Bowood, January 12th, 1853.—I came here on Monday to meet the Cannings, Harcourt,[1] and Lady Waldegrave, the Bessboroughs, Elphinstone, Senior, and the family. Senior talked to me about the Government and Reform, and the danger of their splitting on the latter question and propounded a scheme he has for obviating this danger. He wants to have a Royal Commission to enquire into the practice of bribery at elections and the means of preventing it, or, if possible, to have an enquiry of a more extensive and comprehensive character into the state of the representation and the working of the Reform Bill. We talked it over, and I told him I thought this would not be a bad expedient. He had already spoken to Lord Lansdowne about it, who seemed not averse to the idea, and promised to talk to Lord John Russell on the subject. Senior, when he went away, begged me to talk to Lord Lansdowne also, which I attempted to do, but without success, for he seemed quite indisposed to enter upon it.
[1] [George Granville Harcourt, Esq., M.P., eldest son of the Archbishop of York, and third husband of Frances, Countess of Waldegrave.]
Beaudesert, January 19th.—To town on Saturday and here on Monday, with the Flahaults, Bessboroughs, Ansons, my brothers and the family. Lord Anglesey and M. de Flahault talk over their campaigns, and compare notes on the events of Sir John Moore's retreat and other military operations, in which they have served in opposing armies. Flahault was aide-de-camp to Marshal Berthier till the middle of the Russian campaign, when he became aide-de-camp to Napoleon, whom he never quitted again till the end of his career. His accounts of what he has seen and known are curious and interesting. He says that one of the Emperor's greatest mistakes and the causes of his misfortunes was his habit of ordering everything, down to the minutest arrangement, himself, and leaving so little to the discretion and responsibility of his generals and others that they became mere machines, and were incapable of acting, or afraid to act, on their own judgements. On several occasions great calamities were the consequence of this unfortunate habit of Napoleon's.
LORD JOHN'S ARRANGEMENT DISAPPROVED.
London, January 24th.—The Duke of Bedford called here this morning. I had not seen him for an age; he was just come from Windsor with a budget of matter, which as usual he was in such a hurry that he had not time to tell me. I got a part of it, however. I began by asking him how he had left them all at Windsor, to which he replied that the state of things was not very satisfactory. The Queen disapproved Lord John's arrangement for giving up the seals of the Foreign Office on a given day (the 15th February) which had not been previously explained to her Majesty, as it ought to have been. She said that she should make no objection if any good reason could be assigned for what was proposed, either of a public or a private nature, any reason connected with his health or with the transaction of business, but she thought, and she is right, that fixing beforehand a particular day, without any special necessity occurring, is very unreasonable and absurd. Then they are all very angry with Lord John for an exceeding piece of folly of his, in announcing to the Foreign Ministers, the day he received them, that he was only to be at the Foreign Office for a few weeks. This, as the Duke said, was a most unwise and improper communication, particularly as it was made without any concert with Aberdeen, and without his knowledge, and, in fact, blurted out with the same sort of levity that was apparent in the Durham letter and the Reform announcement, with both of which he has been so bitterly reproached, and which have proved so inconvenient that it might have been thought he would not fall again into similar scrapes. The Foreign Ministers themselves were exceedingly astonished, and not a little annoyed. Brunnow said it was a complete mockery, and they all felt that it was unsatisfactory to be put in relation with a Foreign Secretary who was only to be there for a few weeks.
The Queen is delighted to have got rid of the late Ministers. She felt, as everybody else does, that their Government was disgraced by its shuffling and prevarication, and she said that Harcourt's pamphlet (which was all true) was sufficient to show what they were.[1] As she is very honourable and true herself, it was natural she should disapprove their conduct.
DISRAELI AND THE IRISH BRIGADE.
Yesterday Delane called on me, and gave me an account of a curious conversation he had had with Disraeli. Disraeli asked him to call on him, which he did, when they talked over recent events and the fall of the late Government, very frankly, it would seem, on Disraeli's part. He acknowledged that he had been bitterly mortified. When Delane asked him, 'now it was all over,' what made him produce such a Budget, he said, if he had not been thwarted and disappointed, he should have carried it by the aid of the Irish Brigade whom he had engaged for that purpose. Just before the debate, one of them came to him and said, if he would agree to refer Sharman Crawford's Tenant Right Bill to the Select Committee with the Government Bill, they would all vote with him. He thought this too good a bargain to miss, and he closed with his friend on those terms, told Walpole what he had arranged, desired him to carry out the bargain, and the thing was done. No sooner was the announcement made than Lord Naas and Sir Joseph Napier[2] (who had never been informed) came in a great fury to Disraeli and Walpole, complained of the way they had been treated, and threatened to resign. With great difficulty he pacified or rather silenced them, and he was in hopes the storm had blown over, but the next day he found Naas and Napier had gone to Lord Derby with their complaints, and he now found the latter full of wrath and indignation likewise; for Lord Roden, who had heard something of this compromise (i.e. of the Tenant Right Bill being referred to Committee), announced his intention of asking Lord Derby a question in the House of Lords. Added to this, as soon as the news reached Dublin, Lord Eglinton and Blackburne testified the same resentment as Naas and Napier had done, and threatened to resign likewise. All this produced a prodigious flare up. Disraeli represented that it was his business to make the Budget succeed by such means as he could, that the votes of the Brigade would decide it either way, and that he had made a very good bargain, as he had pledged himself to nothing more, and never had any intention of giving any suite to what had been done, so that it could not signify. He did not succeed in appeasing Lord Derby, who, a night or two after in the Lords, repudiated all participation in what had been done, and attacked the Irishmen very bitterly. Disraeli heard this speech, and saw at once that it would be fatal to the Budget and to them, as it proved, for the whole Brigade voted in a body against the Government, and gave a majority to the other side. He seemed in pretty good spirits as to the future, though without for the present any definite purpose. He thinks the bulk of the party will keep together. Delane asked him what he would have done with such a Budget if he had carried it.
He said they should have remodelled their Government, Palmerston and Gladstone would have joined them (Gladstone after the debate and their duel!); during the intervening two or three months the Budget would have been discussed in the country, what was liked retained, what was unpopular altered, and in the end they should have produced a very good Budget which the country would have taken gladly. He never seems to have given a thought to any consideration of political morality, honesty, or truth, in all that he said. The moral of the whole is, that let what will happen it will be very difficult to bring Lord Derby and Disraeli together again. They must regard each other with real, if not avowed, distrust and dislike. Disraeli said that Derby's position in life and his fortune were so different from his, that their several courses must be influenced accordingly. It is easy to conceive how Lord Derby, embarked (no matter how or why) in such a contest, should strain every nerve to succeed and fight it out; but the thing once broken up, he would not be very likely to place himself again in such a situation, and to encounter the endless difficulties, dangers, and mortifications attendant upon the lead of such a party, and above all the necessity of trusting entirely to such a colleague as Disraeli in the House of Commons without one other man of a grain of capacity besides. As it is, he will probably betake himself to the enjoyment of his pleasures and pursuits, till he is recalled to political life by some fresh excitement and interest that time and circumstances may throw in his way; but let what will happen, I doubt his encountering again the troubles and trammels of office.[3]