There was a great pother for some time before his death about a successor. The candidates soon became reduced to three, though candidates they must not be called; that is, the choice lay between the Duke of Bedford, Clarendon, and Morpeth. Lord John communicated with the Duke and with Labouchere upon the subject, and perhaps with Lord Lansdowne, and, for a long time, he rather leant to the Duke's going, and tried to persuade him, not, however, without misgivings; but he thought it not fair to ask Clarendon, and he had no mind to send Morpeth, who was dying to go. The Duke was rather tickled at the idea of the appointment, somewhat encouraged by the numerous invitations he received to take it, but desperately afraid of it all the time. To my surprise he did not absolutely reject it, as I thought he would have done. In this wavering and uncertain state of mind he broached the matter to Clarendon, who affected to repudiate it and to dread and dislike it, and urged the Duke to go himself. I say affected, because it soon became very clear to me, as it did to the Duke, that Clarendon had no disinclination to go, and would in fact be excessively mortified and disappointed if anybody went but himself. The play of human nature was amusing; the Duke was not quite willing to give it up, but much more afraid to go, and he enjoyed mightily all the expressions of a desire that he should be Lord-Lieutenant, which were addressed to him from various quarters; on the other hand, Clarendon treated it as a sacrifice and a misfortune; hesitated, objected, and did everything to make it appear as if it were a painful burthen cast upon him, but he was all the time in a great fright lest the Duke should be persuaded to accept it, and he said, and made me say to him, that one of his principal motives for accepting it himself was his desire to save the Duke from a burthen which would, he was sure, break him down with anxiety and labour. A great deal of time was wasted and much useless talk expended in fictitious fears and scruples, but at last it was settled that he should go, as it might just as well have been without any fuss or difficulty, for the truth is that he is the fittest man, and is universally considered so. Nothing can be more flattering and gratifying than the reception he has met with from all ranks and all parties, and he is now (whatever doubts or misgivings he may have had, and, in spite of his secret wishes, he probably had some) quite satisfied with his appointment.
The death of O'Connell, I have said, made little or no sensation here. He had quarrelled with half of his followers, he had ceased to be the head of a great party animated by any great principle, or encouraged to pursue any attainable object; the Repeal cause was become despicable and hopeless without ceasing to be noisy and mischievous. O'Connell knew not what to say or what to do; he had become bankrupt in reputation and in power, and was no longer able to do much good or much harm; broken in health and spirits, and seeing Ireland penetrated by famine and sickness, and reduced to a condition of helpless dependence on England, having lost a great part of his prestige in Ireland without having gained respect or esteem in England, he went away unregretted and unnoticed to breathe his last in a foreign land. He was received everywhere on his route with the marks of respect and admiration which were considered due to his wonderful career and to the great part he had played in the history of his country, and his memory has been treated with some appearance of affection in Ireland, and with a decent respect and forbearance here. History will speak of him as one of the most remarkable men who ever existed; he will fill a great space in its pages; his position was unique; there never was before, and there never will be again, anything at all resembling it. To rise from the humblest situation to the height of empire like Napoleon is no uncommon destiny; there have been innumerable successful adventurers and usurpers; but there never was a man who, without altering his social position in the slightest degree, without obtaining any office or station whatever, raised himself to a height of political power which gave him an enormous capacity for good or evil, and made him the most important and most conspicuous man of his time and country. It would not be a very easy matter to do him perfect justice. A careful examination of his career and an accurate knowledge of his character would be necessary for the purpose. It is impossible to question the greatness of his abilities or the sincerity of his patriotism. His dependence on his country's bounty, in the rent that was levied for so many years, was alike honourable to the contributors and the recipient; it was an income nobly given and nobly earned. Up to the conquest of Catholic Emancipation his was certainly a great and glorious career. What he might have done and what he ought to have done after that, it is not easy to say, but undoubtedly he did far more mischief than good, and exhibited anything but a wise, generous, and patriotic spirit. In Peel's administration he did nothing but mischief, and it is difficult to comprehend with what object and what hope he threw Ireland into confusion, and got up that Repeal agitation, the folly and impracticability of which nobody must have known so well as himself.
