March 4th.—The last act of the drama fell out as everybody foresaw it would and must. The Duke of Wellington advised the Queen to send for Lord John again. He was sent for, and came back with his whole crew, and without any change whatever. This was better than trying some trifling patch-up, or some shuffling of the same pack, and it makes a future reconstruction more easy. Last night it was announced to both Houses, and coldly enough received in the House of Commons. There can be no doubt that Lord John returns damaged, weak, and unpopular. His personal and social qualities are not generally attractive, and this is a great misfortune in such circumstances of difficulty. It is very difficult to say how they will be able to go on, and what sort of treatment they will experience from the House of Commons. The only thing that will obtain for them anything like forbearance and support will be the very general dread of a dissolution, and the anxiety of members to stave it off. This may get them through the Session; but their friends are nervous, frightened, and uneasy, and the general opinion is that they will break down again before the end of it. If they do, they must dissolve, for that is the only alternative left.
Lord Granville dined at the Palace last night, and the Queen and Prince Albert both talked to him a great deal of what has been passing, and very openly. She is satisfied with herself, as well she may be, and hardly with anybody else; not dissatisfied personally with Stanley, of whom she spoke in terms indicative of liking him. She thinks John Russell and his Cabinet might have done more than they did to obtain Graham and the Peelites, and might have made the Papal question more of an open question; but Granville says that it is evident she is heart and soul with the Peelites, so strong is the old influence of Sir Robert, and they are very stout and determined about Free Trade. The Queen and Prince think this resuscitated concern very shaky, and that it will not last. Her favourite aversions are: first and foremost, Palmerston; and Disraeli next. It is very likely that this latter antipathy (which no doubt Stanley discovered) contributed to his reluctance to form a Government. Such is the feeling about him in their minds. It is difficult to penetrate Palmerston's conduct and motives during the late crisis; but I am much inclined to think he was playing, or at least looking for an occasion to play, a part of his own.[135]
DISLOCATION OF PARTIES.
March 8th.—At Brocket from Tuesday till Thursday. In the morning I saw Graham and had a long talk with him, principally about the Papal Bill. I asked him why he could not make up his mind to support the amended and curtailed Bill, which would not be inconsistent with his original objection to any measure; but he went into the whole question and satisfied me of the impossibility of his supporting and defending (as he must have done) any measure whatever. The truth moreover is, that he was not sorry to have this excuse for keeping aloof, for if he could have got over this, there still remained behind the great difficulty of Palmerston. This was never touched upon at all, and consequently they were all able to say there were no personal difficulties; but Graham was satisfied that if he had joined them, he and Palmerston should have speedily disagreed, and I do not think any coalition will ever be possible which embraces Palmerston's remaining at the Foreign Office. My own opinion is that Graham wished Stanley's Government to be formed; and I am confirmed in this view by the remarkable fact that he and Aberdeen advised Lord Canning to accept Stanley's offer. Canning told Granville this, and I asked Graham if Aberdeen had advised Canning to do so, and why. He replied, rather evasively, that it was a great temptation; that Canning was not committed to Free Trade; and that Aberdeen had suggested there was no objection if he was disposed to accept. It was, however, very strange advice. Granville thinks very ill of the prospects of the Government, and has no reliance on their savoir faire. Meanwhile there they are again, having lost something in reputation, while it is questionable whether they have gained much in support; but, I think, something. There is a greater disposition to toleration, and to let them work through the Session, for everybody dreads a dissolution. There is a universal feeling of doubt, disquiet, and insecurity. Parties are dislocated; there is no respect for, or confidence in, any public men or man. Notwithstanding the creditable manner in which every actor in the late crisis is said to have played his part, and the fairness, unselfishness, public spirit, and mutual urbanity and politeness displayed by all, there lurks under this smooth surface no little jealousy, dislike and ill-will; in truth, in all that passed, nobody was in earnest. The Government threw up their offices not wishing to resign. Stanley did not desire, and did not intend, if he could possibly avoid it, to form a Government; Graham did not wish to coalesce with the Whig Government, nor they with him. John Russell would have taken him in, if they could have agreed; but most of his colleagues hated the idea of coalition; he would have been ill received by most of the adherents of the Government, and he is himself persuaded that he should not have gone on long without a difference of some sort. Many great difficulties, as they would have proved, were never touched upon, particularly who were to come in, and who were to go out.
March 10th.—I was interrupted, as I was writing, by the arrival of Graham himself, who stayed two hours, talking over everything. He left no doubt about his wishes for Stanley's forming a Government, for he told me that he never was more sorry for anything than for his failure. He still contemplates the great probability of such a Government, supposing a dissolution to take place, and the return of a Parliament prepared to vote for an import duty, and his mind is still bent on a joint action between himself and the Whigs in opposition. This is what he wants. He is not aware of the antipathy there is towards him on the part of many of them. Lord Grey, for example, is very bitter against him, and tantum mutatus, that he is now the warmest supporter and most zealous colleague of Palmerston! John Russell told Graham that last year Palmerston strongly urged him to get Graham to join them and take office, if he could be persuaded to do so. This is curious enough.
THE ANTI-PAPAL BILL.
