There has been alarm at Carlisle. The officers in command of the castle apprehended an attempt to surprise it and seize the arms. Men had been seen measuring the wall. Sir J. Graham was alarmed about it. Orders will be given to provision for thirty days all the places where arms are kept, the town included, where there are 600,000 stand of arms. In the meantime all classes are more comfortable in this country than they ever were, and this alone keeps down insurrection. There are leaders but no troops.
Hardinge reports that the spirit in Ireland is disimproved since the events in Belgium.
There is to be an Anti-Union Society, which, as soon as it meets, will be put down under the Act.
October 12.
At nine went to Apsley House. Met the Chairs. We went in to the Duke. Our conversation lasted two hours. As they are to send in a procès verbal, it is unnecessary for me to state it. The substance was that, supposing the monopoly to be taken away, they would administer the Government of India as heretofore on one of two conditions; either closing their account with the public and receiving payment in full, or an equivalent annuity for all their property in India, in which case they would require no guarantee of the present dividend; or making over all their property, and taking a perpetual guarantee of the dividend.
The public to make good in either case all deficiency of Indian revenue, and in either case the Company to be the agents for the territory, providing all necessary sums here and receiving repayment at a rate of exchange to be paid from time to time fairly.
The Chairs were given to understand that the public being liable to the making good of Indian deficiency, we should require a strict control over the whole expenditure here, as well as in India.
They show, especially Campbell, a disposition to leave off trading and become gentlemen. They were told by the Duke that if they did so we must be at liberty to revise our arrangement with them. We might as well go to the Bank as to them, if we were to treat with a body not commercial.
The Duke seems much pleased with his foreign prospects.
M. de Choiseul was waiting to see him. I suppose on the affair of Holyrood
House.