THE GOVERNOR-GENERALSHIP OF INDIA.
June 14th.—The Duke of Bedford has been telling me what has been going on about India and the appointment of Hardinge's successor. In the first place Normanby has been making desperate attempts to get it, but Lord John will not hear of it, and believes the Directors would object to him if he was proposed. Lord John is resolved that this great appointment shall not be made an affair of party, and he desired the Chairs to furnish him with a list of the persons they would consider most eligible for the office of Governor-General without distinction of party. They sent him four or five names—Clarendon, Graham, I think Dalhousie, and the others I forget, but Normanby's was not among them. Lord John has made up his mind to offer the post to Graham, and has communicated his intention to the Duke of Wellington, at the same time consulting him about the military appointment. The Duke approves of Graham, and proposes Sir George Napier for Commander-in-Chief, to which Lord John agrees. Normanby, who had a suspicion that Graham was thought of, from something the Duke of Bedford had said to him, wrote him a long letter, strongly arguing against this appointment, and not a very bad argument either. Meanwhile I have seen Graham, and had a long conversation with him. It began about the Portuguese question, which is now going on in the House of Commons; but after discussing this and some electioneering matters, I asked him what his own projects were. He said he was indifferent about them and had settled nothing. I said, 'You know that it is reported in the world that you are likely to go to India.' He said he had three times refused to go there; that it would always be a matter of much doubt and deliberation, both on private and public grounds, whether he should accept it if offered; but at present it was out of the question, for Lord John Russell was evidently animated by very implacable sentiments towards him, and he never would take an office from him while he was in such a disposition, and when the appointment would be clearly offered at the suggestion of others, and not by his own free will. He then talked a great deal about the feeling which subsisted between himself and the Whigs—of their resentment towards him; of the way in which he had been persecuted by them; of Lord John's sending for him in the autumn of 1845; about the change of government; how gratified he had been; how frankly he had behaved; how desirous he had been to give every aid in his power to his successor; how generally friendly to the Government, of which he gave instances; and then how hurt he had been at the bitterness and severity of Lord John's attack upon him in reply to his speech objecting to the exclusion of Catholics from the grant; that that speech had proved to him that Lord John's dislike of him was unmitigated and unappeasable. This is a very brief summary of a long discourse he made to me on the subject. I told him he was mistaken in Lord John's sentiments, which were by no means so bitter and hostile as he imagined, and on the occasion he alluded to, Lord John had spoken under great irritation and with strong resentment, thinking that Graham had made a most offensive and unjust speech, and that he had most unfairly done his best to embarrass the Government; that such was the general opinion of Lord John's friends, and I would not conceal from him my own opinion; that his speech had been calculated to produce that effect; that it had appeared to many people, to me amongst them, that Peel had been conscious of the effect produced by his (Graham's) speech, and had spoken, as he did, in a very different tone to repair the effect of it. He must not therefore infer from the vivacity of Lord John's tone on that occasion that he was animated by such sentiments as he ascribed to him; that I did not mean to say he had any feelings of extreme cordiality; but I had reason to know that he rendered ample justice to his public character and capacity, and felt no bitterness towards him; that some day I would give him proofs of the truth of what I said, but that in the meantime I must beg him to take my word for it; and I entreated him not to deceive himself by the exaggerated, and, I was convinced, unfounded notion he entertained of Lord John's disposition. A great deal passed on this subject, and I found that he was very low and very much vexed, both on the above ground and about a very mortifying communication that had been made to him about Cumberland.
THE CUMBERLAND ELECTION.
