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Title: The Greville Memoirs, Part 1 (of 3), Volume 3 (of 3)

Author: Charles Greville

Editor: Henry Reeve

Release date: December 3, 2009 [eBook #30591]
Most recently updated: January 5, 2021

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Transcriber’s Note:

In this work, all spellings and punctuation were reproduced from the
original work except in the very few cases where an obvious typo
occurred. These typos are corrected without comment.

In the original volumes in this set, each even-numbered page had a
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The Greville Memoirs

A JOURNAL OF THE REIGNS

OF

KING GEORGE IV.

AND

KING WILLIAM IV.

BY THE LATE

Charles C. F. Greville, Esq.
CLERK OF THE COUNCIL TO THOSE SOVEREIGNS

EDITED BY

HENRY REEVE
REGISTRAR OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL

IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. III.

Second Edition

LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1874

INDEX.

Contents of the Third Volume
CHAPTER XXI.

Dinner at Greenwich — Monk Lewis — The King’s Letter —
Lord Althorp’s Finance — Salutes to the Royal Family — Death
of Lord Dover — His Character — Lyndhurst and Brougham on
the Local Courts Bill — Charles Napier captures the Miguelite
Fleet — The Irish Church Bill — The Duke of Wellington and
the Bonapartes — Blount’s Preaching — Sir Robert Peel on
Political Unions — Mr. George Villiers appointed to Madrid —
Duke of Richmond — Suspension Clause in Irish Church Bill
— Apprenticeship Clause in West India Bill — State of House
of Commons — Lucien and Joseph Bonaparte — Lord Plunket
— Denis Lemarchant — Brougham and Sugden — Princess
Lieven — Anecdotes of the Emperor Nicholas — Affairs of
Portugal — Don Miguel at Strathfieldsaye — Prorogation of
Parliament — Results of the Reform Bill.

CHAPTER XXII.

The Speaker a Knight of the Bath — Lord Wellesley Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland — M. Thiers in England — Prince
Esterhazy’s Opinion of the State of England — Queen of
Portugal at Windsor — The Duke of Leuchtenberg — Macaulay
and Sydney Smith — Brougham’s Anecdotes of Queen Caroline
— Judicial Committee of the Privy Council — Sir Stratford
Canning and M. Dedel — Sydney Smith and the ‘Siege of
Saragossa’ — Edward Irving — The Unknown Tongues —
Tribute to Lord Eldon — W.J. Fox — Lord Tavistock on the
Prospects of his Party — Moore at the State Paper Office —
Russia and England — Belvoir Castle — The Duke of
Wellington at Belvoir — Visit to Mrs. Arkwright — Sir Thomas
Lawrence and the Misses Siddons — A Murder at Runton —
Sandon — Lord and Lady Harrowby — Burghley — Railroads

talked of — Gloomy Tory Prognostications — State of Spain —
Parliament opens — Quarrel of Sheil and Lord Althorp —
Unpopularity of Lord Palmerston — Mrs. Somerville —
O’Connell’s Attack on Baron Smith — Lord Althorp’s Budget
— The Pension List — Lord Althorp as Leader of the House —
Sir R. Peel’s Position in the House — Meeting of Supporters of
Government — Mr. Villiers on the State of Spain —
Predicament of Horne, the Attorney-General

CHAPTER XXIII.

Spain — Russia and Turkey — Sir R. Peel’s Pictures — Peel
and Stanley — Lord Brougham’s Judicial Changes — Lord
Brougham’s Defence — Admission of Dissenters to the
Universities — Lord Denman’s Peerage — Growing
Ascendancy of Peel — An Apology for Lord Brougham —
Personal Reflections — Crime in Dorsetshire — Spain and
Portugal — Procession of the Trades’ Unions — Lady
Hertford’s Funeral — Petition of the London University for a
Charter — Repeal of the Union — Excitement of the King —
Brougham and Eldon at the Privy Council — Duke of
Wellington’s Aversion to the Whigs — Lord Brougham and
Lord Wynford — Fête at Petworth — Lord Brougham’s
Conduct on the Pluralities Bill — Crisis in the Cabinet — Prince
Lieven recalled — Stanley, Graham, and the Duke of Richmond
resign on the Irish Church Bill — History of the Crisis —
Ward’s Motion defeated by moving the previous Question —
Affairs of Portugal — Effects of the late Change — Oxford
Commemoration — Peel’s Declaration — Festival in
Westminster Abbey — Don Carlos on his way to Spain —
Stanley’s ‘Thimble-rig’ Speech — Resignation of Lord Grey —
Mr. Greville’s account of the Causes of his Retirement — The
Government reconstituted by Lord Melbourne — Lord
Duncannon Secretary of State

CHAPTER XXIV.

Taylor’s ‘Philip Van Artevelde’ — Goodwood — Earl Bathurst’s
Death — Death of Mrs. Arbuthnot — Overtures to O’Connell
— Irish Tithe Bill — Theodore Hook’s Improvisation — Lord
Westmeath’s Case in the Privy Council — First Council of Lord
Melbourne’s Government and Prorogation — Brougham’s
Vagaries — Lord Durham’s Exclusion — The Edinburgh Dinner
— Windsor and Meiningen — Spencer Perceval — Lord Grey’s
Retirement — The Westmeath Case again — The Queen’s
Return — Melbourne and Tom Young — Holland House —
Reflections — Conversation on the Poets — Miscellaneous Chat
— Lord Melbourne’s Literary Attainments — Lord Holland’s
Anecdotes of Great Orators — Execution of Charles I. — Lord
Melbourne’s Opinion of Henry VIII. — The ‘Times’ attacks
Lord Brougham — His Tour in Scotland — His Unpopularity —
Cowper’s Secret — Canning on Reform — Lord Melbourne on
Palmerston and Brougham — Canning and Brougham in 1827
— Senior — Lord Melbourne and the Benthamites — His
Theology — Spanish Eloquence — The Harley Papers — The
Turf — Death of Lord Spencer — The Westmeath Case heard
— Law Appointments — Bickersteth — Louis Philippe’s
Position.

CHAPTER XXV.

Fall of Lord Melbourne’s Government — History and Causes of
this Event — An Intrigue — Effect of the Coup at Holland
House — The Change of Government — The two Camps —
The King’s Address to the New Ministers — The Duke’s
Account of the Transaction — And Lord Lyndhurst’s —
Difficult Position of the Tories — Their Policy — The Duke in
all the Offices — Negotiation with Mr. Barnes — Power of the
‘Times’ — Another Address of the King — Brougham offers to
be Lord Chief Baron — Mr. Barnes dines with Lord Lyndhurst
— Whig View of the Recent Change — Liberal Views of the
Tory Ministers — The King resolved to support them —
Another Account of the Interview between the King and Lord
Melbourne — Lord Stanley’s Position — Sydney Smith’s

Preaching at St. Paul’s — Lord Duncannon and Lord Melbourne
— Relations of the four Seceders to Peel — Young Disraeli —
Lord Melbourne’s Speeches at Derby — Lord John Russell’s
Speech at Totness — The Duke of Wellington’s Inconsistencies
and Conduct

CHAPTER XXVI.

Sir R. Peel arrives — The First Council — The King’s Address
— Lord Stanley and Sir J. Graham decline to join the
Government — Lord Wharncliffe and Sir E. Knatchbull join —
The Ministers sworn in — Peel’s Address to his Constituents —
Dinner at the Mansion House — Offer to Lord Roden —
Prospects of the Election — Stanley’s Want of Influence —
Pozzo di Borgo’s Views — Russia and England — Nomination
of Lord Londonderry to St. Petersburg — Parliament dissolved
— State of the Constituencies — A Governor-General for India
— Sebastiani and St. Aulaire — Anecdote of Princess
Metternich — The City Elections — Lord Lyndhurst’s View of
the Government — Violence of the Opposition — Close Contest
at Rochester — Sydney Herbert — Sir John Hobhouse’s Views
— Anecdotes — County Elections — The Queen supposed to be
with Child — Church Reform — Dinner of Ministers — Story
of La Roncière — The King’s Crotchets

CHAPTER XXVII.

The Speakership — Temporary Houses of Parliament — Church
Reform — Dissenters’ Marriage Bill — Peel’s False Position —
Burke — Palmerston’s Talents as a Man of Business and
Unpopularity — Sympathy of Continental Courts with the
Tories — Abercromby elected Speaker — Defeat of the
Government — Tactics of the Opposition — The Speaker does
not dine with Peel — Meeting of Stanley’s Friends — Debate on
the Address — Lord John Russell leads the Opposition — The
Stanley Party — Second Defeat of the Government — Peel’s
Ability — The Lichfield House Meeting — Debate on Lord
Londonderry’s Appointment — His Speech in the Lords and

Resignation — Sir E. Sudgen resigns the Great Seal of Ireland
— Lady Canterbury — Brougham in the House of Lords —
Peel’s Readiness and Courage — Lord Canterbury and Stratford
Canning proposed for Canada — Approaching Fall of the Peel
Government — Meetings of the Opposition — Further Defeat
— Sir Robert Peel’s own View of the State of Affairs — He
resigns

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Lord Grey and Sir James Graham express Conservative Views
— Opinions of Lord Stanley — Lord Grey sees the King, but is
not asked to resume Office — Lord Melbourne’s Second
Administration — His Moderation — A Difficulty — Spring
Rice — A Joyless Victory — Exclusion of Brougham — The
New Cabinet — Lord John Russell defeated in Devonshire —
Lord Alvanley and O’Connell — Duel with Morgan O’Connell
— Lord Wellesley resigns the Lord Stewardship — The Eliot
Convention — Swift v. Kelly — The Kembles — London
University Charter discussed at the Privy Council —
Corporation Reform — Formation of the Conservative Party —
The King’s Habits — Secretaryship of Jamaica — Lord
Melbourne’s Tithe Bill — The Pope rejects the
Recommendation of the British Government — Relations with
Rome — Carlists and Christinos in Spain — Walcheren — The
King’s Address to Sir Charles Grey — Stanley and Graham
cross the House — Failure of Stanley’s Tactics — Alava and the
Duke of Cumberland — A Sinecure Placeman — Lord Glenelg
and the King — Concert at Stafford House — The King’s
Aversion to his Ministers and to the Speaker — Decision on the
Secretaryship of Jamaica — Archbishop Whateley — Irish
Church Bill — Payment of Catholic Clergy — Peel and Lord
John Russell — Factious Conduct of Tory Peers — The King’s
Violence — Debate on the Corporation Bill

CHAPTER XXIX.

Resistance of the Lords — Duke of Richmond — Happiness —
Struggle between Lords and Commons — Peel keeps aloof —
Inconsistency of the Whigs on the Irish Church Bill — Violent
Language in the Lords — Lord John Russell and Peel pass the
Corporation Bill — Dissolution of the Tory Party foreseen —
Meeting of Peers to consider the Amendments — King’s Speech
in Council on the Militia — Lord Howick’s Bitterness against
the Lords — Lord Lyndhurst’s Opinion of the Corporation Bill
— The King’s Language on the Regency — Talleyrand’s View
of the English Alliance — Comparison of Burke and
Mackintosh — The St. Leger — Visit of Princess Victoria to
Burghley — O’Connell’s Progress through Scotland —
Mackintosh’s Life

CHAPTER XXX.

Emperor Nicholas’s Speech at Warsaw — His Respect for
Opinion in England — Burdett proposes the Expulsion of
O’Connell from Brooks’s — Club Law — George Villiers at
Madrid — Lord Segrave Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire —
Dispute between France and America — Allen’s Account of
Mackintosh and Melbourne — Prolongation of a Patent —
Should Dr. Arnold be made a Bishop? — Frederic Elliot —
O’Connell’s mischievous Influence — Bretby — Chesterfield
MSS. — The Portfolio — Lord Cottenham and Lord Langdale
— Opening of Parliament — The Judicial Committee — Poulett
Thomson at the Board of Trade — Mr. Perceval’s Interviews
with the Ministers — Prospects of the Tories — Lord Stanley’s
Relations to them — Holland House Anecdotes — Mischievous
Effects of the Division on his Address — The Youth of
Macaulay — Brougham and Macaulay — Lord William
Bentinck — Review of Sir R. Peel’s Conduct — Dr. Hampden’s
Appointment — The Orange Lodges

CHAPTER XXXI.

Moore and O’Connell — Defeat of the Opposition — The
Carlow Election — Lord Alvanley’s Speech to the Tory Peers —

Norton v. Lord Melbourne — Catastrophe after Epsom —
Mendizabal and Queen Christina — Lord John Russell’s
Moderation in the Ecclesiastical Commission — Theatricals at
Bridgewater House — Irish Church — Ministerial Difficulties
— Deplorable State of Spain — What was thought of Lord
Palmerston in 1836 — Weakness of Government — Lord
Lyndhurst’s Summary of the Session — Balance of Parties —
Lady Augusta Kennedy’s Marriage — King’s Speech to Princess
Victoria — Revolution of La Granja — Rudeness of the King to
Ministers — Irritation of the King at the Duchess of Kent —
Scene at Windsor on the King’s Birthday — Prince Esterhazy’s
View of the Affairs of Europe — Emperor Nicholas at Vienna
— A Crisis in Trade — State of the Court at Vienna — Duc de
Reichstadt

CHAPTER XXXII.

