The new Court is nearly completed, and we have succeeded in obtaining a very respectable and proper one, notwithstanding the run which the Party made upon it which had been formerly used to settle these matters, to their liking only. The Government is not a united one, however, by any means. Mr Wood and Lord Clarendon take the greatest credit in having induced Lord Grey to join the Government,16 and are responsible to Lord John to keep him quiet, which they think they will be able to do, as he had been convinced of the folly of his former line of conduct. Still, they say Lord Lansdowne will have the lead only nominally, that Lord Grey is to take it really in the House of Lords. There is the Grey Party, consisting of Lord Grey, Lord Clarendon, Sir George Grey, and Mr Wood; they are against Lord Lansdowne, Lord Minto, Lord Auckland, and Sir John Hobhouse, stigmatising them as old women. Lord John leans entirely to the last-named gentlemen. There is no cordiality between Lord John and Lord Palmerston, who, if he had to make a choice, would even forget what passed in December last, and join the Grey Party in preference to Lord John personally. The curious part of all this is that they cannot keep a secret, and speak of all their differences. They got the Times over by giving it exclusive information, and the leading articles are sent in and praise the new Cabinet, but the wicked paper added immediately a furious attack upon Sir John Hobhouse, which alarmed them so much that they sent to Sir John, sounding him, whether he would be hereafter prepared to relinquish the Board of Control. (This, however, is a mere personal matter of Mr Walter, who stood against Sir John at Nottingham in 1841 and was unseated.) Sir John Easthope, the proprietor of the Morning Chronicle, complains bitterly of the subserviency to the Times and treason to him. He says he knows that the information was sent from Lord John's house, and threatens revenge. "If you will be ruled by the Times," he said to one of the Cabinet, "the Times has shown you already by a specimen that you will be ruled by a rod of iron."
Footnote 16: In spite of the opposition of the latter to Palmerston's re-appointment to the Foreign Office. See ante, [p. 60].
A Brevet for the Army and Navy is proposed, in order to satisfy Lord Anglesey with the dignity of Field-Marshal.
Albert.
The Protectionists, 150 strong, including Peers and M.P.'s, are to give a dinner to Lord Stanley at Greenwich, at which he is to announce his opinions upon the line they are to take. Lord George Bentinck is there to lay down the lead which the Party insisted upon. Who is to follow him as their leader in the Commons nobody knows.
Queen Victoria to the King of the Belgians.
Buckingham Palace, 7th July 1846.
My dearest Uncle,—I have to thank you for your kind letter of the 3rd. It arrived yesterday, which was a very hard day for me. I had to part with Sir R. Peel and Lord Aberdeen, who are irreparable losses to us and the Country; they were both so much overcome that it quite overset me, and we have in them two devoted friends. We felt so safe with them. Never, during the five years that they were with me, did they ever recommend a person or a thing which was not for my or the Country's best, and never for the Party's advantage only; and the contrast now is very striking; there is much less respect and much less high and pure feeling. Then the discretion of Peel, I believe, is unexampled.
A WEAK GOVERNMENT