He thinks the Duke is annoyed, more particularly at the King's not treating him well, and at his Government not being well supported.
In fact, however, it is a Government which will not fall, for the King hates the Whigs; the people do not regard them. He may like the Tories, but he knows they cannot make a Government, and the Duke's Administration has four-fifths of the country.
Received a letter from the Duke, telling me he had settled Colonel
McDonald's knighthood, and asking me if I should be ready to talk about
India on the 13th. I said about Batta certainly; about India I had rather
talk first to Lord Melville and him.
Wrote to the Duchess of Kent telling her a Bengal cavalry cadetship was at her disposal for the son of Colonel Harvey.
There is a very interesting letter from an English officer at Adrianople with respect to the state of the Russian army. It has suffered and suffers most dreadfully.
I told Aberdeen if I had seen the account of the conversation between Lord Heytesbury and the Emperor Nicholas before I read his proposed letter, I should have suggested that much stress should have been laid upon the effect the downfall of Turkey would have upon affairs in France.
Polignac seems confident he can stand. He thinks he has the Chambers. The French behave ill in the settlement of the Greek business, and object altogether to our man, Prince Philip of Hesse Homburg. They equally object to Prince Frederick of Orange, and to Prince Leopold, whom Russia would have had willingly. I wonder Aberdeen did not laugh when he was proposed. They want to settle the thing without a Prince. I suppose they want a Frenchman.
Aberdeen is for settling Greece as a Power into whose lap the broken parts of Turkey may fall. He gives up Euboea. That is, the surrender of Euboea is to be proposed to the Porte, with a frontier limited in other respects, instead of the protocol of March 22.
The Turks who have left the Morea have no indemnity. The Turks who are in the other parts of the new Greece remain. It is altogether a wonderful business. These anti-revolutionary States combining to revolutionise a rebellious province of an unoffending ally!
November 11.