Crisis in the City — The Chancellor of the Exchequer — A
Journey to Paris — Lord Lyndhurst in Paris — Princess Lieven
— Parties in France — Berryer — The Strasburg Conspirators
— Rotten State of France — Presentation at the Tuileries —
Ball at the Tuileries — Bal Musard — Lord Granville — The
Due de Broglie — Position of the Duc d’Orleans — Return to
England — Conservative Reaction — Sheil’s Tirade against
Lord Lyndhurst — Lyndhurst as a Tory Leader — Angry Debate
on Church Rates — The Government on the Brink of
Resignation — Sir R. Peel’s Prospects — The King and Lord
Aylmer — Death of Mrs. Fitzherbert — Ministerial
Compromise — Westminster Election — Majority of the
Princess Victoria — The King’s Illness — The King’s Letter to
the Princess — Preparations for the Council — Sir E. Peel on
the Prospects of the New Reign — Prayers ordered for the
King’s Recovery — Affairs of Lord Ponsonby — Death of King
William IV. — First Council of Queen Victoria — The Queen
proclaimed — Character of William IV

A JOURNAL
OF THE
REIGN OF KING WILLIAM THE
FOURTH

CHAPTER XXI.
Dinner at Greenwich — Monk Lewis — The King’s Letter —
Lord Althorp’s Finance — Salutes to the Royal Family — Death
of Lord Dover — His Character — Lyndhurst and Brougham on
the Local Courts Bill — Charles Napier captures the Miguelite
Fleet — The Irish Church Bill — The Duke of Wellington and
the Bonapartes — Blount’s preaching — Sir Robert Peel on
Political Unions — Mr. George Villiers appointed to Madrid —
Duke of Richmond — Suspension Clause in Irish Church Bill
— Apprenticeship Clause in West India Bill — State of House
of Commons — Lucien and Joseph Bonaparte — Lord Plunket
— Denis Lemarchant — Brougham and Sugden — Princess
Lieven — Anecdotes of the Emperor Nicholas — Affairs of
Portugal — Don Miguel at Strathfieldsaye — Prorogation of
Parliament — Results of the Reform Bill.

June 29th, 1833
I am going, if not too lazy, to note down the everyday nothings of my
life, and see what it looks like.
We dined yesterday at Greenwich, the dinner given by Sefton, who
took the whole party in his omnibus, and his great open carriage;
Talleyrand, Madame de Dino, Standish, Neumann, and the Molyneux
family; dined in a room called ‘the Apollo’ at the Crown and Sceptre. I
thought we should never get Talleyrand up two narrow perpendicular
staircases, but he sidles and wriggles himself somehow into every place he
pleases. A capital dinner, tolerably pleasant, and a divine evening. Went
afterwards to the ‘Travellers,’ and played at whist, and read the new edition
of ‘Horace Walpole’s Letters to Sir Horace Mann.’ There is something I

don’t like in his style; his letters don’t amuse me so much as they ought to
do.
A letter this morning from Sir Henry Lushington about Monk Lewis.
He is rather averse to a biographical sketch, because he thinks a true
account of his life and character would not do him credit, and adds a sketch
of the latter, which is not flattering. Lord Melbourne told me the other day a
queer trait of Lewis. He had a long-standing quarrel with Lushington.
Having occasion to go to Naples, he wrote beforehand to him, to say that
their quarrel had better be suspended, and he went and lived with him and
his sister (Lady L.) in perfect cordiality during his stay. When he departed
he wrote to Lushington to say that now they should resume their quarrel,
and put matters in the ‘status quo ante pacem,’ and accordingly he did
resume it, with rather more acharnement than before.
Charles Wood came into my room yesterday, and talked of the King’s
letter, said he understood the Archbishop had imparted it to the seven
Bishops who had voted, that nothing would come of it, for it was a private
letter which nobody had a right to take up. I see the Government are not
displeased at such an evidence of the King’s goodwill. The King and Taylor
both love letter-writing, and both are voluminously inclined. Wood told me
that last year Lord Grey got one letter from them (for Taylor writes and the
King approves) of seven sheets; what a mass of silly verbiage there must
have been to wade through.[1]
[1] [This is not just. The published correspondence of King William IV. and
Earl Grey proves that the King’s letters were written by Sir Herbert Taylor with
the greatest ability.]

July 3rd, 1833
Nothing to put down these last two days, unless I go back to my old
practice of recording what I read, and which I rather think I left off because
I read nothing, and had nothing to put down; but in the last two days I have
read a little of Cicero’s ‘Second Philippic,’ Voltaire’s ‘Siècle de Louis
XIV.,’ Coleridge’s ‘Journey to the West Indies;’ bought some books, went to
the opera to hear Bellini’s ‘Norma,’ and thought it heavy, Pasta’s voice not
what it was. SALUTES TO THE ROYAL FAMILY. Everybody talking yesterday of

Althorp’s exhibition in the House of Commons the night before (for
particulars of which see newspapers and Parliamentary debates). It is too
ludicrous, too melancholy, to think of the finances of this country being
managed by such a man: what will not people endure? What a strange
medley politics produce: a wretched clerk in an office who makes some
unimportant blunder, some clerical error, or who exhibits signs of
incapacity for work, which it does not much signify whether it be well or ill
done, is got rid of, and here this man, this good-natured, popular, liked-and-
laughed-at good fellow, more of a grazier than a statesman, blurts out his
utter ignorance before a Reformed Parliament, and people lift up their eyes,
shrug their shoulders, and laugh and chuckle, but still on he goes.

July 4th, 1833
At Court yesterday, and Council for a foolish business. The King has
been (not unnaturally) disgusted at the Duchess of Kent’s progresses with
her daughter through the kingdom, and amongst the rest with her sailings at
the Isle of Wight, and the continual popping in the shape of salutes to Her
Royal Highness. He did not choose that this latter practice should go on,
and he signified his pleasure to Sir James Graham and Lord Hill, for salutes
are matter of general order, both to army and navy. They (and Lord Grey)
thought it better to make no order on the subject, and they opened a
negotiation with the Duchess of Kent, to induce her of her own accord to
waive the salutes, and when she went to the Isle of Wight to send word that
as she was sailing about for her amusement she had rather they did not
salute her whenever she appeared. The negotiation failed, for the Duchess
insisted upon her right to be saluted, and would not give it up. Kemp told
me he had heard that Conroy (who is a ridiculous fellow, a compound of
‘Great Hussy’ and the Chamberlain of the Princess of Navarre[2]) had said,
‘that as Her Royal Highness’s confidential adviser, he could not
recommend her to give way on this point.’ As she declined to accede to the
proposals, nothing remained but to alter the regulations, and accordingly
yesterday, by an Order in Council, the King changed them, and from this
time the Royal Standard is only to be saluted when the King or the Queen is
on board.

[2] See Sir C. Hanbury Williams’ Poems.

Friday, July 12th, 1833
Went to Newmarket on Sunday, came back yesterday, got back at half-
past nine, went to Crockford’s, and heard on the steps of the house that poor
Dover had died that morning. The accounts I had received at Newmarket
confirmed my previous impression that there was no hope; and, indeed, the
sanguine expectations of his family are only to be accounted for by that
disposition in the human mind to look at the most favourable side, and to
cling with pertinacity to hope when reason bids us despair. There has
seldom been destroyed a fairer scene of happiness and domestic prosperity
than by this event. He dies in the flower of his age, surrounded with all the
elements of happiness, and with no drawback but that of weak health,
which until within the last few months was not sufficiently important to
counterbalance the good, and only amounted to feebleness and delicacy of
constitution; and it is the breaking up of a house replete with social
enjoyment, six or seven children deprived of their father, and a young wife
and his old father overwhelmed with a grief which the former may, but the
latter never can get over, for to him time sufficient cannot in the course of
nature be allotted. Few men could be more generally regretted than Lord
Dover will be by an immense circle of connections and friends for his really
amiable and endearing qualities, by the world at large for the serious loss
which society sustains, and the disappointment of the expectations of what
he one day might have been. He occupied as large a space in society as his
talents (which were by no means first-rate) permitted; but he was clever,
lively, agreeable, good-tempered, good-natured, hospitable, liberal and rich,
a zealous friend, an eager political partisan, full of activity and vivacity,
enjoying life, and anxious that the circle of his enjoyment should be widely
extended. George Agar Ellis was the only son of Lord Clifden, and obtained
early the reputation of being a prodigy of youthful talent and information.
CHARACTER OF LORD DOVER. He was quick, lively, and had a very retentive
memory, and having entered the world with this reputation, and his great
expectations besides, he speedily became one of the most conspicuous
youths of the day. Having imbibed a great admiration for Lord Orford
(Horace Walpole), he evinced a disposition to make him his model, and

took pains to store his mind with that sort of light miscellaneous literature
in which Lord Orford delighted. He got into the House of Commons, but
never was able to speak, never attempted to say more than a few words, and
from the beginning gave up all idea of oratorical distinction. After running
about the world for a few years he resolved to marry, and as his heart had
nothing to do with this determination, he pitched upon a daughter of the
Duke of Beaufort’s, who he thought would suit his purpose, and confer
upon him a very agreeable family connection. Being on a tour in the North,
he intended to finish it at Badminton, and there to propose to Lady
Georgiana Somerset, with full assurance that he should not be rejected; but
having stopped for a few days at Lord Carlisle’s at Castle Howard, he there
found a girl who spared him the trouble of going any further, and at the
expiration of three or four days he proposed in form to Lord Morpeth’s
second daughter, Georgiana Howard, who, not less surprised than pleased
and proud at the conquest she found she had so unconsciously made,
immediately accepted him. There never was a less romantic attachment, or
more business-like engagement, nor was there ever a more fortunate choice
or a happier union. Mild, gentle, and amiable, full of devotion to, and
admiration of her husband, her soft and feminine qualities were
harmoniously blended with his vivacity and animal spirits, and produced
together results not more felicitous for themselves than agreeable to all who
belonged to their society. Soon after his marriage, Ellis, who had never been
vicious or profligate, but who was free from anything like severity or
austerity, began to show symptoms of a devout propensity, and not
contented with an ordinary discharge of religious duties, he read tracts and
sermons, frequented churches and preachings, gave up driving on Sundays,
and appeared in considerable danger of falling into the gulf of methodism;
but this turn did not last long, and whatever induced him to take it up, he
apparently became bored with his self-imposed restrictions, and after a little
while he threw off his short-lived sanctity, and resumed his worldly habits
and irreverent language, for he was always a loose talker. Active and
ambitious in his pursuits, and magnificent in his tastes, he devoted himself
to literature, politics, and society; to the two first with greater success than
would be expected of a man whose talents for composition were below
mediocrity, and for public speaking none at all. He became the patron of
various literary institutions and undertakings connected with the arts, he
took the chair at public meetings for literary or scientific purposes, he read

a good deal and wrote a little. The only work which he put forth of any
consequence was ‘The Life of Frederick II.,’ which contained scarcely any
original matter, and was remarkably barren of original ideas; but as it was a
compilation from several very amusing writers, was not devoid of
entertainment.[3] Though unable to speak in Parliament, he entered warmly
into politics, formed several political intimacies, especially with the
Chancellor (Brougham), and undertook much of the minor Government
work of keeping proxies, making houses (in the House of Lords), and
managing the local details of the House itself. But however contracted his
sphere both in literature and politics, in society his merits were conspicuous
and his success unquestionable. Without a strong understanding, destitute of
fancy and imagination, and with neither eloquence nor wit, he was a
remarkably agreeable man. He was hospitable, courteous, and cordial; he
collected about him the most distinguished persons in every rank and
condition of life. He had a constant flow of animal spirits, much
miscellaneous information, an excellent memory, a great enjoyment of fun
and humour, a refined taste and THE LOCAL COURTS BILL DEFEATED. perfect good
breeding. But his more solid merit was the thorough goodness of his heart,
and the strong and durable nature of his friendships and early attachments.
To the friends of his youth he was bound to the last moment of his life with
unremitting kindness and never-cooling affection; no greater connections or
more ambitious interests cancelled those early ties, and though he was not
unnaturally dazzled and flattered by the later intimacies he contracted, this
never for a moment made him forgetful of or indifferent to his first and less
distinguished friends.
[3] [Lord Dover’s volume on the ‘Man in the Iron Mask’ deserves not to be
altogether forgotten, though more recent researches have proved that his theory
identifying the ‘Iron Mask’ with Mathioli, the captured agent of the Duke of
Parma, cannot be supported.]

The Local Courts Bill was thrown out by twelve. His party made the
amende honorable to Lyndhurst, and went down in a body to back him. He
and Brougham each spoke for two hours or more, and both with
consummate skill, the latter especially in his very best style, and with
extraordinary power and eloquence. It would not perhaps be easy to decide
which made the ablest speech; that of Lyndhurst was clear, logical, and
profound, replete with a sort of judicial weight and dignity, with a fine and
cutting vein of sarcasm constantly peeping from behind a thick veil of

complimentary phraseology. Brougham more various, more imaginative,
more impassioned, more eloquent, and exceedingly dexterous. Unable to
crush Lyndhurst, he resembled one of Homer’s heroes, who, missing his
great antagonist, wreaked his fury on some ignominious foe, and he fell
upon Wynford with overpowering severity. As somebody told me who
heard him, ‘He flayed him alive, and kept rubbing salt upon his back.’ It
appears to have been a great exhibition. There was Lyndhurst after his
speech, drinking tea, not a bit tired, elated and chuckling: ‘Well, how long
will the Chancellor speak, do you think, eh? we shall have some good fun
from him. What lies he will tell, and how he will misrepresent everything!
come, let’s have done our tea, that we mayn’t miss him, eh?’ The truth
seems to be that the Bill is not a good Bill, and is condemned by the
lawyers, that some such measure is required, but that this is nothing more
than a gigantic job, conferring enormous patronage upon the Chancellor.
The debate, however, appears to have afforded a grand display of talent.[4]
[4] [The successful efforts of the Tories to prevent the establishment of a
system of Local Courts of limited jurisdiction, retarded for many years that
important measure to which we, at last, owe the County Courts—now an
institution of the utmost social utility. Nothing can be more characteristic of the
blind bigotry of the Tory party at that time, and the party spirit of Lord
Lyndhurst; for the measure had no bearing upon politics, and was simply a cheap
and easy mode of recovering small debts.]

