[1] [Lord John Russell insisted on taking the office of Lord President of the Council, which has always been held by a peer, and to effect this change Earl Granville was removed from the higher office of Lord President to that of Chancellor of the Duchy. The Right Honourable Edward Strutt, who had been Chancellor of the Duchy with a seat in the Cabinet, was dismissed from office, but he was subsequently raised to the peerage with the title of Lord Belper. This transaction reflected no credit on the author of it, who consulted nothing but his own dignity and convenience.]
June 21st.—At St. Leonards last week for Ascot races, where I got wet, and have been ever since confined with the gout. The 'Times,' though by way of supporting the Government, went on violently attacking John Russell about the recent changes. Lord John was very well received in the City at his election, and at the opening of the Crystal Palace he was more cheered than anybody. This morning the Duke of Bedford came here and told me he had had a good deal of conversation with his brother about this business, to which he (the Duke) had been a stranger while it was going on. Lord John said that when the Government was formed he had proposed to Aberdeen that he should be President of the Council, but Aberdeen had objected on the score of its being so unusual, therefore he was only going back to his original design. He had an invincible repugnance to taking the Duchy of Lancaster or any inferior office. Both when the Government was formed and now, he would have much preferred to have kept aloof, and to have led in the House of Commons that section of the Whig party which would have followed him, but he found this impossible, and as the Government could not have been formed without him, and could not now go on without him, he was obliged to sacrifice his own inclination. I said I could not conceive why he could not go on as he was till the end of the session, and then settle it, that his pushing out Granville had a very ungracious appearance, and he would have done much better to take the sinecure office of the Duchy, it being quite absurd to suppose that he could be degraded by holding any office, no matter what. The Duke owned it would have been better to wait till Parliament was up before anything was done, and he regarded the question of the particular office much as I do.
There was a discussion in the House of Lords on Monday night on the war, when Lyndhurst made a grand speech, wonderful at his age—82; he spoke for an hour and a quarter with as much force and clearness as at any time of his life: it was greatly admired. Clarendon spoke well and strongly, and elicited expressions of satisfaction from Derby, after whom Aberdeen rose, and imprudently spoke in the sense of desiring peace, a speech which has been laid hold of, and drawn down upon him a renewal of the violent abuse with which he has been all along assailed. I see nothing in his speech to justify the clamour, but it was very ill judged in him with his antecedents to say what he did, which malignity could so easily lay hold of.
LORD JOHN RUSSELL VOTES WITH THE TORIES.
June 25th.—There never was such a state of things as that which now exists between the Government, the Party, and the House of Commons. John Russell made such a hash of it last week, and put himself and his Government in such a position, that nothing but the war, and the impossibility which everybody feels there is of making any change of Government in the midst of it, prevents the immediate downfall of this Administration. Last week John Russell opposed the motion for the abolition of Church rates in a flaming High Tory and Church speech. The motion was rejected by a slender majority, but his speech gave great offence to the Liberal party and his own friends. Immediately afterwards came on the motion in the University Bill for admitting Dissenters to the University. This John Russell opposed again, although in his speech he declared he was in favour of the admission of Dissenters, but he objected to the motion on various grounds. The result was that he went into the lobby with Disraeli and the whole body of the Tories, while the whole of the Liberal party and all his own friends and supporters went against him and defeated him by a majority of 91. He took with him six or seven of his colleagues, and two or three of the underlings. Molesworth, Bernal Osborne, and some more stayed away, and some others voted in the majority. In the majority were found Christopher and a few Tories besides, who, however, only voted with the object and hope of damaging the bill itself and procuring its rejection in the House of Lords. Never was man placed in so deplorable and humiliating a position as John Russell, and nothing can exceed his folly and mismanagement in getting himself into such a scrape. The indignation and resentment of the Liberals are boundless, and I think he has completely put an extinguisher on himself as a statesman and as the leader of a party; they never will forgive him or feel any confidence in him again. There was a capital article on him and his proceedings in the 'Times' yesterday, which was not acrimonious, like some others on him, and was perfectly just and true.
The victorious Liberals managed their affairs very ill. Instead of resting satisfied with a victory which must have been decisive (for after all the House of Commons had affirmed the principle of admitting the Dissenters by so large a majority, neither the House of Lords nor the University would have ventured to oppose it), they imprudently pressed on another division[1] in which they were beaten, though by a small majority, and this of course does away with a good deal of the effect of the first division. Between the recent changes which were universally distasteful, and his extraordinary maladroitness in these questions, Lord John is fallen prodigiously in public favour and opinion, and while he is, or has been till very recently, dreaming of again being Prime Minister, it is evident that he is totally unfit to be the leader of the Government in the House of Commons even in a subordinate post. He communicates with nobody, he has no confidence in or sympathy with any one, he does not impart his intentions or his wishes to his own political followers, and does not ask to be informed of theirs, but he buries himself at Richmond and only comes forth to say and do everything that is most imprudent and unpopular.
The House of Commons is in a state of complete anarchy, and nobody has any hold on it; matters, bad enough through John Russell, are made worse by Aberdeen, whose speech the other night has made a great, but I think unnecessary clamour; and Layard, who is his bitter enemy, took it up in the House of Commons, and has given notice of a motion on it which is equivalent to a vote of censure. Almost at the same moment Aberdeen, with questionable prudence and dignity, gave notice in the Lords that on Monday he should explain the speech he made the other night. Layard's design can hardly be matured, because they never can permit a speech made in one House of Parliament to be made the subject of a motion and debate in the other. It is, however, incontestable that clamour and misrepresentation have succeeded in raising a vast prejudice against Aberdeen, and that he is exceedingly unpopular.
The people are wild about this war, and besides the general confidence that we are to obtain very signal success in our naval and military operations, there is a violent desire to force the Emperor to make a very humiliating peace, and a strong conviction that he will very soon be compelled to do so. This belief is the cause of the great rise which has been taking place in the public securities, and all sorts of stories are rife of the terror and dislike of the war which prevail in Russia, and of the agitation and melancholy in which the Emperor is said to be plunged. But the authentic accounts from St. Petersburg tell a very different tale. They say, and our Consul just arrived from St. Petersburg confirms the statement, that the Emperor is calm and resolute, that his popularity is very great, and the Russians of all classes enthusiastic in his cause, and that they are prepared to a man to sacrifice their properties and their lives in a vigorous prosecution of the war.
[1] It seems it was Mr. Walpole who insisted on the second division, which he did for the express purpose of neutralising the effect of the first, hoping to get a majority, which he did, and it was rather dexterously done.
UNPOPULARITY OF LORD ABERDEEN.