The Monday after I went to Goodwood, where we had the usual party, with the addition of the King of the Netherlands, who was in high glee, and full of enjoyment with his old friends, his cordial reception here, and the gaieties with which he has been saluted on all sides. On coming back to town I found Madame de Lieven arrived, and had a talk with her about politics and what not. She gave me the real account of the interview between Thiers and Guizot at her house, which was not exactly as I had heard it. She sent for Thiers, to speak to him about some mention he had made of the Empress Dowager of Russia in his history, which was unfair and inexact. He came, and then she ordered her doors to be closed to everybody while he was there. He asked why she did so, and why Guizot, who was always let in, should be excluded. She said it was on his account. He repeated, 'Why, as he did not object.' After some talk, she said, 'If you really wish it, I will withdraw my order.' He said he saw no reason why she should retain it. She then desired him to ring the bell, and said, 'I am at home to nobody but M. Guizot.' Presently Guizot came, not knowing Thiers was there. He started with amazement; she burst out laughing; Thiers laughed; Guizot laughed too. This hilarity ended, she told Guizot for what object she had sent for Thiers, and then they talked over the book, and the subject of the meeting. This ended, there was a pause, when she said to Thiers, 'I have had a message to carry to you from M. Guizot. He says he has behaved better to you than you have done to him, for you threw M. Molé between his legs, and he has disembarrassed you of M. Molé, and now there are only two political possibilities left, You and Himself.' Guizot said, 'Yes, it is true; I begged the Princess to say so.' They then began to talk politics, and discussed persons and things, external and internal policy, peace and war, all contingencies and probabilities. Thiers asked Guizot, 'Are you determined to remain Minister?' He said, 'Decidedly yes.' Then they discussed everything, and on every point were agreed, except on that of peace and war; Guizot maintaining that peace might be preserved, and Thiers insisting that in the long run it could not, and that difference of opinion was what alone made them the representatives of opposite principles, and influenced their conduct accordingly. She says they talked over everything, very frankly, very civilly, and that it was impossible for anything to be more interesting and more curious than such a conversation between two such men, or more worth writing down, if there had been a possibility of reporting it. She told me Thiers' book was not thought much of in France, that the style was criticised, and it was such a continual panegyric of Napoleon, as to be rather an apology than a history.
LORD MELBOURNE'S CONVERSATION.
Broadlands, August 21st.—I went last Saturday week to the Grove; very pleasant party. Palmerstons, Lady Morley, Lady Holland, Macaulay, Bessborough, Luttrell, Henry Bulwer. Macaulay subdued in talk, but still talking more and better than anybody else. Came here on Monday, Lady Holland, Clanricardes, Luttrell, Melbourne, Beauvales. Melbourne by way of being very well, but there are only gleams left of his former self. He seems to bear on his face a perpetual consciousness of his glory obscured, and looks grave and stern, while he sits for hours in silence. At times he talks in the way he used, but though in the same strain, more feebly; always candid as usual. In talking over the Post Office affairs of this and last year, and the attacks on Graham, he said that he remembered having signed warrants for opening O'Connell's letters, and Freeling bringing him the warrants back, and saying he thought the best thing to do with them was to thrust them into the fire, which was done. He said they never found anything in them; he then said that he had urged Normanby to open the King of Hanover's letters, but that he never could get him to do it; he was afraid. A curious avowal to make. I believe if anybody could pass some time with him, so as to put him quite at his ease, and then tap him on one subject after another, they might get almost anything out of him, and he would supply a fund of matter, historical and anecdotic, which would be of the greatest value and interest.
I received yesterday a very gracious and obliging letter from Guizot about my book. I sent it him when it came out, and he apologised for not acknowledging and reading it before, on account of his illness and his affairs. It is remarkable that every one of the Ministers has preserved the same silence and reserve to me upon the subject. The few of them I have occasionally seen have not said a word. Peel I fell in with one day in the Park, and walked by his horse some time, but he did not allude to it. Graham has avoided seeing me, but I have never heard that any fault has been found, or any complaint made in any quarter.
The Session of Parliament has ended, leaving Peel quite as powerful, or more so, than he was at the beginning of it. Everybody says affairs are in a strange state, but nobody foresees, and few seem to desire any change. The world seems weary of what are called politics, there is not a spark of party spirit visible. The Whigs see no prospect of coming into office, or making a Government that would be able to stand, and people will not make exertions and spend money without a reasonable expectation of some tangible result. On the other hand, everything like enthusiasm for Peel is extinguished; the Tories hate, fear, but do not dare oppose him. If the Whigs cannot see any alternative, the Tories can see still less: and odious as Peel's conduct is to them, and alarming as his principles are, they still think they are better off, and on the whole in less danger with him than with any other Ministry that could be formed. He has completely succeeded in getting the Court on his side, so that between the support he gets from one side on account of his liberality, and that which he continues to receive from the other on account of a combination of motives, habit, fear, hope and patronage, he is in fact, though very unpopular, still very powerful. Everybody expects that he means to go on, and in the end to knock the Corn Laws on the head,[103] and endow the Roman Catholic Church; but nobody knows how or when he will do these things. He in the meantime proceeds with extreme caution and reserve, and to some his conduct appears the height of prudence, and the exercise of a sound discretion; while others regard it as pusillanimous and impolitic, and that in holding back so long as he does, he is committing the old error of delaying till the moment passes away when concession can be beneficial and effectual. It is clear that his object is to do everything gradually, if possible to reconcile his own reluctant friends to his changes, and draw them along with him, partly by reason and partly by influence, so that he may still find himself at the end of each successive stage with his party unbroken, and his power unshaken. He probably believes sincerely that great good will ensue from his measures, and that if he can avoid a quarrel and a break-up, the manifestation, clear and indubitable, of the good effects he has produced will reconcile those whom no reasoning can reconcile or propitiate beforehand. He therefore endeavours to combine his two objects, and it is certainly by a profound calculation, be it wise or not, that he is acting and temporising as he does. Nobody perhaps represents so correctly the state of public opinion, which is itself unsettled, and in a state of transition.