Macaulay is said to have made an admirable speech last night on the
Indian question in the House of Commons. I observe, by the bye, that very
few of the Bishops voted the other night, but all who did voted with
Government; even Exeter went away before the division, so the King’s
letter seems to have produced some effect. I have had a squabble with Lady
Holland about some nonsense, but she was insolent, so I was fierce, and
then she was civil, as she usually is to those who won’t be bullied by her.

July 12th, 1833
It is extraordinary how little sensation the defeat of Government in the
House of Lords has caused. Everybody talks of the debate, nobody thinks of
the event, but I find several people expect that the Church Bill will be
thrown out, which would be a much more serious thing. I betted Stanley

five pounds to one yesterday that they were not beaten on the second
reading of the Irish Church Bill. I have concluded a bargain with Murray for
Lewis’s journal and sold it him for 400 guineas, the MSS. to be returned to
Lushington, and fifteen copies for him, and five for me, gratis.

July 14th, 1833
Wharncliffe told me yesterday that the Duke and the Opposition do not
mean to throw out the Irish Church Bill on the second reading. He had been
in great alarm himself after the Duke’s speech lest they should, but had
since heard what satisfied him they would not; he said that Sir John
Wrottesley’s motion for a call of the House had given them great offence,
and was an extreme piece of folly, for it was obviously for the purpose of
bullying the House of Lords, who would not be bullied, and this species of
menace only increased the obstinacy of the majority there, but that IRISH
CHURCH BILL. the Duke could command the greater number, and though there
might be a division (as some cannot be restrained from dividing) there
would be no endeavour to throw it out. Thus it is that one folly produces
another: the Duke’s silly speech about the Coronation Oath (a piece of
nonsense quite unworthy of his straightforward, manly sense) produced
Wrottesley’s bravado in the other House. But Wharncliffe says he is
persuaded nothing can prevent a collision between the two Houses
ultimately. There is a great idea that the Government will fall to pieces
before the end of this year. Tavistock told me that Althorp would certainly
go out in a very few months, and that he would go on the turf! Tom
Duncombe is found guilty at Hertford (of a libel), and recommended to
mercy, to the infinite diversion of his friends.

July 15th, 1833
Yesterday came the news of Captain Napier having captured the whole
of Don Miguel’s fleet, to the great delight of the Whigs, and equal
mortification of the Tories. It appears to have been a dashing affair, and
very cowardly on the part of the Miguelites. The day before the news came,
Napier had been struck out of the British Navy.

Met Duncannon in the morning, who was very gloomy about
Wednesday, at the same time saying he rather hoped the Tories would throw
out the Irish Church Bill, for it was impossible to go on as they were now
doing; that if they did, two motions would infallibly be made in the House
of Commons, an address to the Crown to make Peers, and a vote for the
expulsion of the Bishops, and that both would be carried by great
majorities. He talked much of the Irish Church, and of the abominations
that had been going on even under his own eyes. One case he mentions of a
man who holds a living of 1,000ℓ. a year close to Bessborough, whom he
knows. There is no house, no church, and there are no Protestants in the
parish. He went there to be inducted, and dined with Duncannon at
Bessborough the day after. Duncannon asked him how he had managed the
necessary form, and he said he had been obliged to borrow the clerk and
three Protestants from a neighbouring parish, and had read the morning and
evening service to them within the ruined walls of the old Abbey, and they
signed a certificate that he had complied with the forms prescribed by law;
he added that people would no longer endure such things, that no existing
interests were to be touched, and that if remedial measures were still
opposed, the whole fabric would be pulled down. He was still persuaded
that the Opposition meant to throw out the Bill.
In the evening I dined at the Duke of Richmond’s, and found Stanley
informed of the result of the meeting at the Duke of Wellington’s in the
morning, which was decisive on the question. The Duke, after his
extraordinary speech in the House of Lords, when he mounted the old
broken-down hobby of the Coronation Oath and cut a curvet that alarmed
his friends and his enemies, assembled the Tories at Apsley House, and
there, resuming his own good sense, though not very consistently, made
them a speech, and told them that some such measure must be passed, for
nothing else could save the Irish Church: that there were things in this Bill
that he did not approve of at all, but he could not resist its going into
committee, and he finished by announcing that he should either vote for it
or not vote at all, according to circumstances. Lyndhurst goes on the circuit
on Wednesday, so that though there will be a division there will be a large
majority for the Bill, which is the best thing that could happen. Stanley said
there would be a great speech from Lord Grey, talked of his power in that
line, thought his reply at five in the morning on the Catholic question the

most perfect speech that ever was made. He would rather have made it than
four of Brougham’s. He gave the following instance of Lord Grey’s
readiness and clear-headed accuracy. In one of the debates on the West
India question, he went to Stanley, who was standing under the gallery, and
asked him on what calculation he had allotted the sum of twenty millions.
Stanley explained to him a complicated series of figures, of terms of years,
interest, compound interest, value of labour, etc., after which Lord Grey
went back to his place, rose, and went through the whole with as much DUKE
OF WELLINGTON AND THE BONAPARTES. clearness and precision as if all these details
had been all along familiar to his mind. It is very extraordinary that he
should unite so much oratorical and Parliamentary power with such
weakness of character. He is a long way from a great man altogether.
I met the Duke in the evening at the Duchess of Cannizzaro’s, talked
of Napier’s affair, at which he was extremely amused, though he thinks it a
very bad thing, and not the least bad part of it that Napier should be lost to
the service, so distinguished as he is. It was he who in 1803 (I believe) was
the cause of the capture of a French squadron by Sir Alexander Cochrane.
The English fell in with and cleared the French fleet, but Napier in a sloop
outsailed the rest, and firing upon the stern of the French Admiral’s
flagship, so damaged her (contriving by skilful evolutions to avoid being
hurt himself) that the rest of the ships were obliged to haul to, to save the
Admiral’s ship, which gave time to the British squadron to come up, when
they took four out of the five sail. The Whigs all talk of this action as
decisive of the Portuguese contest; the Duke says it is impossible to say
what the moral effect may be, but in a military point of view it will not have
much influence upon it. Lucien Bonaparte was there, and was introduced to
the Duke. He laughed and said, ‘He shook hands with me, and we were as
intimate as if we had known each other all our lives!’ He said he had
likewise called on Joseph, who had called on him, but they had never met:
he added that some civilities had passed between them in Spain. Before the
battle of Salamanca he had regularly intercepted the French
correspondence, and as one of the King’s daughters was ill at Paris, and
daily intelligence came of her health, he always sent it to him. He did not
forward the letters, because they contained other matters, but he sent a flag
every day to the outposts, who said, ‘Allez dire au Roi que sa fille se porte
mieux,’ or as it might be. There was Lucien running downstairs to look for

his carriage, one brother of Napoleon who refused to be a king, and another
who was King of Naples, and afterwards King of Spain, both living as
private gentlemen in England!

July 16th, 1833
The Cabinet met at the instance of Lord John Russell to take into
consideration Lord Hill’s not voting on Brougham’s Local Courts Bill.
Nothing came of it, and it is extremely absurd when their own people
continually vote as they please—Duncannon, Ellice, Charles Grey, etc. On
Sunday I went to hear Mr. Blount preach. He is very popular, and has a
great deal of merit, not so clever as Thorpe, not so eloquent as Anderson,
but with a great appearance of zeal and sincerity, and he is very
conscientious and disinterested, for he refused the living of Chelsea (which
Lord Cadogan offered him) because he thought he could not discharge the
duties belonging to it together with those of his present cure. Went last night
to hear Malibran in the ‘Sonnambula,’ a fine piece of acting and fine
singing.

July 18th, 1833
I fell in with Sir Robert Peel yesterday in the Park, and rode with him
for an hour or two, never having had so much conversation with him before
in my life. He was very agreeable, told me that he had just come from the
Police Committee, when a member of one of the political unions had been
under examination, who had acknowledged that they were provided with
arms, and exercised themselves in their use, to be ready for the struggle
which they thought was fast approaching. This evidence will appear in the
Report to the House of Commons, but what will not appear is that an
attempt was made (by Mr. Charles Buller especially) to prevent its being
elicited, and the aforesaid gentleman endeavoured to put down Peel, who
drew it out. The room was cleared, and they had an angry discussion, but
Peel insisted upon asking his question, and carried his point, even in this
Radical Committee. It seems to have been very curious, and the man was
nothing loth to say all he knew. Peel thinks very ill of everything. I asked

him if there was no way of putting down the Repeal Union. He said none,
and that they had found the impossibility of doing so in Ireland, except by
investing the Lord Lieutenant with extraordinary powers; talked of the
Government and its strange way of going on, spoke highly of Stanley in all
ways.
Althorp’s retirement seems certain, and if the Government STANLEY AND
ALTHORP. goes on Stanley will be leader, but unless he puts it all on a different
footing it must break up, and unless the Government people can be brought
under better discipline it will fall to pieces, for nobody will support it on
that motion of Wrottesley’s for a call of the House. Both Stanley and
Althorp deprecated it in the strongest way, in the name of their colleagues
as well as their own, with whom Stanley said they had consulted, and that
they felt it would materially embarrass the Government if persisted in, and
after this Duncannon, Kennedy, and Charles Grey voted for the call, Ellice
and Poulett Thomson stayed away. The other night (I forget on what
question) Ellice voted one way and Stanley the other, and the former said to
the latter as he was going out of the house, ‘You will see if the boys don’t
go with me instead of with you.’ The vote of the night before last against
sinecures was carried in a thin house, only one Cabinet Minister present
(Althorp), no pains taken to secure a majority, and he (Althorp) saying that
it signified more to the Tories than to him, and they ought to have come
down and rejected it. Peel thinks it of great importance, and very difficult to
get out of. However, it will be got out of by some particular case being
tried, on which Hume, or whoever brings it forward, will be beaten, and
then it will sleep for a time; but there stands and will stand the resolution on
the journals, and the House of Commons has admitted the principle of
dealing with actual vested interests, and not confining their operation to the
future.
There seems every probability of Stanley’s West India Bill being
thrown out. The Saints, who at first had agreed to support it, object to pay
the twenty millions for emancipation to take place twelve years hence, and
the present condition of the question seems to be that all parties are
dissatisfied with it, and there is nearly a certainty that it will be received
with horror by the planters, while the slaves will no longer work when they
find the fiat of their freedom (however conditional or distant the final
consummation may be) has at length gone forth.

July 20th, 1833
I dropped into the House of Lords last night, and heard the Bishop of
London reply severally to the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Winchilsea, the
first of whom muttered, and the latter bellowed something I could not hear,
but I gathered that the last was on the subject of the King’s letter to the
Bishops. The Bishop made very pertinent answers to both, but the Duke of
Wellington got up after Winchilsea, and entreated nothing might be said
upon the subject, and put down discussion with that authority which the
Tories dare not resist, and which he exercised on this occasion with the
good sense and, above all, consideration for public convenience and disdain
of party rancour which distinguish him above all men I have ever seen, and
which compel one to admire him in spite of the extraordinary things he
occasionally says and does.
George Villiers is going Minister to Madrid, instead of Addington, who
is so inefficient they are obliged to recall him, and at this moment Madrid is
the most important diplomatic mission, with reference to the existing and
the prospective state of things. The Portuguese contest, the chance of the
King of Spain’s death and a disputed succession, the recognition of the
South American colonies, and commercial arrangements with this country,
present a mass of interests which demand considerable dexterity and
judgment; besides, Addington is a Tory, and does not act in the spirit of this
Government, so they will recall him without ceremony. There is another
Ambassador (Frederic Lamb) whose principles are equally at variance with
those of Palmerston, and who is completely be-Metternich’d, but his
removal is out of the question; he knows it, and no doubt conducts himself
accordingly. George Villiers told me that he touched incidentally one day
with Palmerston on Lamb’s conduct in some matter relating to Lord
Granville, and he found that it was sacred ground, and he only got, ‘Ah, aw
—yes, Metternich is, I suppose, too old to mend now.’