Graham again entered at great length into all the objections against the Papal Bill, and the bad policy and mistakes of the Government. He thought it was one to have put up George Grey to usher it out, when John Russell had himself ushered it in;[136] for he said it was both evident and notorious that George Grey was in favour of stringent measures, and his speech was one in favour of the clauses the omission of which he was announcing. He said the announcement was very ill received, and he thinks the Bill will not pass. He fancies the Protectionists will throw it out, in which I disagree with him. There is an idea that they will try and make it more stringent, by proposing to retain the clauses or some other way; but this would be the best thing for the Government, and would bring Whigs, Radicals, and Irish all together. Meanwhile the effect of all that has happened is as bad as possible. I said in my letter (Carolus), 'We shall assuredly look very foolish if all the hubbub should turn out to have been made without some definite, reasonable, and moreover attainable object; and yet we appear to be in imminent danger of finding ourselves in this perplexing and mortifying predicament.' Never, I may make bold to say, was any prediction more signally accomplished than this. Everybody seems disgusted, provoked, and ashamed at the position in which we are placed. The Roman Catholics alone are chuckling over their triumph and our perplexity. They see that we have plunged ourselves into a situation of embarrassment, which leaves us no power of advancing or receding without danger or disgrace. Our Government, and especially its chief, have gone on from one fault and blunder to another. They manage to conciliate nobody, and to offend everybody. Their concessions are treated with rage and indignation on one side, and with scorn and contempt on the other. The Bill is reduced to a nullity, but this does not appease the wrath of the Irish and the Catholics; though what is left of it will do them no injury, they still oppose this remnant with undiminished violence, determined if possible to make us drain the last drop in the cup of mortification and shame. It is not unnatural that people should be indignant with a Government whose egregious folly has got us into such an unhappy and discreditable dilemma. We are in such a position that the Roman Catholics and the Radicals are alone the gainers; and accordingly, while all others are disturbed and terrified at such a state of things, they are delighted, and confidently expect their several ends and objects will be advanced by the confusion, disunion, and discontent which prevail.
London, March 18th.—Everything still going on as bad as possible. The Government is now so weak and powerless that its feebleness is openly talked of in Parliament, as well as derided in the Press. A day or two ago we appeared to be on the eve of an immediate crisis. Baillie gave notice of a motion of censure on Torrington and Lord Grey, on which John Russell declared he would not go on with the Budget or any public business with this vote hanging over their heads (which if carried involved resignation) nor till it was decided. Last night Baillie withdrew it, and business will go on. Nothing is more extraordinary than the conduct of many of their friends, and the levity with which almost everybody follows his own particular inclination or opinion, regardless of the condition of the Government and of the grave questions which are looming in the distance.
SIR JAMES GRAHAM VACILLATES.
Of all strange and unaccountable things the conduct of Graham is the strangest with reference to his ultimate views, objects and expectations. On Lord Duncan's motion about the Woods and Forests, he ostentatiously marched out first to vote against them; on the Naval Estimates he went away. All this exasperates and disgusts the Whigs, with whom he looks forward hereafter to acting, and whose chief he means to be. On Duncan's motion, John Russell's brother-in-law, Romilly, voted against him; his nephew, Hastings Russell, was in the House and did not vote. Hayter told John Russell that when such men acted thus, he could not ask independent members to come down and support the Government. I called on Graham yesterday, and found him in a state of great disgust at the Solicitor-General's speech the night before, against the violence and imprudence of which he bitterly inveighed. He said that Stanley was preparing resolutions, and he had contemplated having to fight the battle of religious liberty side by side with John Russell, and the Government against them; but that this speech perplexed him, and left him in doubt what he ought to do or what he was to expect. Did John Russell adopt all the furious 'No Popery' of his law officer, and was he prepared to legislate in that sense? If so, he would oppose him totis viribus. I told him I did not believe John Russell (who was not present) by any means concurred with Cockburn, whose speech he must only regard as an individual effusion, singularly injudicious. He talked a great deal about this and on other things. I asked him why he had voted against the Government on Duncan's motion, and told him that his doing so had greatly annoyed them. He said they were to blame to fight such a bad case; that he could not but vote with Duncan, having put his name to an instrument, together with several other eminent persons he named, recommending this very principle; and that the Government ought to have shown more deference for the opinion of Parliament and less condescension to the Court, to please which this proposition had been resisted. He ridiculed the argument of Parliamentary control being useless and inefficient, as Seymour pretended. Moreover, he said he had told Tufnell how he was going to vote. I told him that as he contemplated at some future time the dissolution of this Government, and its reconstruction with a large Liberal infusion, including himself, a combination devoutly to be desired, and as the great Whig party must constitute the main strength of such a Government, it was very desirable that he should avoid giving umbrage to them, and exciting hostile feelings against himself as much as he could and that I wished when he thought himself obliged to oppose them, that he would tell them so fairly and amicably. He might prevent many things being done, and at all events it would obviate much of the bitterness that otherwise was sure to arise, and that as he was now on such good terms with John Russell he could very easily do this, and could speak to him at any time. He said he and John Russell were very good friends, but that all the rest hated him. He had nothing to complain of on the part of John Russell in the last transactions, but he thought he had on that of the others, and he knew very well they did not desire his junction with them, and were very glad it had failed. And while he took the same view that I do of the necessity of widening considerably the basis of the Administration, and taking in men from the Liberal ranks, he said nothing of the kind was contemplated the other day. We had a great deal of talk, and I gathered that the present state of his mind and opinions is this. He thinks Stanley is ready to take the Government, but not just yet; that he is prepared to push the Ministers later in the Session, and drive them out; then to dissolve, and if such a Parliament as he hopes and expects be returned, that Palmerston will join him and lead the House of Commons, Stratford Canning taking the Foreign Office (as he fancied) till Palmerston joined. We parted, and I undertook to find out for him what the Government really meant to do, and whether they did intend strenuously to resist any attempt to make the Anti-Papal Bill more stringent, and he promised that he would communicate more frankly and freely with John Russell in respect to any matters of difference, and when he was disposed to take any adverse part.