INDIFFERENCE TO POLITICS.
I have said that what are called politics are out of fashion; there is no public man a jot more popular than another; nobody cares about parties, for there is no party distinguished by any peculiar badge of principle, with a distinct colour, and standing in open and defined antagonism to any other; none which has any great object to advance—constitutional, political, or commercial—in opposition to another party ranged against it. All is confusion, intermingling of principles and opinions, political rivalry and personal antipathy, the working of which produces, from time to time, something brisk and exciting, and a good deal of clever speaking and writing, interesting enough to the immediate actors, but which the mass of the country does not care a straw about. The world is absorbed by its material interests, railroads, and speculation in its multiform aspect, and it is in vain that John Russell reviews the session and delivers philippics against Peel; still more in vain that Palmerston harangues upon the Right of Search, Texas, Greece, or Spain, and endeavours to rouse the public indignation or contempt against Aberdeen and his foreign policy. It all falls dead and flat, and nobody takes the slightest interest in orations, though they are prepared with indefatigable industry and delivered with extraordinary skill.
London, August 28th.—I came from Broadlands last Saturday; went to see Lord Granville at Roehampton; to Hinchinbrook on Monday, and returned yesterday. I had no conversation with Melbourne himself at Broadlands, who was generally taciturn, but Frederic Lamb told me Melbourne was dissatisfied because they had not appointed a Regency when the Queen went abroad, and fancied if they had explained to her the necessity or propriety of it, she would not have objected. Melbourne never can speak of the Queen without tears coming into his eyes; he is, however, in a very nervous, lachrymose state. I met him at dinner yesterday, and he said that the Queen had a regard for Lady Conyngham, and felt grateful to her for her conduct to her mother and herself in George IV.'s time. It was through her influence that they were invited to his Court, and that any civilities were shown them.
August 30th.—I was just setting off to Tottenham Park yesterday, when Graham sent for me. It was about the affair of the Guernsey duties, concerning which the Government have got into a scrape. The whole revenue of the island is derived from a duty on wine and spirits, which is imposed by an Act of the States, confirmed by an Order in Council, and it is imposed for a year more or less, and from time to time continued by subsequent Acts and Orders. The last Act expires the day after to-morrow. The Queen is in Germany, and there is no power to renew it by Order in Council till she returns. The people in Guernsey are aware of the blot, and intend to avail themselves of it to introduce spirits duty free. In this dilemma Graham sent for me, to desire I would search the Council books and see if there was any analogous case and any precedent for continuing the duty without an Order, and he had already sent to the Law Officers for their opinion whether an Order could be passed with a retroactive effect—meaning, if it could, to order an account to be taken meanwhile, and to levy the duty afterwards. I found him and the Chancellor of the Exchequer together. I told him that this matter would be infallibly taken up as proving the necessity there had been for a Regency, and that those who had argued for one would, of course, triumph in the proof thus afforded that they were right. He said he was well aware of this. I then told him Melbourne's opinion, and that he thought if the matter had been properly explained to the Queen, there would have been no difficulty in satisfying her. Goulburn said Peel was much annoyed, as he had particularly desired that everything there was to be done should be brought to the last Council, and notice be served on all the offices to that effect, and he thought the fault lay with the Council Office. This I denied, and Graham at once said it was his fault if anybody's. The fault really lies with the people of Guernsey, whom it immediately concerns. I looked into the books, and found there was an analogous case, in which the same duties had expired, and orders were sent to levy them, with a notification that an Order in Council would be passed as soon as a Council could be held. It was a case exactly in point as to the principle, but differed in some of the official details. I went to Graham and found the Attorney-General there. He had brought the opinion of himself and the Queen's Advocate, which, much to my surprise, was, that an Order in Council might be made with a retroactive effect, and accordingly Graham determined to act upon this opinion, and to signify, by a letter to the Government, that an Order would be passed to renew the duties as soon as the Queen came home. I proposed to him to let the communication go from the Council Office, following the former precedent, and suggesting that they would be more disposed to defer to the authority of the Privy Council, to which they are used to look up, than to that of the Secretary of State, against which they are disposed to kick, but he said it was impossible to summon a committee. I said three were enough, and there were himself, Goulburn, and Haddington. He said Haddington would be frightened out of his senses at the notion of the responsibility, and he would rather take it all upon himself, and so he had the letter written. This is, however, enough to prove that no foresight can provide against all the contingencies which may require the exercise of the Royal authority; that it would have been safer and wiser stetisse super antiquas vias, to have followed former precedents, and not to have departed from them.
September 3rd.—I read in the newspapers the day before yesterday an account of a lad brought up for not supporting his child. The father was fifteen or sixteen years old, the mother a year or two less, and the grandmother of the child—the girl's mother—appeared, who was twenty-nine years old, and had had fourteen children. This seems to me curious enough to be worth recording. There appear from time to time many odd and remarkable things, which would be well worth noticing, and which are hurried down and lost in the stream of events. If I were not too idle I would record them, for really I have no political transactions to speak of, as I am not in the way of knowing anything secret or interesting.