July 21st, 1853
The Duke of Wellington did not vote on Friday night, but he made a
bitter speech against Government, and attacked Lord Anglesey very
unnecessarily, when Melbourne retorted on him very well. Lord Grey’s

reply DUKE OF RICHMOND. appears to have been exceedingly good. I met the
Duke of Richmond last night, and talked to him about the prospects of
Government, and suggested that if Stanley (when Althorp retires) does not
make it a sine quâ non that better discipline should be observed in their
ranks, the Government cannot go on. He agreed, and said Stanley would,
but he thought the House of Lords were going on in such a way that before
three years there would be none. It appears to me totally impossible for
Stanley or anybody to go on without remodelling the Government, and one
of his difficulties would be in getting rid of Richmond himself. He is utterly
incapable, entirely ignorant, and his pert smartness, saying sharp things,
cheering offensively, have greatly exasperated many people against him in
the House of Commons, and these feelings of anger have been heightened
by his taking frequent opportunities of comporting himself with acrimony
towards the Duke of Wellington, though he always professes great
veneration for him, and talks as if he had constantly abstained from
anything like incivility or disrespect towards him. It is remarkable certainly
that his colleagues appear to entertain a higher opinion of him than he
deserves, and you hear of one or another saying, ‘Oh, you don’t know the
Duke of Richmond.’ He has, in fact, that weight which a man can derive
from being positive, obstinate, pertinacious, and busy, but his understanding
lies in a nutshell, and his information in a pin’s head. He is, however, good-
humoured, a good fellow, and personally liked, particularly by Stanley and
Graham, who are of his own age, and have both the same taste for sporting
and gay occupations. The Tories threaten mighty things in the Committee,
but I don’t think they will attempt much.

July 24th, 1833
Divisions in both Houses last night. The Duke of Wellington proposed
an important amendment (which he would afterwards have withdrawn, but
his friends would not let him), and he was beaten by fourteen. A great
division for Government in the House of Lords. In the Commons 166
minority for triennial Parliaments, and by every sort of whipping and Billy
Holmes’s assistance a majority, but only of sixty or seventy; fine work this.

July 25th to 26th.—Half-past two in the morning
Just come home, having heard of the division in the House of Lords, in
which Ministers were beaten on what they call the Suspension clause by
two. Alvanley, Belhaven, and Clanricarde got there too late. Gower could
not attend, nor Lord Granville. Lyndhurst came all the way from Norwich
(being on the circuit) to vote. The question is, what Ministers will do—go
on with the Bill, or throw it up, resign, make Peers, or what? Nothing can
be more silly than the amendment, although it may be questioned whether it
signifies very materially; but the light in which Ministers see it is this: are
they to submit night after night to the vexatious insolence of the Tories, who
are constantly on the watch to find some vulnerable point, and without
intending or daring to throw over their great measures, to mangle their
details as much as they can venture to do, and hold the Government in a
sort of subjugation and in a state of sufferance? The Tory lords are perfectly
rabid, and reckless of consequences, regardless of the embarrassment they
cause the King, and of the aggravation of a state of things they already think
very bad, they care for nothing but the silly vain pleasure of beating the
Government, every day affording fresh materials for the assaults that are
made upon them by the press, and fresh cause for general odium and
contempt. The Duke of Wellington has no power over them for good
purposes, and they will only follow him when he will lead them on to some
rash and desperate enterprise. This event has affected people differently
according to their several views and opinions, but all are in eager curiosity
to see what the Government will do.
In the House of Commons things are no better than in the House of
Lords. Stanley was nearly beaten on the Apprenticeship clause in the West
Indian Bill on Wednesday night, Macaulay opposing him; so yesterday
morning he came down to the House and gave it up. It is remarkable that he
made an admirable speech in defence of his clause, GOVERNMENT DEFEATED. was
unusually and enthusiastically cheered, Macaulay’s speech falling very flat,
and to all appearance the whole House with Stanley, yet upon division he
only carried it by some seven or eight votes. It is said that after the vote he
could not do otherwise than give it up, but that if he had taken a higher tone
in his speech, and treated it as a compact fixed and agreed upon, which
nothing could shake, and to which he was irrevocably pledged, he would
have carried the House with him, and have got a larger majority. But the

truth is that the House of Commons is in such a state that it is next to
impossible to say what Ministers can or ought to do, or what the House will
do. There is no such thing as a great party knit together by community of
opinion, ‘idem sentientes de republicâ.’ The Government conciliate no
attachment, command no esteem and respect, and have no following.
Althorp is liked, Stanley admired, but people devote themselves to neither;
every man is thinking of what he shall say to his constituents, and how his
vote will be taken, and everything goes on (as it were) from hand to mouth;
by fits and starts the House of Commons seems rational and moderate, and
then they appear one day subservient to the Ministers, another riotous,
unruly, and fierce, ready to abolish the Bishops and crush the House of
Lords, and to vote anything that is violent. The Tories in the House of
Commons are lukewarm, angry, frightened: they say, Why should we come
and support a Government that won’t support itself? the Government from
weakness or facility, or motives of personal feeling and partiality, suffers
itself to be bearded and thwarted by its own people, and does nothing.
Duncannon, on the triennial motion the other night, stayed in the House of
Lords and would not vote, there are some half-dozen of them whose votes
the Ministerial bench cannot count upon. Then it is no small aggravation to
the present difficult state of things that Stanley does not appear to be a man
of much moral political firmness and courage, a timid politician, ignavus
adversum lupos. He is bold and spirited against individuals, but timid
against bodies, and with respect to results. Labouchere went to him some
time ago, and told him that it was evident a feeling was growing up in the
House of Commons against this Apprenticeship clause, and that he had
better make up his mind early what course he should pursue, that if he
meant to stand to it they would support him, but if not, he had better give it
up early and from foresight rather than from necessity at last, but above all,
not to drag them through the mire by making them support him, and then
throwing them over. He declared he would stand to his clause. They
supported him, and he threw them over. This will not do for a man who
aspires to be leader, and Sandon told me last night that men would not be
led by him, in spite of his talents, that when Althorp went under Stanley’s
banner the friends of Government would not enlist. God only knows how it
all will end, and out of such a mass of confusion, of so much violence and
folly and weakness, and the working of so many bad passions, what will
result, but any day the chance becomes less of the elements of disorder

being resolved into a state of tranquillity and good government. It is every
day more apparent that with such a House of Commons, so elected, so acted
upon, no Government can feel secure; none can undertake with confidence
to carry on the affairs of the country. It is difficult to describe the state of
agitation into which the minds of people of all persuasions are thrown by
the continual recurrence of these little events, of the feeling of insecurity, of
doubt, of apprehension which pervades all classes. Nobody thinks the
present Government can go on, at the same time they can see no party and
no individual who could go on as well if they were to retire. The present
House of Commons it is found impossible to manage, but it is believed that
in the event of a dissolution another would be much worse; in short, all is
chaos, confusion, and uncertainty, and the only thing in which all parties
agree is that things are very bad, and every day getting worse.
I dined the day before yesterday with old Lady Cork, to meet the
Bonapartes. There were Joseph, Lucien, Lucien’s daughter, the widow of
Louis Bonaparte, Hortense’s son,[5] the THE BONAPARTES. Dudley Stuarts,
Belhavens, Rogers, Lady Clarendon, and Lady Davy and myself; not very
amusing, but curious to see these two men, one of whom would not be a
King, when he might have chosen almost any crown he pleased (conceive,
for instance, having refused the kingdom of Naples), and the other, who was
first King of Naples and then King of Spain, commanded armies, and had
the honour of being defeated at Vittoria by the Duke of Wellington. There
they sat, these brothers of Napoleon, who once trampled upon all Europe,
and at whose feet the potentates of the earth bowed, two simple, plain-
looking, civil, courteous, smiling gentlemen. They say Lucien is a very
agreeable man, Joseph nothing. Joseph is a caricature of Napoleon in his
latter days, at least so I guess from the pictures. He is taller, stouter, with the
same sort of face, but without the expression, and particularly without the
eagle eye. Lucien looked as if he had once been like him, that is, his face in
shape is like the pictures of Napoleon when he was thin and young, but
Lucien is a very large, tall man. They talked little, but stayed on in the
evening, when there was a party, and received very civilly all the people
who were presented to them. There was not the slightest affectation of
royalty in either. Lucien, indeed, had no occasion for any, but a man who
had ruled over two kingdoms might be excused for betraying something of
his former condition, but, on the contrary, everything regal that he ever had

about him seemed to have been merged in his American citizenship, and he
looked more like a Yankee cultivator than a King of Spain and the Indies.
Though there was nothing to see in Joseph, who is, I believe, a very
mediocre personage, I could not help gazing at him, and running over in my
mind the strange events in which he had been concerned in the course of his
life, and regarding him as a curiosity, and probably as the most
extraordinary living instance of the freaks of fortune and instability of
human grandeur.
[5] [This must have been the Emperor Napoleon III.]

The Duke of Sutherland is dead, a leviathan of wealth. I believe he is
the richest individual who ever died, and I should like to know what his
property amounts to, out of pure curiosity.

July 27th, 1833
This affair in the House of Lords blew over. The Patriots at Brookes’
were loud in their indignation, and talked nonsense about dignity and
resignation, and so forth, but Lord Grey took the better course, and came
down to the House with a lecture, conceived in mild yet firm language, and
announced his intention of going on with the Bill. Accordingly they got
through the Committee last night without further obstructions. The
amendment is in fact so trivial that I don’t think he will attempt to re-
establish the original clause on the report, and if he does not, the Commons
(I am told) will not either.

August 7th, 1833
At Goodwood from Saturday se’nnight to Saturday last. Magnificent
weather, numerous assemblage, tolerable racing, but I did not win the great
cup, which I ought to have won, a most vile piece of ill luck, but good
fortune seems to have deserted me, and the most I can do is not to lose.
George Villiers is appointed to Madrid, but he tells me that he can
neither see nor hear from Palmerston, that though his appointment is in

everybody’s mouth it has never been notified to him. All this negligence is
because our Foreign Secretary is engaged in the conferences, in which,
however, he gives no greater satisfaction to those he is concerned with, for
Talleyrand complains that he invariably makes them wait from one to two
hours, and Dedel says that his manner is so insulting towards the Dutch
nation and King, and that on every occasion he acts with so much partiality
towards Belgium, that it is with the greatest difficulty he can transact
business with him at all. They say the Duke of Wellington has scarcely
missed a day during this session in his attendance on the House of Lords,
always in his place from the beginning to the end of the debates, speaking
and evidently preparing himself on every subject, doing duty as the head of
a party.

August 8th, 1833
Met Lord Grey in the street; he said this session had nearly done him
up, and he must have repose, GEORGE VILLIERS MINISTER AT MADRID. he talked of
Portugal, of the desirableness of getting rid of Pedro, and of putting
Palmella at the head of the Government. I said he must take care they did
not establish too liberal a Government. He replied the Portuguese certainly
were not fit for any such thing, and that the constitution had undoubtedly
done all the mischief; spoke of the Duke of Wellington, and of his being
always in the House of Lords, speaking on anything, and generally not well,
that he had made a most tiresome bad speech on the India Charter question,
etc. Brougham’s Privy Council Bill has, I perceive, passed the House of
Commons, having gone through both Houses without a syllable said upon it
in either.
George Villiers is at last acknowledged Minister to Madrid. He told me
he was with Palmerston at his house yesterday morning, and was much
struck with his custom of receiving all his numerous visitors and applicants
in the order in which they arrive, be their rank what it may. Neumann told
him he had never known him vary in this practice, or deviate from it in
anybody’s favour. It is a merit. There seems little danger of any movement
on the part of Spain, for Zea Bermudez (Palmerston told George Villiers) is

struck to the earth by the events in Portugal, and only anxious to curry
favour with England.

August 15th, 1833
At Council yesterday to swear in James Parke and Bosanquet (who did
not come) Privy Councillors, in order to carry into operation the
Chancellor’s new Bill for the establishment of the Judicial Committee of
the Privy Council.

August 20th, 1833
To Stoke on Saturday with Creevey and Lemarchant, the Chancellor’s
secretary. The Chancellor and others of the Ministry were to have come, but
they all dined at Blackwall. Brougham, Plunket, and John Russell came the
next day. Brougham is not so talkative as he was; his dignities, his labours,
and the various cares of his situation have dashed his gaiety, and pressed
down his once elastic spirits; however, he was not otherwise than cheerful
and lively. Plunket I never met before, he was pretty much at his ease, and
talked sufficiently without exhibiting anything remarkable. Lemarchant is a
clever, industrious fellow, whom I remember at Eton. The Chancellor’s
secretaryship must be no sinecure, and he has particularly distinguished
himself by his reports of the debates in the House of Commons. He goes
there every night, and forwards to the Chancellor from time to time an
account of the debate, and the manner of it, very well executed indeed. He
talked to me of Brougham’s labours and their intensity, which put me in
mind of his gasconading to Sefton a year or two ago about his idleness, and
finding the Great Seal a mere plaything; Lemarchant said that by severe and
constant application he had made himself very tolerably acquainted with
equity law, and very extensively with cases. I find from Sefton that he
means to propose next year that his salary should be reduced to 8,000ℓ. a
year, and that the new Equity Judges should be paid out of what he now
has. I believe he is liberal about money, and not careless, but I have some
doubts whether this project will be executed. Lemarchant told me that the
cause of Sugden’s inveterate animosity against Brougham was this—that in

a debate in the House of Commons, Sugden in his speech took occasion to
speak of Mr. Fox, and said that he had no great respect for his authority, on
which Brougham merely said, loud enough to be heard all over the House,
and in that peculiar tone which strikes like a dagger, ‘Poor Fox.’ The words,
the tone, were electrical, everybody burst into roars of laughter, Sugden was
so overwhelmed that he said afterwards it was with difficulty he could go
on, and he vowed that he never could forgive this sarcasm.
Sefton talked to me of Brougham’s reluctance when the Government
was formed to take the Great Seal; after they had offered him the Attorney-
Generalship, which he so indignantly refused, they sent Sefton to cajole him
and get him to take the Seal. He wanted to be made Master of the Rolls, and
left in the House of Commons, the Seal being put in Commission. This they
would not hear of, naturally enough not choosing to exist at his mercy in the
House of Commons, and rely upon his doubtful and capricious support. It
was very well for him to act the part of Atlas, and bear LORD BROUGHAM AS
CHANCELLOR. the Government on his shoulders, but they shrewdly enough
guessed that they would not ride on them very comfortably, that they would
be considerably jolted, and perhaps at last shoved off. He, on the other
hand, would not suffer anybody to be Chancellor but himself; and at last,
with many misgivings, he yielded to the gentle violence which would make
him the first officer of the Crown. Great was his lamentation at this
necessity. ‘How,’ he said, ‘am I fallen! As member for Yorkshire in the
House of Commons, what a position was mine.’ Sefton tried to comfort him
by representing that ‘the fall’ upon the woolsack was somewhat of the
softest, and that a few years ago he would not have considered it so
grievous a misfortune if it had been foretold him that he should be seated
there at such a time.
After dinner on Sunday Brougham talked of the Reform Bill and its
first appearance in the House of Commons. He said that once allowed to
take root there it could not be crushed, and that their only opportunity was
thrown away by the Tories. Had Peel risen at once and declared that he
would not even discuss such a measure, that it was revolution, and opposed
its being brought in, he would have thrown it out, and if he had then come
down with a moderate measure, it would have satisfied the country for the
time. This is exactly what William Banks said to me last year, and the very
thing Peel had intended to do, and from which he was deterred by Granville

Somerset. The Duke of Wellington has continued to attend in the House of
Lords day after day, proposing alterations and amendments to all the Bills,
evidently reading hard, and preparing himself for each occasion, always
loaded with papers. Lyndhurst said to somebody, ‘I shall attend no more,
what’s the use of it? The Duke comes down every day, and tries to make the
Bills better; if I could make them worse, I would come too.’

