. On Monday an article appeared in the 'Morning Chronicle,' very bitter and smart, and written by Clarendon, which stung him to the quick. He got up the next day in the House of Lords, and alluding to his having been accused of bringing in this Bill with personal views, rejected the accusation with vehement indignation, and in the most extravagant language, 'amidst loud laughter,' as the report said, 'in which the Lord Chancellor heartily joined.' None but Brougham himself can be his parallel; no other man would have dared to get up, and, in the presence of at least half a dozen men who knew the whole truth, deliberately and vehemently tell a parcel of impudent lies—lies too which, if he succeeds in his object, must be exposed to the whole world. But one of the most curious characteristics is his utter shamelessness. With an inordinate vanity and a morbid activity, which prompts him to be eternally doing and talking, he has lost all care for his serious reputation, and for the applause and approbation of the best part of the world. To flourish away, and become Cock-of-the-Walk among silly and dissolute people of fashion, to talk incessantly in a strain of boisterous levity, and make free and frivolous men and women roar with laughter at his coarse, but not witty pleasantries, seems now the height of his ambition. He passes days and hours at Chesterfield House and Gore House; his most intimate associate is D'Orsay; and from the nonsense and idleness of such houses as these, he rushes away to mix in the high matters of politics and legislation, in an eternal whirl and bustle of alternate business and gossip, a sad spectacle to those who remember what he once was; and he has not even the merit of success in his new vocation, for whereas he was once more brilliant and amusing than anybody, he is now become an arrant bore. He has frittered down his really great powers to the level of his new friends and companions, but he has no notion how to converse or 'live with ease,' and nothing can be more awkward and ungraceful than the exhibition he makes of himself as a man of fashion. What a contrast it is, when one turns from the vagaries of this impure and degraded buffoon, who has been guilty of debasing and rendering useless the rare talents with which Nature endowed him, to the dignified old age and mild wisdom of Mr. Grenville—who counts only twenty years more than Brougham—so inferior in genius and intellectual power, so superior in moral worth, in rectitude of understanding, and in all the graces and proprieties of social life.
Writing of Mr. Grenville, I must mention an anecdote he told me the other day, illustrating the facility with which Pitt gave peerages to anybody who had a fancy for the honour. Mr. Grenville one day asked his cousin, Lord Glastonbury, what had induced him to get made a peer, for he could not think he had ever cared much for a title. He said, 'God, Devil!' (for such it seems was his queer habit of expressing himself) 'I'll tell you. I never thought of a peerage; but one day I took up the newspaper, and I read in it that Tommy Townshend was made a peer. Confound the fellow, said I, what right had he to be made a peer I should like to know. Why, I am as rich again as he is, and have a much better right. So I resolved to write to Pitt and tell him so. I wrote, and was made a peer the following week.'
THE TEN HOURS BILL.
March 31st.—I never remember so much excitement as has been caused by Ashley's Ten Hours Bill,[78] nor a more curious political state of things, such intermingling of parties, such a confusion of opposition; a question so much more open than any question ever was before, and yet not made so or acknowledged to be so with the Government; so much zeal, asperity, and animosity, so many reproaches hurled backwards and forwards. The Government have brought forward their measure in a very positive way, and have clung to it with great tenacity, rejecting all compromise; they have been abandoned by nearly half their supporters, and nothing can exceed their chagrin and soreness at being so forsaken. Some of them attribute it to Graham's unpopularity, and aver that if Peel had brought it forward, or if a meeting had been previously called, they would not have been defeated; again, some declare that Graham had said they were indifferent to the result, and that people might vote as they pleased, which he stoutly denies; then John Russell voting for 'ten hours,' against all he professed last year, has filled the world with amazement, and many of his own friends with indignation. It has, I think, not redounded to his credit, but, on the contrary, done him considerable harm. The Opposition were divided, Palmerston and Lord John one way, Baring and Labouchere the other. It has been a very queer affair. Some voted, not knowing how they ought to vote, and following those they are accustomed to follow; many who voted against Government afterwards said they believed they were wrong. Melbourne is all against Ashley; all the political economists, of course; Lord Spencer strong against him. Then Graham gave the greatest offence by taking up a word of the 'Examiner's' last Sunday, and calling it a Jack Cade legislation, this stirring them to fury, and they flew upon him like tigers. Ashley made a speech as violent and factious as any of O'Connell's, and old Inglis was overflowing with wrath. Nothing could be so foolish as Graham's taunt; he ought to have known better how much mischief may be done by words, and how they stick by men for ever. Lyndhurst rubbed his hands with great glee, and said, 'Well, we shall hear no more of 'aliens' now, people will only talk of Jack Cade for the future,' too happy to shift the odium, if he could, from his own to his colleague's back. The Ministers gave out, if they were beaten last Friday, they would resign; but they knew there was no chance of it. Some abused Ashley for not going on and fighting again, but he knew well enough it would be of no use. The House did certainly put itself in an odd predicament, with its two votes directly opposed to each other. The whole thing is difficult and unpleasant. Government will carry their Bill now, and Ashley will be able to do nothing, but he will go on agitating session after session; and a philanthropic agitator is more dangerous than a repealer, either of the Union or the Corn Laws. We are just now overrun with philanthropy, and God knows where it will stop, or whither it will lead us.
May 1st.—This interval I passed at Newmarket (two weeks), where I took my books and papers, resolving to write, and go on with my pamphlet on Ireland; but it does not signify, I find it impossible at that place to put pen to paper or to open a book. It is one incessant course of active idleness, which with me at least utterly precludes all occupation, and even thought. The last day of the last week I went over to Cambridge to my nephew George Egerton, and took a look at some of the lions, none of which, strange to say (though I have frequented Newmarket so many years), with the exception of King's College Chapel, I had ever seen. I walked over the gardens, through the University Library, saw Lord Fitzwilliam's pictures, and looked at the Fitzwilliam Museum; but nothing is to be compared to King's College Chapel, which I beheld again, as one always does really great and perfect works, with increased admiration and delight.