August 13th.—I had no inclination to write while I was at Brighton and Goodwood, and have had little or nothing to say since I came to town. At Goodwood, Lord Stanley was laid up with the gout; the Duke of Richmond was as violent and talkative as usual, and incessantly clamouring against Peel, the renegades, and the Bill, and arranging 'Cabinets' to be held in Stanley's bedroom, with his Protectionist friends—George Bentinck, Beaufort, Stradbroke, and Eglinton, Stanley's new friends! The Government got a much better division in the House of Commons on the sugar duties than they expected, but the Lords were very near playing them a very shabby trick. Lord Stanley and his party had a meeting, at which they resolved not to divide in the Lords. This resolution Stanley imparted to Bessborough, and begged him to arrange matters in such a manner as to enable him to get away to Scotland as soon as possible. This Bessborough did, and he got the House of Commons to sit on Saturday (very unusual), in order to send the Bill up to the Lords on Monday, and then to take the debate (also unusual) on the first reading. Meanwhile, Brougham, who had gone to Westmoreland, returned, intending to speak and to divide on the Bill. The debate came on with a general understanding there should be no division. Stanley made a speech, and so did Brougham, and, at the end of the night, Stanley said that though he had no intention of dividing the House, if anybody else did, he should vote with them. The Government was in a minority in the House, and in a great fright they sent emissaries all over the town to bring Peers down. The Duke of Devonshire was brought from the Opera, and Granville from his bed, and they got enough to make it not worth while for the Opposition to divide.
This matter is settled, but there is another still pending, much more serious, and which has occasioned great discontent among the friends of Government, great perplexity to the Government itself, and done much mischief. This is the Irish Arms Bill, which Labouchere has proposed to renew for nine months. The resolution to do this was hastily taken, without much consideration on the part of the Government, without consulting their friends, and in consequence of the unanimous opinion of the Irish Government, law officers and all, that it is necessary. When this opinion was notified to John Russell, he at once assented to the renewal, though not liking it. It was very ill-received by his adherents, and has thrown the Government into great embarrassment. They are now trying to make it palateable by cancelling some of the strongest clauses, the effect of which is to exasperate Bessborough[132] (who talks of not going unless they are retained) without much conciliating others. It is not yet settled how it is to end, but everybody connected with the Government feels that it has been a very unfortunate and damaging occurrence.
INCIPIENT DISPUTES WITH FRANCE.
X—— has been here this morning to talk of this and many other things. He says that already many disagreeable things are occurring, and there are elements of disunion and causes of danger in operation. The first of these originates with Palmerston. The French complain that Palmerston has already begun to disturb the harmony which subsisted in Aberdeen's time, and to alter the amicable relations which the latter had established. They complain of his tone and manner, and of what he was saying and doing at Madrid in reference to Louis Philippe, who was in a state of violent excitement on the subject, so much so that he had suddenly sent for Guizot, who was one hundred miles off, and ordered Jarnac[133] to repair to Paris. Jarnac asked if he might see Lord John and speak to him on the subject. He said he knew how jealous Palmerston was of any diplomatic communications with anybody but himself. Lord John, however, consented to receive him; but Jarnac being meanwhile ordered off to Paris, did not see Lord John till his return. He then told him several things, I know not what, which it seems Lord John was not previously aware of, and he promised to speak to Palmerston on the subject. X—— said Lord John was well disposed to interfere in foreign affairs, and indeed as a Prime Minister ought in every department; but what he feared was that he would not find time, and that he would be overwhelmed with the multifarious functions that were heaped upon him, the endless correspondence, the innumerable deputations, and the attendance in the House of Commons, where, for example, he was kept yesterday from twelve in the morning to twelve at night. All this he thinks will be too much for his health and strength, and above all will baffle his good intention of overlooking and controlling the other departments. It appears that he has got on very good terms with the Queen, whose displeasure has subsided. The Ministers, however, find the Prince in a very different situation from that in which they left him, more prominent, more important, with increased authority. This was the result of Peel's and Aberdeen's administration, and their continual care and attention to all his wishes and the Queen's. They must take things as they find them. These details show that even in so short a time, under all the apparent smoothness on the surface, there are jealousies and suspicions rankling, and difficulties preparing, which may at any time break out and shake the Government to pieces. If this catastrophe happens, Palmerston will be the cause of it; he is evidently dissatisfied and suspicious, and his colleagues are suspicious of him. The Protectionists are dying to entice him on their side; his family desire no better, and would like of all things to see the Whig Cabinet fall to pieces, and a Protectionist Cabinet formed, with Palmerston its leader in the House of Commons. Such a combination is by no means impossible, hardly improbable.