August 22nd, 1833
Called on Madame de Lieven yesterday, who is just come back from
Petersburg, rayonnante at her reception and treatment. The Emperor went
out to sea to meet her, took her into his own boat, when they landed he
drove her to the palace, and carried her into the Empress’s room, who was
en chemise. She told me a comical anecdote illustrative of the good humour
of the Emperor (who, she says, is an angel), and of the free and frank
reception he gives to strangers. In the midst of some splendid military fêtes,
which terminated with a sham siege by 50,000 of his guards the last day,
word was brought him that two strange-looking men had presented
themselves at the lines, and requested to be allowed to see what was going
on. They said they were English, had come from Scotland on purpose to see
the Russian manœuvres, and had started from Petersburg under the
direction of a laquais de place, who had conducted them to where they
heard the firing of the cannon. The Emperor ordered them to be admitted,
received them with the greatest civility, and desired apartments to be
prepared for them in the palace (Peterhof), at the same time inviting them to
dine with him, and be present at a ball he gave at night. She said that one
was a Don Quixote sort of figure; they called themselves Johnstone. The
Emperor asked her if she knew them. She said no, but that there were many
of that name in England. There they remained, enchanted, astonished,
behaving, however, perfectly well. After seeing all the sights, they were one
evening led into a great hall, where all sorts of pastimes were going on, and
among others a Montagne Russe (of which the Emperor is passionately
fond). He is a very tall powerful man, and his way is to be placed at the top
of the machine, when a man mounts astride on his shoulders, and another
on his, and so on till there are fourteen; when a signal is given, with the
rapidity of lightning down they go. On this occasion the Emperor took the

Johnstones on his back, and she says their astonishment at the position they
occupied, and at the rapidity of the descent, was beyond everything
amusing. They were asked how they liked it, and they said they thought it
‘very good fun,’ and should like to begin again. So they were allowed to
divert themselves in this way for an hour. Bligh told her afterwards that
these men returned to Petersburg their heads turned, and utterly bewildered
with, such an unexpected reception.
AFFAIRS OF PORTUGAL.In her serious talk the Princess said that the Emperor
was full of moderation and desire for peace, ‘s’il y a des orages ce ne sera
pas de ce côté qu’ils viendront,’ that he could not comprehend the English
Parliament, nor the sort of language which was held there about him, that he
was ‘le plus généreux, le plus humain, le meilleur des hommes,’ that they
believed all the lies which were ‘débités sur les affaires de Pologne, qui
enfin est notre affaire, qu’il était peu connu ici, qu’elle avait vu en Russie
beaucoup de respects, beaucoup d’amour pour l’Empereur, et voilà tout.’ In
short, she is returned in a state of intoxication, and her adoration for the
Emperor is only exceeded by that which she has for the Empress.

August 24th, 1833
Matters have taken a bad turn in Portugal. Bourmont is marching on
Lisbon with 18,000 men, ‘regna il terror nella citta.’ William Russell, in a
fit of enthusiasm, says, ‘the capital must be saved even at the hazard of a
war.’ Admiral Parker says he shall land 1,200 marines and make them
occupy the forts. Our Government are in great confusion and alarm, and
have despatched a swift steamer to Parker to desire him to do no such thing;
but the steamer will probably arrive too late, and if Bourmont is really
there, we shall cut a pretty figure with our non-intervention, for Parker will
probably have to surrender the forts to Miguel. I dined with Talleyrand
yesterday, who is furious, laughing non-intervention to scorn; and he told
me he had for the last ten days been endeavouring to get the Government to
take a decided part. What he advised was that we should recognise Donna
Maria and the Regency appointed by the Charter; that is, Donna Isabella
Regent, with a Council to be comprised of Palmella, Villa Flor, and any
other; that our Minister should be directed to acknowledge no other

government, and at the same time concert with Palmella that Pedro should
be sent away, and the constitution be suspended till the Queen shall be of
age. Pedro has committed, since he was in Lisbon, every folly and atrocity
he could squeeze into so small a space of time; imprisoning, confiscating,
granting monopolies, attacking the Church, and putting forth the
constitution in its most offensive shape. I suspect we shall have made a sad
mess of this business.
Just come from the Duke of Wellington; talked about Portugal and the
intercepted letters; the writer said that he (the Duke) had told Neumann he
approved of Bourmont’s going, whereas he thought it an objectionable
nomination, because he had formerly deserted from the Portuguese service.
[6] He had never had any communication with these agents, and did not
believe Aberdeen had had any either: he said Lisbon was more defensible
than Oporto, but required more men. Talking of Miguel, the Duke related
that he was at Strathfieldsaye with Palmella, where in the library they were
settling the oath that Miguel should take, Miguel would pay no attention,
and instead of going into the business and saying what oath he would
consent to take (the question was whether he should swear fidelity to Pedro
or to Maria) he sat flirting with the Princess Thérèse Esterhazy. The Duke
said to Palmella, ‘This will never do, he must settle the terms of the oath,
and if he is so careless in an affair of such moment, he will never do his
duty.’ Palmella said, ‘Oh, leave him to us, we will manage him.’ He had no
idea of overturning the constitution and playing false when he went there,
but was persuaded by his mother and terrified by the lengths to which the
constitutional party was disposed to go. The Duke said the Government
would be very foolish to interfere for Pedro, who was a ruffian, and for the
constitution, which was odious, and that Pedro would never have more than
the ground he stood on; talked of our foreign policy, his anxiety for peace,
but of France as our ‘natural enemy!’ and of the importance of maintaining
our influence in Spain, which so long as we did we should have nothing to
fear from France.
[6] Bourmont was an emigrant, and went into the Portuguese service. When
Junot came to Portugal he joined him, was taken into the French service, in
which he continued to rise, till he deserted just before the battle of Waterloo from
Napoleon to Louis XVIII.

September 3rd, 1833
On Wednesday last when the King’s speech was read there was no
Council. Brougham brought RESULTS OF THE REFORM BILL. Sir Alexander
Johnston, formerly Chief Justice in Ceylon, to be sworn a Privy Councillor
without giving any notice, consequently I was not there. The King,
therefore, comes again to-morrow on purpose, and, what is unpleasant,
desired a Clerk of the Council might always be in attendance when there
was anything going on. This, I suppose, His Majesty will repeat to me
himself to-morrow. The Parliament is at last up; it was a fine sight the day
the King went down, the weather splendid, and park full of people, with
guards mounted and dismounted, making a picturesque show. He was very
coolly received, for there is no doubt there never was a King less respected.
George IV., with all his occasional unpopularity, could always revive the
external appearance of loyalty when he gave himself the trouble.
The Parliament is up, and not before people were dead sick of it, and
had dropped out of town one by one till hardly any Parliament was left. It
may be worth while to take a little survey of the present condition of things
as compared with what it was a few months ago, and consider at this resting
time what has been the practical effect of the great measure of Reform,
without going very deeply into the question. The Reform Bill was carried in
toto, the Tories having contrived that everything that was attempted should
be gained by the Reformers. No excuse, therefore, was left for the
Parliament, and if ‘the people’ did not choose a good one it was their own
fault. It was chosen, and when it met was found to be composed of a
majority of supporters of the present Government, a certain number of
Tories, not enough to be powerful, and many Radicals, who soon proved to
be wholly inefficient. It speedily became manifest that in point of ability it
was not only inferior to the last, but perhaps to any Parliament that has sat
for many years. There were 350 new members (or some such number), but
not one man among them of shining or remarkable talent; Cobbett, Silk,
Buckingham, Roebuck, and such men soon found their level and sunk into
insignificance. The House appeared at first to be very unruly, not under the
command of Government, talkative, noisy, and ill-constituted for the
transaction of business. After a little while it got better in this respect, the
majority, however, though evidently determined to support Government,
would not be commanded by it, and even men in place often took up

crotchets of their own, and voted against Government measures; but
whenever the Ministers seemed to be in danger they always found efficient
support, and on the Malt Tax the House even stultified itself to uphold
them. As the session proceeded the men who gained reputation and
established the greatest personal influence were Peel and Stanley; Macaulay
rather lost than gained; Althorp lost entirely, but the weight of his blunders
and unfitness could not sink him, his personal character and good humour
always buoyed him up. The great measures, some of the greatest that any
Parliament ever dealt with, were got through with marvellous facility. They
did not for the most part come on till late in the session, when the House
had got tired, and the East India Charter Bill was carried through most of
the stages in empty Houses. The measures have generally evinced a
Conservative character, and the Parliament has not shown any disposition to
favour subversive principles or to encourage subversive language. It has
been eminently liberal in point of money, granting all that Ministers asked
without the slightest difficulty; twenty millions for the West Indians, a
million for the Irish clergy, were voted almost by acclamation. Hume cut no
figure in this Parliament. Notwithstanding apprehensions and predictions
the Government has contrived to carry on the business of the country very
successfully, and great reforms have been accomplished in every
department of the State, which do not seem liable to any serious objections,
and in the midst of many troubles, of much complaining and bickering; the
country has been advancing in prosperity, and recovering rapidly from the
state of sickly depression in which it lay at the end of last year. It is fair to
compare the state of affairs now and then, merely reciting facts, and let the
praise rest where it may, whether it be due to the wisdom of men or the
result of that disposition to right itself which SURVEY OF THE STATE OF AFFAIRS. has
always appeared inherent in the British commonwealth. Some months ago
there appeared every prospect of a war in Europe; the French were in
Belgium, whence many predicted they would never be got away; Ireland
was in a flame, every post brought the relation of fresh horrors and
atrocities; in England trade was low, alarm and uncertainty prevalent, and a
general disquietude pervaded the nation, some fearing and others desiring
change, some expecting, others dreading the great things which a Reformed
Parliament would do. The session is over, and a Reformed Parliament turns
out to be very much like every other Parliament, except that it is rather
differently and somewhat less ably composed than its predecessors. The

hopes and the fears of mankind have been equally disappointed, and after
all the clamour, confusion, riots, conflagrations, furies, despair, and
triumphs through which we have arrived at this consummation, up to the
present time, at least, matters remain pretty much as they were, except that
the Whigs have got possession of the power which the Tories have lost. We
continue at peace, and with every prospect of so being for some time, we
are on good terms with France, and by degrees inducing the French to
extend their incipient principles of free trade, to the benefit of both
countries. In Ireland there never has been a period for many years when the
country was so quiet; it may not last, but so it is at the present moment. In
England trade flourishes, running in a deep and steady stream, there are
improvement and employment in all its branches. The landed interest has
suffered and suffers still, but the wages of labour have not fallen with the
rents of landlords, and the agricultural labourers were never better off.
Generally there is a better spirit abroad, less discontent, greater security, and
those vague apprehensions are lulled to rest which when in morbid activity,
carrying themselves from one object to another, are partly the cause and
partly the effect of an evil state of things. We hear nothing now of
associations, unions, and public meetings, and (compared with what it was)
the world seems in a state of repose.

CHAPTER XXII.
The Speaker a Knight of the Bath — Lord Wellesley Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland — M. Thiers in England — Prince
Esterhazy’s Opinion of the State of England — Queen of
Portugal at Windsor — The Duke of Leuchtenberg — Macaulay
and Sydney Smith — Brougham’s Anecdotes of Queen Caroline
— Judicial Committee of the Privy Council — Sir Stratford
Canning and M. Dedel — Sydney Smith and the ‘Siege of
Saragossa’ — Edward Irving — The Unknown Tongues —
Tribute to Lord Eldon — W. J. Fox — Lord Tavistock on the
Prospects of his Party — Moore at the State Paper Office —
Russia and England — Belvoir Castle — The Duke of
Wellington at Belvoir — Visit to Mrs. Arkwright — Sir Thomas
Lawrence and the Misses Siddons — A Murder at Runton —
Sandon — Lord and Lady Harrowby — Burghley — Railroads
talked of — Gloomy Tory Prognostications — State of Spain —
Parliament opens — Quarrel of Sheil and Lord Althorp —
Unpopularity of Lord Palmerston — Mrs. Somerville —
O’Connell’s Attack on Baron Smith — Lord Althorp’s Budget
— The Pension List — Lord Althorp as Leader of the House —
Sir R. Peel’s Position in the House — Meeting of Supporters of
Government — Mr. Villiers on the State of Spain —
Predicament of Horne, the Attorney-General.