Aglionby had informed him they were going to put up Charles Howard and William Marshall, which was an intimation that that they would not have him. He replied that he would not pledge himself about the two candidates, but would support Howard, saying civil things about Lord Carlisle and the whole family. The other day he got a letter, not very judiciously worded—cold, but intended to be civil—from Morpeth, announcing that he was going to support the two candidates on his own side of the House, accompanied with some expression of regret that his support could not rather have been given to him. Graham took this very ill, and was evidently excessively hurt at the way in which he was thus excluded from the representation. All these things were evidently souring his mind, and I strongly suspect stimulating him to act an unfriendly part in the Portuguese discussion, and I was therefore very glad that I had an opportunity of saying what I did, for I said quite enough to let him see that India is full in view, and I do not think he will now do anything to mar this prospect. He would not tell me what he or Peel meant to do, and Peel happens to be exceedingly out of humour in consequence of young Campbell's speech at Cambridge; so is Graham. Graham told me he never saw Peel so put out and so angry with anything, and they are the more so because old Jack (Lord Campbell) went down, they say, to Cambridge with his son.
June 19th.—I was obliged to break off in the midst of the above conversation, and have since been out of town. I told the Duke of Bedford all that had passed between Graham and me, and advised that Lord John should show him some civility, which he undertook that he should do. On Tuesday evening the Portuguese discussion was resumed in the Commons and came on in the Lords. I went down to hear Stanley speak, never having heard him before. His style and manner, fluency and expression, are admirable, and he speaks with an appearance of earnestness, even of dignity, that is marvellously striking; but nothing could be more injudicious than his speech, and I was as much disappointed with the matter of it as I was charmed with the manner. Never was there so ridiculous and contemptible an ending to an affair begun with such a flourish of trumpets and note of preparation, and which for a moment put the Government into a state of alarm. The whippers-in in both Houses had collected all their forces, and when the House of Lords met, a long night and a doubtful division were announced.
The first thing that happened was that Peel made an admirable speech in the House of Commons, strong in defence of Government, and without any 'buts' or drawbacks. He spoke very early. Very few people were there, and many went away after; so, finding the House in this state, George Bentinck made Newdigate count it out, and the whole thing thus fell to the ground. This he considered a very skilful piece of jockeyship, apparently unconscious of the ridicule which it cast on the whole affair. Great was the astonishment in the Lords when news was brought that the House of Commons had been counted out. Stanley had gone home to dinner, and after a few insignificant speeches (the Duke of Wellington having spoken strongly for the Government) nobody seemed disposed to go on. Clarendon went to Ellenborough and to Brougham, and asked them if they would not speak: both declined; the latter said it was very dull and he should say nothing. Accordingly they divided, many on both sides absent, and Government had a majority of twenty. Stanley was not present, and when he came back to the House found it all over. So ended this solemn farce. Stanley would have beaten the Government if he could, and have thought it very good fun, trusting to the majority he knew they would have in the Commons to induce them to put up with a defeat. Lord John, however, was not disposed to take it so quietly, and there can be very little doubt that Brougham and the rest saw that a division against Government in the Lords without any division for them in the Commons would make matters very different, and the sudden termination of the debate in the other House greatly cooled their ardour.
WYATT'S STATUE OF THE DUKE.
The other day I met John Russell in the Park as he was going to Apsley House by appointment with the Duke. He said he was going on important business (it was about the Indian appointments), and he asked me if I thought he had better say anything to him or not about the Statue.[20] I said 'Better not.' The Duke of Bedford told me after that it was very fortunate advice I gave Lord John, for if he had said anything there would have been an explosion. The Duke said to Arbuthnot, when Lord John wrote to say he wished to see him, 'What can he want? what can he be coming about? do you think it is about the Statue?' and then he went off on that sore subject, and said he should place his resignation in Lord John's hands! However, Lord John said nothing about it, and the Duke was put into great good humour by being consulted about the Indian affairs; and he said afterwards that he only wished they would get the pedestal made, put the Statue up, and have done with it. But it is curious, as showing how sensitive and irritable he is become, how the strong mind is weakened. He is, however, very happy on the whole, in excellent health, and treated with the greatest deference and attention by everybody. The Queen is excessively kind to him. On Monday his grand-daughter was christened at the Palace, and the Queen dined with him in the evening. She had written him a very pretty letter expressing her wish to be godmother to the child, saying she wished her to be called Victoria, which name was so peculiarly appropriate to a grand-daughter of his. All these attentions marvellously please him.