August 18th.—Last night John Russell gave up the Arms Bill altogether. It was the best course he had left; but it has been an unlucky affair altogether. Very bad accounts of potatoes all over the country, nearly total destruction, in Ireland, and now the disease is ravaging Scotland and England.
BISHOP WILBERFORCE.
Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, made a very brilliant speech a few nights ago on the Sugar Bill. As his father's son he thought it necessary to make an Anti-Slavery oration; it was very able and eloquent, and in tone and manner so well regulated as to show that he has profited by the criticisms which were made on his former speeches. He is certainly a remarkable man, full of cleverness and vivacity, very unlike a Churchman in society and in Parliament, and yet he must be deficient in that worldly tact which it might be thought he would most surely have acquired. I judge of this from what has passed between him and myself, which is certainly extraordinary. I met him for the first time the year before last at the Grange, where I spent a couple of days with him, and afterwards I dined once or twice in his company, but never had much conversation with him. One morning I met him at breakfast at Macaulay's (this year), and shortly afterwards he asked me to breakfast with him, which I did. This is all the intercourse I ever had with him, never amounting to anything like intimacy. Just as I was recovering from my illness, Lord Lansdowne sent me a letter from the Bishop about the Eton College case,[134] which was pending before the Privy Council, entreating an early decision of it. I put the matter in train, and a few days after I went to Brighton. Just before I went the Bishop called at my house, but I was out, and after I got to Brighton I heard that he had called again, and expressed some disappointment at not having seen me. Meanwhile I learnt that a day was fixed for the hearing of his case. Never imagining that he had called on me for any other purpose than to urge this matter, by no means giving him credit for any especial interest in my health, but wishing to be very civil to him, I wrote him a letter from Brighton, saying that I concluded he had called on me about the Eton College case, and that I therefore wished to inform him that a day was fixed for the argument. I received a letter from him by return of post, in which he told me that that was not his object in calling on me; that he had heard I had been dangerously ill, and that he had called to tender his spiritual advice and aid, and (in a rather commonplace style of writing) he urged me to listen to his religious exhortations. In the whole course of my life I never was so astonished, for he was about the last clergyman from whom I should have expected such an overture, and my acquaintance with him was so slight, that I could not conceive why he had selected me as the subject of a spiritual experiment. I was not a little puzzled how to reply to him. I determined, however, to take his letter in excellent part, to give him credit for the best motive, to express much gratitude, but to decline entering with him into any religious discussion; and to give him to understand, though with great civility, that his proposal was extraordinary and uncalled for. I think I succeeded tolerably well; but he never took any notice of my answer, so I do not know what he felt upon it, and I have not seen him since.
August 19th.—I asked Clarendon yesterday what it is they complain of in Palmerston. He said 'Something about Spain, that we do not put an absolute veto on a Coburg.'[135] He said the King had a monomania on this subject, and that Guizot rather encouraged him than not, in order that by humouring him on this point he might have his own way on all others. As to matters going on just as they did with Aberdeen, that is impossible, nor is it desirable, for Aberdeen transacted the business of the two countries by private letters between himself and Guizot, not employing his own agents at all, and consequently there is no record whatever of this correspondence in the Foreign Office.
AN EXCHANGE OF PATRONAGE.
There was a curious occurrence in the House of Commons yesterday morning and the evening before. George Bentinck, who employs what is left of the Session in collecting matter for assailing the late Government, and has brought forward divers cases of jobs or blunders against them, made a furious attack upon the appointment to an Indian judgeship, &c., which was a job of Lyndhurst's and Brougham's, and, in a smaller way, of Ripon's, though after all not a very flagitious one.[136] He fired, however, into the Treasury Bench, not caring whom he hit provided his shot told on some of them; but Disraeli, who has his own reasons for courting Lyndhurst, was determined to throw a shield over him, so he got up, and (though there could be no doubt that the real jobber, for whose pleasure it was all done, was Lyndhurst)[137] pronounced a flaming panegyric on the ex-Chancellor, and said there could be no doubt he would come quite clear out of the affair. This was ridiculous enough, but in the course of the night George Bentinck found out, as he thought, that he had made a mistake, and that the living which he accused Ripon of having got from the Chancellor was not in the Chancellor's gift, but in the gift of one of Ripon's relations. Down he went to the House of Commons in a great hurry, and begged the Speaker to call on him as soon as he took the Chair. He got up, and retracted what he had said with all sorts of expressions of regret, for which he got mighty credit and praise. But he had hardly sat down when a letter was brought him with information that he had been quite right in his original statement, that the 'Clergy List' was wrong, and the living was in the gift of the Chancellor, and that there was nothing for him to retract.