September 5th, 1833
At Court yesterday, the Speaker[1] was made a Knight of the Bath to
his great delight. It is a reward for his conduct during the Session, in which
he has done Government good and handsome service. He told them before
it began that he would undertake to ride the new House, but it must be with

a snaffle bridle. Bosanquet and Sir Alexander Johnston were made Privy
Councillors to sit in the Chancellor’s new Court. The Privy Council is as
numerous as a moderate-sized club, and about as well composed. Awful
storms these last few days, and enormous damage done, the weather like the
middle of winter.
[1] [Rt. Hon. Manners Sutton, afterwards Viscount Canterbury.]

September 6th, 1833
Yesterday the announcement of Lord LORD WELLESLEY. Wellesley’s
appointment to be Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was received with as great
astonishment as I ever saw. Once very brilliant, probably never very
efficient, he is now worn out and effete. It is astonishing that they should
send such a man, and one does not see why, because it is difficult to find a
good man, they should select one of the very worst they could hit upon. It is
a ridiculous appointment, which is the most objectionable of all. For years
past he has lived entirely out of the world. He comes to the House of Lords,
and talks of making a speech every now and then, of which he is never
delivered, and he comes to Court, where he sits in a corner and talks (as
those who know him say) with as much fire and liveliness as ever, and with
the same neat, shrewd causticity that formerly distinguished him; but such
scintillations as these prove nothing as to his fitness for business and
government, and as he was quite unfit for these long ago, it is scarcely to be
supposed that retirement and increased age and infirmities should have
made him less so now.[2] They have judiciously waited till Parliament is up
before the appointment was made known. Lord Wellesley is said to be in
the hands of Blake the Remembrancer, a dangerous Jesuitical fellow.
[2] [This opinion of Lord Wellesley was, however, speedily changed by his
successful and vigorous administration of Ireland. See infra, November 14th.]

September 10th, 1833
At Gorhambury on Saturday till Monday. Dined on Friday with
Talleyrand, a great dinner to M. Thiers, the French Minister of Commerce, a

little man, about as tall as Sheil, and as mean and vulgar looking, wearing
spectacles, and with a squeaking voice. He was editor of the ‘National,’ an
able writer, and one of the principal instigators of the Revolution of July. It
is said that he is a man of great ability and a good speaker, more in the
familiar English than the bombastical French style. Talleyrand has a high
opinion of him. He wrote a history of the Revolution, which he now regrets;
it is well done, but the doctrine of fatalism which he puts forth in it he
thinks calculated to injure his reputation as a statesman. I met him again at
dinner at Talleyrand’s yesterday with another great party, and last night he
started on a visit to Birmingham and Liverpool.
After dinner on Friday I had rather a curious conversation with
Esterhazy, who said he wanted to know what I thought of the condition of
this country. I told him that I thought everything was surprisingly improved,
and gave my reasons for thinking so. He then went off and said that these
were his opinions also, and he had written home in this strain, that
Neumann had deceived his Government, giving them very different
accounts, that it was no use telling them what they might wish to hear, but
that he was resolved to tell them the truth, and make them understand how
greatly they were deceiving themselves if they counted upon the decadence
or want of power of this country; a great deal more of the same sort, which
proves that the Austrian Court were all on the qui vive to find out that we
are paralysed, and that their political conduct is in fact influenced by their
notion of our actual position. They probably hardly knew what they would
be at, but their hatred and dread of revolutionary principles are so great that
they are always on the watch for a good opportunity of striking a blow at
them, which they know they can only do through England and France. They
would therefore willingly believe that the political power of England is
diminished, and Neumann, who wrote in the spirit of a disappointed Tory
rather than of an impartial Foreign Minister, no doubt flattered their desires
in this respect. Last night I sat by Dedel, the Dutch Minister, who told me
he knew Neumann had given very false accounts (not intentionally) to his
Government, that Wessenberg took much juster views, and he (Dedel)
agreed with Esterhazy, who said that nobody could understand this country
who had not had long experience of it, and that he found it impossible to
make his Government comprehend it, or give entire credit to what he said.
Dedel told me that Holland is ruined, that the day of reckoning will come,

when they will discover what a state of bankruptcy they are in, that the
spirit of the nation had QUEEN OF PORTUGAL IN ENGLAND. been kept up by
excitement, and that therein lay the dexterity of the King and his
Government, but that this factitious enthusiasm was rapidly passing away.
They now pay fifty millions of florins interest of debt, about four millions
sterling, and their population is not above two millions.
The young Queen of Portugal goes to Windsor to-day. The King was at
first very angry at her coming to England, but when he found that Louis
Philippe had treated her with incivility, he changed his mind, and resolved
to receive her with great honours. He hates Louis Philippe and the French
with a sort of Jack Tar animosity. The other day he gave a dinner to one of
the regiments at Windsor, and as usual he made a parcel of foolish speeches,
in one of which, after descanting upon their exploits in Spain against the
French, he went on: ‘Talking of France, I must say that whether at peace or
at war with that country, I shall always consider her as our natural enemy,
and whoever may be her King or ruler, I shall keep a watchful eye for the
purpose of repressing her ambitious encroachments.’ If he was not such an
ass that nobody does anything but laugh at what he says, this would be very
important. Such as he is, it is nothing. ‘What can you expect’ (as I forget
who said) ‘from a man with a head like a pineapple?’ His head is just of that
shape.
The history of the French King’s behaviour is that he wanted the
young Queen of Portugal to marry the Duke de Nemours, and when he
found that impossible (for we should have opposed it) he proposed Prince
Charles of Naples, his nephew. This was likewise rejected. The Emperor
Don Pedro wants the Duke of Leuchtenberg, his wife’s brother, to marry
her.[3] This Duke went to Havre the other day, where the Préfet refused to
admit him, though he went with (or to) his sister, pleading the law
excluding Napoleon’s family. He went to the Préfet to say that he protested
against such application of the law, but, as he would not make any
disturbance there, desired to have his passports visé for Munich, and off he
went. At the same time he wrote a letter to Palmerston, which George
Villiers, to whom Palmerston showed it, told me was exceedingly good. He
said that though he did not know Palmerston he ventured to address him, as
the Minister of the greatest and freest country in the world, for the purpose
of explaining what had happened, and to clear himself from the

misrepresentations that would be made as to his motives and intentions in
joining his sister; that it was true that Don Pedro had wished him to marry
his daughter, and that he had written him a letter, of which he enclosed a
copy. This was a very well written letter, begging the Emperor to pause and
consider of this projected match, and setting forth all the reasons why it
might not be advantageous for her; in short, Villiers says, exhibiting a very
remarkable degree of disinterestedness, and of longsighted views with
regard to the situation of Portugal and the general politics of Europe.
[3] [Queen Donna Maria did eventually many the young Duke of
Leuchtenberg, son of Prince Eugène Beauharnais and a Bavarian Princess. But
he survived his marriage only a few months, and died of a fever at Lisbon.]

He told me another anecdote at the same time. Palmerston showed him
a letter he had received from Charles Napier, in which, talking of the
possible interference of Spain, he said; ‘Your Lordship knows that I have
only to sail with my fleet (enumerating a respectable squadron of different
sizes) to Cadiz, and I can create a revolution in five minutes throughout the
whole South of Spain.’ Palmerston seems to have been a little amused and a
little alarmed at this fanfaronade, in which there is, however, a great deal of
truth. He said that of course they should not allow Napier to do any such
thing, but as nothing else could prevent him if we did not, the Spaniards
may be made to understand that we shall not be at the trouble of muzzling
this bull-dog if they do not behave with civility and moderation.

London, November 13th, 1833
Nothing written for nearly two months. I remained in town till the end
of September, when I went to Newmarket, and afterwards to Buckenham,
where I met Sir Robert Peel. He is very SYDNEY SMITH AND MACAULAY. agreeable
in society, it is a toss up whether he talks or not, but if he thaws, and is in
good humour and spirits, he is lively, entertaining, and abounding in
anecdotes, which he tells extremely well. I came back to town on Friday
last, the 8th, dined with the Poodle, and found Rogers, Moore, and
Westmacott (the son); a very agreeable dinner. On Sunday dined with
Rogers, Moore, Sydney Smith, Macaulay. Sydney less vivacious than usual,
and somewhat overpowered and talked down by what Moore called the

‘flumen sermonis’ of Macaulay. Sydney calls Macaulay ‘a book in
breeches.’ All that this latter says, all that he writes, exhibits his great
powers and astonishing information, but I don’t think he is agreeable. It is
more than society requires, and not exactly of the kind; his figure, face,
voice, and manner are all bad; he astonishes and instructs, he sometimes
entertains, seldom amuses, and still seldomer pleases. He wants variety,
elasticity, gracefulness; his is a roaring torrent, and not a meandering stream
of talk. I believe we would all of us have been glad to exchange some of his
sense for some of Sydney Smith’s nonsense. He told me that he had read Sir
Charles Grandison fifteen times!
Not a word of news, political or other; the Ministers are all come,
Spain and Portugal potter on with their civil contests and create uneasiness,
though of a languid kind. I came to town for a meeting at the Council
Office, the first under Brougham’s new Bill, to make rules and regulations
for the proceedings of the Court. All the lawyers attended, not much done,
but there do not seem to be any great difficulties. There was Brougham,
with Leach next him, and Lyndhurst opposite, all smirks and civility, he and
Leach quite fondling one another. Dined yesterday with Stanley, who gave
me a commission to bet a hundred for him on Bentley against Berbastes for
the Derby, and talked of racing after dinner with as much zest as if he was
on the turf. Who (to see him and hear him thus) would take him for the
greatest orator and statesman of the day?

November 14th, 1833
Dined with Sefton yesterday; after dinner came in the Chancellor in
good humour and spirits; talked of Lord Wellesley, who, since he has been
in Ireland, has astonished everybody by his activity and assiduity in
business. He appeared, before he went, in the last stage of decrepitude, and
they had no idea the energy was in him; but they say he is quite a new man,
and it is not merely a splash, but real and bonâ-fide business that he does.
The Chancellor talked over some of the passages of the Queen’s trial, to
which he loves to revert. It was about the liturgy. The negotiations which
had taken place at Apsley House between the Duke of Wellington and Lord
Castlereagh on one part and Brougham and Denman on the other were

broken off on that point. It was then agreed to refer the matter to others; the
Duke and Castlereagh were to meet Lord Fitzwilliam and Sefton; a queer
choice, old Fitzwilliam a driveller, and Sefton, with all his sharpness, totally
unfit for the office of negotiator in a grave matter. He can’t be grave, life
itself is to him a plaything; but the night before they were to meet,
Fitzwilliam took fright, and backed out. Notice was sent to the other party,
but they did not get it, owing to some mistake. In the morning Brougham
came to Sefton and asked him to drive him up to the Queen’s house, and as
they passed through Grosvenor Square, to their amazement they saw
Wellington and Castlereagh alighting (full dressed for the levée) at Lord
Fitzwilliam’s door. Sefton went into the house, and found them already in
the dining-room, the table covered with papers, when an explanation
ensued, on which they had to bundle up their papers again and trot off.
When the deputation from the House of Commons went up with the
address to the Queen, entreating her to come to terms (Banks, Wortley,
Acland, and Wilberforce), she had got all her Council assembled, and
before receiving the deputation from the Commons, she asked their advice.
Brougham said that she was disposed to acquiesce, but wanted them to
advise her to do so, and that her intention was, if they had, to act on that
advice, but to save her popularity by throwing the odium on them, and
devoting them to popular execration. He therefore resolved, and his
brethren BROUGHAM’S ANECDOTES OF QUEEN CAROLINE. likewise, to give no advice at
all; and when she turned to him, and said, ‘What do you think I ought to
do?’ he replied, in a sort of speech which he gave very comically, ‘Your
Majesty is undoubtedly the best judge of the answer you ought to give, and
I am certain that your own feelings will point out to you the proper course.’
‘Well, but what is your opinion?’ ‘Madam, I certainly have a strong opinion
on the subject, but I think there cannot be a shadow of doubt of what your
Majesty ought to do, and there can be no doubt your Majesty’s admirable
sense will suggest to you what that opinion is.’ ‘Humph,’ said she, and flung
from him; turning to Denman, ‘And Mr. Solicitor, what is your opinion?’
‘Madam, I concur entirely in that which has been expressed by the
Attorney-General;’ and so they all repeated. She was furious, and being left
to herself she resolved not to agree. Sefton was on horseback among the
crowd which was waiting impatiently to hear the result of the interview and
her determination. He had agreed with Brougham that as soon as she had

made up her mind he should come to the window and make him a sign. He
was to stroke his chin if she refused, and do something else, I forget what, if
she agreed. Accordingly arrived Brougham at the window, all in gown and
wig, and as soon as he caught Sefton’s eye began stroking his chin. This
was enough for Sefton, who (as he declares) immediately began telling
people in the crowd who were wondering and doubting and hoping that
they might rely upon it she would ‘stand by them,’ and not accept the terms.

November 21st, 1833
Another meeting at the Council Office the day before yesterday. The
Chancellor arranging everything, but proposing many things which meet
with opposition, wants people to be allowed to plead in formâ pauperis
before the Privy Council, which they object to. I have doubts whether this
Court will work well after all, and foresee great difficulty about the rota;
everybody had something to prevent their attendance; however we meet on
the 27th for the despatch of business. I have just finished ‘Clarissa;’ never
was so interested or affected by any book.

November 28th, 1833
Yesterday the first meeting under Brougham’s new Bill of ‘the Judicial
Committee,’ the Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Baron Parke, Justice
Bosanquet, and Erskine (Chief Judge in Bankruptcy). I can’t perceive that
matters are likely to go on a bit better than when one Judge sat there,
though the Chancellor endeavours to confer all the importance he can on his
Committee, that he may hereafter figure there himself. There has been a
lively controversy between the Whig and Tory papers, of which he has been
the object, the former lauding his law reforms, the latter attacking his
judicial incompetence. It is actually true that hardly any original causes are
brought before him, and he has little business except appeals which must
come into his Court. He feels himself every day in a more unpleasant
predicament, and of course has a growing impatience to get rid of his
judicial duties. That he will by a series of tricks wriggle out of them there
can be no doubt, for just now he can do whatever he pleases. What he wants

is to be Prime Minister; his restless and versatile mind will then find
sufficient occupation, and there is no department of Government which he
does not think himself capable of presiding over, leaving as he would do all
troublesome details to be worked out by others.

November 30th, 1833
A long sitting of our Court yesterday. The Chancellor comes regularly.
Jenner (the King’s Advocate) told me that he believed the Chancellor’s
object was to transfer all appeals from the House of Lords to the Privy
Council. Lyndhurst (whom I met at Mrs. Fox’s) said that it was quite true
that he had no business in his own Court, for nobody would plead there,
that he wanted to be Prime Minister, retaining the emoluments and
patronage of the Great Seal, and getting rid of its duties. There can be no
doubt that he does, and if Lord Grey dies, or is ill (in which case he will
resign), he probably will succeed. It is amusing to see Brougham’s tricks in
small things; his present object is to raise the Judicial Committee as much
as he can, and bring all the business there he can collect; in order to
increase the appeals he proposed to allow of them from the STRATFORD CANNING
AND DEDEL. Indian Courts in formâ pauperis. This, however, was strenuously
resisted by all the Judges and others present, and as he always takes the lead
in all discussions relating to rules and regulations, when he found that the
unanimous opinion of the Committee was the other way, he turned himself
round and argued against his own proposal, stating or anticipating the
objections of the others, just insinuating incidentally counter-arguments,
and ending by letting the question remain in abeyance.
Madame de Lieven told me an anecdote of Stratford Canning which
highly delighted her, because it justified the resistance which the Court of
Russia made to his nomination to that Embassy. The other day Dedel called
on Palmerston. When shown into the waiting-room, he said, ‘Tell Lord
Palmerston that the Dutch Minister will be glad to see him,’ when a man
who was there, and whom he did not know, jumped up and said, ‘And I
desire you will tell Lord Palmerston that I have been waiting here these two
hours, and that I expect to see him before anybody else;’ and then, turning
to Dedel, ‘Sir, this is too bad; two persons have been already shown in to

Lord Palmerston, both of whom came after me, and I expect that you will
not go in to his Lordship till after me.’ Dedel, who is the mildest and
civillest of men, replied, ‘Sir, far be it from me to dispute your right, and I
assure you I have no desire to go in before you, but I only beg that if Lord
Palmerston should send for me first you will understand that I cannot help
going;’ and then the other, ‘Sir, I am Sir Stratford Canning.’ ‘And I am Mr.
Dedel.’ This extraordinary scene he told Madame de Lieven, not knowing
what had passed about the mission. Touching that affair, there is an
understanding that he shall not go there, and no other Ambassador is to be
named till it is quite convenient to Palmerston.
The day before yesterday I met Sydney Smith at dinner at Poodle
Byng’s, when a conversation occurred which produced a curious
coincidence. We were talking of Vaughan, the Minister in America, how
dull he appeared, and yet how smart and successful had been ‘The Siege of
Saragossa,’ which he published at the time of the Spanish war. Sydney
Smith said that the truth was he had not written a word of it, and on being
questioned further said that he was himself the author. Vaughan, who was a
friend of his, had given him the materials, and he had composed the
narrative. He then went on to say that it was not the only instance of the
kind, for that the celebrated pamphlet which had been attributed to Lady
Canning had not been written by her, not a word of it, that it had been
written by Stapleton. I said that I had it in my power to contradict this, for
that I had been privy to the composition of it, had seen the manuscript, and
had at her request undertaken the task of revising and correcting it. Thus
were two mistakes accidentally cleared up, by the circumstance of the only
persons who could have explained them being present.

December 2nd, 1833
I went yesterday to Edward Irving’s chapel to hear him preach, and
witness the exhibition of the tongues. The chapel was formerly West’s
picture gallery, oblong, with a semicircular recess at one end; it has been
fitted up with galleries all round, and in the semicircle there are tiers of
benches, in front of which is a platform with an elevated chair for Irving
himself, and a sort of desk before it; on each side the chair are three arm-

chairs, on which three other preachers sat. The steps from the floor to the
platform were occupied by men (whether peculiarly favoured or not I don’t
know), but the seats behind Irving’s chair are evidently appropriated to the
higher class of devotees, for they were the best dressed of the congregation.
The business was conducted with decency, and the congregation was
attentive. It began with a hymn, the words given out by one of the assistant
preachers, and sung by the whole flock. This, which seems to be common to
all dissenting services, is always very fine, the full swell of human voices
producing a grand effect. After this Irving delivered a prayer, in a very slow
drawling tone, rather long, and not at all striking in point of language or
thought. When he had finished, one of the men sitting beside him arose,
read a few verses from THE UNKNOWN TONGUES. the Bible, and discoursed
thereon. He was a sorry fellow, and was followed by two others, not much
better. After these three Spencer Perceval stood up. He recited the duty to
our neighbour in the catechism, and descanted on that text in a style in all
respects far superior to the others. He appeared about to touch on politics,
and (as well as I recollect) was saying, ‘Ye trusted that your institutions
were unalterable, ye believed that your loyalty to your King, your respect
for your nobility, your’—when suddenly a low moaning noise was heard,
on which he instantly stopped, threw his arm over his breast, and covered
his eyes, in an attitude of deep devotion, as if oppressed by the presence of
the spirit. The voice after ejaculating three ‘Oh’s,’ one rising above the
other, in tones very musical, burst into a flow of unintelligible jargon,
which, whether it was in English or in gibberish I could not discover. This
lasted five or six minutes, and as the voice was silenced, another woman, in
more passionate and louder tones, took it up; this last spoke in English, and
words, though not sentences, were distinguishable. I had a full view of her
sitting exactly behind Irving’s chair. She was well dressed, spoke sitting,
under great apparent excitement, and screamed on till from exhaustion, as it
seemed, her voice gradually died away, and all was still. Then Spencer
Perceval, in slow and solemn tones, resumed, not where he had left off, but
with an exhortation to hear the voice of the Lord which had just been
uttered to the congregation, and after a few more sentences he sat down.
Two more men followed him, and then Irving preached. His subject was
‘God’s love,’ upon which he poured forth a mystical incomprehensible
rhapsody, with extraordinary vehemence of manner and power of lungs.
There was nothing like eloquence in his sermon, no musical periods to

captivate the ear, no striking illustrations to charm the imagination; but
there is undoubtedly something in his commanding figure and strange, wild
countenance, his vehemence, and above all the astonishing power of his
voice, its compass, intonation, and variety, which arrests attention, and
gives the notion of a great orator. I daresay he can speak well, but to waste
real eloquence on such an auditory would be like throwing pearls to swine.
‘The bawl of Bellas’ is better adapted for their ears than quiet sense in
simpler sounds, and the principle ‘omne ignotum pro magnifico,’ can
scarcely find a happier illustration than amongst a congregation whose
admiration is probably in an inverse ratio to their comprehension.

December 6th, 1833
The Vice-Chancellor, Parke, Bosanquet, and Erskine met yesterday to
consider a judgment, and took three hours to manage it; business does not
go on so quickly with many Judges as with one, whether it be more
satisfactory or not. The Chancellor, the last time we met, announced to the
Bar (very oddly) that for the future their Lordships would give judgment in
turn. (He had himself delivered the only judgment that had been given.) The
Vice-Chancellor, who I thought was his friend, laughed at this yesterday
with me, and said that he wanted to throw off from himself as much as he
could. I asked him (he had said something, I forget what, about the
Chancery Bill) what would be left for the Chancellor to do when that Bill
was passed. He said, ‘Nothing, that he meant to be Prime Minister and
Chancellor, and that it was what he had been driving at all along, that the
Bill for regulating the Privy Council was only a part of his own plan, and
that all his schemes tended to that end.’ Setting political bias aside, it is
curious, considering his station, to hear the lawyers talk of him, the
contempt they universally have for him professionally, how striking the
contrast with the profound respect which is paid to Lord Eldon. The other
day, in the action brought against the Chancellor for false imprisonment,
Lord Eldon was subpœnaed, and he appeared to give evidence; when he
entered the Court, while he was examined, and when he departed, the whole
Bar stood up, and the Solicitor-General harangued him, expressed in the
name of his brethren the satisfaction they felt at seeing him once more
among them. There is something affecting in these reverential testimonials

to a man from whom power has passed away, and who is just descending
into the grave, and I doubt LORD TAVISTOCK ON THE LIBERAL PARTY. if, at the close of
his career, Brougham will ever obtain the same.

December 9th, 1833
Went yesterday with Frederic Elliot and Luttrell to hear Fox, a
celebrated Unitarian preacher, at a chapel in South Place, Finsbury Square.
He is very short and thick, dark hair, black eyes, and a countenance
intelligent though by no means handsome; his voice is not strong, and his
articulation imperfect, he cannot pronounce the s. His sermon was,
however, admirable, and amply repaid us for the trouble of going so far. He
read the whole of it, the language was beautiful, the argument clear and
unembarrassed, the reasoning powerful, and there were occasionally
passages of great eloquence. The conclusion, which was a sort of invocation
to the Deity, was very fine. I like the simplicity of the service: hymns, a
prayer, and the sermon, still I think a short liturgy preferable—our own,
much abbreviated, would be the best.

December 13th, 1833
Met Tavistock at dinner the other day, and talked about the
Government; from his intimacy with Althorp and connection with the others
he knows their sentiments pretty accurately. He said that Lord Grey had so
high an opinion of Althorp that he made his remaining a sine quâ non, and
accordingly he does remain. He thought Lord Grey would be glad to retire,
but that he will go on as long as he can, because the Government would be
placed in such great embarrassment by his retreat. He did not think
Brougham could succeed him, though he believed his popularity in the
country to be great; that all depended on the part Peel took in the next
session, for in the event of Lord Grey’s resignation he looked to the King’s
sending for Peel to form a Government (much as Canning did when Lord
Liverpool died), principally composed of course of the purest materials, but
not exclusively, and that he did not think the great body of the Liberal party
would make any difficulty of accepting office under Peel; that Stanley

would not. He (Tavistock) thinks that Peel could not come into office with
the Duke of Wellington; the Tories (Irvine, e.g.) think he would not come in
without him.

December 18th, 1833
Went with Moore yesterday morning to the State Paper Office, and
introduced him to Lemon.[4] It was at the new office, where the documents
are in course of arrangement, and for the future they will be accessible and
useful. John Allen told Moore the other day that he considered that the
history of England had never really been written, so much matter was there
in public and private collections, illustrative of it, that had never been made
use of. Lemon said he could in great measure confirm that assertion, as his
researches had afforded him the means of throwing great light upon modern
history, from the time of Henry VIII. The fact is, that the whole thing is
conventional; people take the best evidence that has been produced, and
give their assent to a certain series of events, until more facts and better
evidence supplant the old statements and establish others in their place.
They are now printing Irish papers of the time of Henry VIII., but from the
folly of Henry Hobhouse, who would not let the volume be indexed, it will
be of little service. In the evening dined with Moore at the Poodle’s. He told
a good story of Sydney Smith and Leslie the Professor. Leslie had written
upon the North Pole; something he had said had been attacked in the
‘Edinburgh Review’ in a way that displeased him. He called on Jeffrey just
as he was getting on horseback, and in a great hurry. Leslie began with a
grave complaint on the subject, which Jeffrey interrupted with ‘O damn the
North Pole.’ Leslie went off in high dudgeon, and soon after met Sydney,
who, seeing him disturbed, asked what was the matter. He told him what he
had been to Jeffrey about, and that he had in a very unpleasant way said,
‘Damn the North Pole.’ ‘It was very bad,’ said Sydney; ‘but, do you know, I
am not surprised at it, for I have heard him speak very disrespectfully of the
Equator.’
[4] [Robert Lemon, Esq., F.S.A., was the Deputy Keeper of the State
Papers, who rendered the greatest services in the classification of the Records,
which at this time were but little known and had not been opened to literary
investigation.]

December 21st, 1833
There is great talk of war with Russia, HOSTILITY TO RUSSIA. which I don’t
believe will take place. I had a long talk with Madame de Lieven the day
before yesterday, and was surprised to find her with such a lofty tone about
war. She said that it was ‘chance égale;’ that they neither desired nor feared
it; that our tone had latterly been so insulting that they had no option but
that of replying with corresponding hauteur; that if we sent ships to the
Mediterranean they would send ships: that if those measures were pursued,
and such language held, it was impossible to say that circumstances might
not bring about war, though equally against the wishes and interests of all
parties. In such a case we might destroy their fleet and burn their harbours,
but we could not exclude them from Turkey, nor once established there get
them out again. That we must not fancy we should be able, in conjunction
with France, to keep the rest of Europe in check; for it was the opinion of
the wisest heads, and of Louis Philippe himself, that a war would infallibly
bring about his downfall. (This latter opinion is likewise, I find, that of the
French ultra-Radicals; but they think the war must be a war of opinion, and
that the extreme Liberals, who would thereby gain the ascendency, would
make the King the first victim.) She complained bitterly of the language of
our newspapers, and of our orators in Parliament, described the indignation
of the Russian Court, and the dignified resentment mixed with contempt of
the Emperor; in short, talked very big, but still there will be no war.—I met
Dedel afterwards, and he told me that at Broadlands, where they all met,
some explanations in a tolerably friendly tone did take place. The truth is
that we have divested ourselves of the right of objecting to Russia’s
measures with regard to Turkey, although we do not dare acknowledge what
we have done, nor our motives. We were (and we are) in a false position,
and she has played her cards with great dexterity; but the Treaty[5] is
another thing, and is justly calculated to excite our jealousy and suspicions.
We have held this language to Russia with regard to the Treaty: ‘We do not
remonstrate, because we admit your right to make what treaties you think
fit; but we give you notice, that if any attempt is made to enforce the
stipulations of it against us, we shall not endure it, and you must be
prepared for the consequences.’
[5] The treaty of Unkiar Skelesi.

1834.

Belvoir Castle, January 7th, 1834
After many years of delay, I am here since the 3rd, to assist at the
celebration of the Duke of Rutland’s birthday. The party is very large, and
sufficiently dull: the Duke of Wellington, Esterhazy, Matuscewitz, Rokeby,
Miss d’Este (afterwards Lady Truro), and the rest a rabble of fine people,
without beauty or wit among them. The place is certainly very magnificent,
and the position of the castle unrivalled, though the interior is full of
enormous faults, which are wholly irretrievable. This results from the
management of the alterations having been entrusted to the Duchess and Sir
John Thurston (the former of whom had some taste but no knowledge), and
they have consequently made a sad mess of it. There is immense space
wasted, and with great splendour and some comfort the Castle has been
tumbled about until they have contrived to render it a very indifferent
house; no two rooms communicating, nor even (except the drawing-room
and dining-room, the former of which is seldom or never inhabited)
contiguous. The gallery, though unfinished, is a delightful apartment, and
one of the most comfortable I ever saw. The outside of the Castle is faulty,
but very grand; so grand as to sink criticism in admiration; and altogether,
with its terraces and towers, its woods and hills, and its boundless prospect
over a rich and fertile country, it is a very noble possession. The Duke lives
here for three or four months, from the end of October till the end of
February or March, on and off, and the establishment is kept up with
extraordinary splendour. In the morning we are roused by the strains of
martial music, and the band (of his regiment of militia) marches round the
terrace, awakening or quickening the guests with lively airs. All the men
hunt or shoot. At dinner there is a different BELVOIR CASTLE. display of plate
every day, and in the evening some play at whist or amuse themselves as
they please, and some walk about the staircases and corridors to hear the
band, which plays the whole evening in the hall. On the Duke’s birthday
there was a great feast in the Castle; 200 people dined in the servants’ hall

alone, without counting the other tables. We were about forty at dinner.
When the cloth was removed, Esterhazy proposed His Grace’s health, who
has always a speech prepared in which he returns thanks. This time it was
more simple than usual, and not at all bad. To-night there is a ball for the
servants, which could not take place on the real birthday, as it fell on a
Saturday.
I have had snatches of talk with the Duke of Wellington, and yesterday
morning he retired with Matuscewitz, and had a long conference with him.
The absolute Courts have a great hankering after the Duke, though their
Ministers here can hardly look for his return to office; nor do I believe that
if he was to come back he would be found indulgent to the projects of
Russia, though he might be disinclined to continue so very intimate as we
now are with France. He told me this morning he thought the French King’s
speech to his Chambers exceedingly good. He of course disapproves of all
our foreign policy, particularly in the Peninsula. He says he sees no daylight
whatever through the Portuguese affair. The Spanish may terminate in the
success of the Queen, but only by her opposing Liberalism. He is convinced
that if she introduces Liberal principles she will be lost. He says that the
Spanish Government will be too happy to interfere in the Portuguese
contest (as in fact I know that they have offered to do), but that we never
can allow this, which besides the consequences of interference (as a
principle) would necessarily make Portugal dependent on Spain. Arbuthnot,
who is here, told me (and he hears these things from the Duke) that
Matuscewitz had expressed the greatest contempt for Palmerston, and not
the less for Lord Grey; and that, with regard to the latter, he had been much
struck with his ignorance. I do not know on what points he meant, but it
must be in history or diplomacy, which I am surprised at, because I thought
he was a man of a cultivated mind and general information, who would be
found, as far as knowledge goes, competent to any discussion. He likewise
said that he found him slow of comprehension.

Belvoir, January 8th, 1834
There was a ball for all the servants and tenants on Monday, which the
Duke of Rutland opened with Lady Georgina Fane, and the Duke of

Wellington followed with Lady Brownlow. Yesterday half the people went
to Belton; it was nearly impossible to get any talk with the Duke. He told
me that the Russians were in no hurry to do any overt act in Turkey, and
that their policy was as it had always been—to work very gradually. I asked
him if he thought they really intended a permanent occupation of Turkey.
He said certainly not; that they could not bear the expense of a war, which
in that case would ensue; that the difference of the expense between their
own and a foreign country was as between 10d. and 4s. a man.
To-day I have been all over this Castle; the arrangements are
admirable, and the order and cleanliness of every part of the offices and the
magnitude of the establishment are very remarkable, and such as I have
never seen elsewhere. This afternoon Gosh [Mr. Arbuthnot] came and sat
with me, and talked over all matters, which I have heard from him before,
though he has forgotten it, which he well may, for his intellect, never very
bright, seems to be almost entirely obscured. I daresay I have put down
these things before, but as they are curious scraps of history they may as
well go down again. It all relates to the break-up of Lord Grey’s
Government in ’32, and the abortive attempts of the Duke to form an
administration.
The King had given his word that he had never promised to make a
single peer. Doubts arose whether he had not told a lie; they pressed him on
this point (Wellington and Lyndhurst); he persisted in his denial, upon
which they requested Taylor might be sent for, and all the correspondence
produced, when they found he was pledged up to the throat, and without
reserve. The King then attempted to get out of it by saying he had consented
to call up the sons of DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND MR. PEEL. Scotch peers and give to
Irish peers English peerages, which he did not consider a creation of peers!
When the Duke accepted the commission to form a Government, it
was resolved to prorogue Parliament, and Lyndhurst was desired by the
King to go to Lord Grey and tell him such was his pleasure. Lyndhurst
forgot it! In after times, those who write the history of these days will
probably discuss the conduct of the great actors, and it will not fail to be
matter of surprise that such an obvious expedient was not resorted to, in
order to suspend violent discussions. Among the various reasons that will

be imagined and suggested, I doubt if it will occur to anybody that the real
reason was that it was forgotten.
Arbuthnot says they know that Lyndhurst was intriguing with the
Whigs when the Duke was turned out in ’30, and that it had been settled
that he was to remain their Chancellor; and so he would have been if
Brougham would have consented to be Attorney-General, and had not run
restive, and given clear indications of his resolution to destroy the
Government if he was left out of it. He says that notwithstanding the
duplicity of Peel’s conduct in 1832, he and the Duke are always on good
terms, and no great question is ever agitated without Peel’s coming to the
Duke and talking it over with him; that Peel is determined to have nothing
to do with the Whigs, and told him (Arbuthnot) so very lately, but the High
Tories are just as unmanageable as ever. Chandos came to the Duke the
other day, and told him he thought they ought to get up petitions against the
malt tax. The Duke said he would countenance no such thing; that he
thought the revenue of the country should be supported; for if it failed,
recourse must be had to a property tax, which would fall on the aristocracy;
and so he persuaded him to let the malt tax alone.

January 26th, 1834
I left Belvoir on Friday, the 10th, and went to Mrs. Arkwright’s,[6] at
Stoke, where I found nobody but her own family. I was well enough
amused for two days with her original conversation and her singing, and her
cousin, Miss Twiss, who, with a face of uncommon plainness and the voice
of a man, is sensible and well informed. Then they both liked to have me,
and that is a great charm; a little agreeableness goes a great way in the
Peak, and it is not difficult to procure a triumph to one’s vanity from people
who, with a good deal of power of appreciation, have very little opportunity
for comparison, and are therefore easily satisfied. Arkwright told me that it
was reported by those who were better informed than himself of his father’s
circumstances, that he is worth from seven to eight millions. His
grandfather began life as a barber, invented some machinery, got a patent,
and made a fortune. His son gave him offence by a marriage which he
disapproved of, and he quarrelled with him, but gave him a mill. Arkwright,

the son, saw nothing of his father for many years, but by industry and
ability accumulated great wealth. When Sir Richard served as Sheriff, his
son thought it right to go out with the other gentlemen of the county to meet
him, and the old gentleman was struck with his handsome equipage, and
asked to whom it belonged. Upon being informed, he sought a
reconciliation with him, and was astonished to find that his son was as rich
as himself. From that time they continued on good terms, and at his death
he bequeathed him the bulk of his property.

[6] [Mrs. Arkwright was a Kemble by birth, and had much of the musical
and dramatic genius of that gifted family. Her singing was most touching, and
some of her musical compositions were full of originality and expression.]

Mrs. Arkwright told me the curious story of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s
engagements with her two cousins, the daughters of Mrs. Siddons. They
were two sisters, one tall and very handsome, the other little, without
remarkable beauty, but very clever and agreeable. He fell in love with the
first, and they were engaged to be married. Of course under such
circumstances he lived constantly and freely in the house, and after some
time the superior intelligence of the clever sister changed the current of his
passion, and she supplanted the handsome one in the affection of the artist.
They concealed the double treachery, but one day a note which was
intended for his new love fell into the hands of the old love, A MURDER NEAR
RUNTON. who, never doubting it was for herself, opened it, and discovered the
fatal truth. From that time she drooped, sickened, and shortly after died. On
her deathbed she exacted a promise from her sister that she would never
marry Lawrence, who firmly adhered to it. He continued his relations with
her with more or less intimacy up to the period of her death, the date of
which I do not recollect.
From Stoke I went on Monday, 13th, to Drakelow, which Sir Roger
Gresley has lent to Craufurd, and stayed there two nights. It is a miserable
place, with the Trent running under the windows, and Lord Anglesey’s land
close to the door. Thence on Wednesday to Runton Abbey—Lord
Lichfield’s—who has added to it a farm-house, and made a residence in the
midst of his property, where he has the best shooting in England. He and I
went out the day after I got there, and killed 41 pheasants, 74 hares, 24
rabbits, 8 woodcocks, and 8 partridges. He is a fine fellow, with an
excellent disposition, liberal, hospitable, frank and gay, quick and
intelligent, without cultivation, extravagant and imprudent, with
considerable aptitude for business; between spending and speculating,
buying property in one place, selling in another, and declining to sell in a
third, he has half ruined a noble estate.
Just before I got there a murder had been committed close to his house
under very curious circumstances, of which some notice appeared in the
newspapers. A soldier in the Artillery got a legacy of 500ℓ., with which he

bought his discharge, went down to the village near Runton, and took a very
pretty girl of indifferent character to live with him. He gave her shawls and
trinkets, and spent a good deal of money on her. Having addicted himself
immoderately to drink, he soon spent all his money, and, to supply himself
with the means of getting drunk, he began robbing his mistress of the
articles he had given her. It happened that about this time somebody in the
village who had been robbed consulted a cunning man of great repute in the
neighbourhood, and so alarmed was the thief at the bare idea of what this
oracle might utter, that the stolen property was secretly restored. The girl
upon hearing of this restitution resolved to have recourse to the cunning
man, and invited her lover to escort her to his abode. After endeavouring in
vain to dissuade her they set out together, but he was so overcome with
terror as he went along that he stopped short in the road and refused to
proceed. On this the girl said that it was easy to see who was the thief, and
that the reason he would not face the conjuror was that he was conscious of
his own guilt. Upon this they fell to high words, then to blows, and he
finished by murdering her. He did not attempt to escape, but repaired to a
public-house, where he was soon after taken into custody. He
acknowledged the crime, and said he was weary of life, and deserved to be
hanged. Here is an example of the miserable effects of good fortune upon a
man who was unfit to use it, and of the strange superstition of the common
people. The murderer will be tried at the next assizes.
I stayed at Runton till Sunday, 19th, when I came here,[7] where there
was nobody but the family and Ralph Sneyd. The place is exceedingly
beautiful, and arranged with excellent taste. It has been very agreeable.
Lady Harrowby is superior to all the women I have ever known; ‘her talk is
so crisp,’ as Luttrell once said of her. She has no imagination, no invention,
no eloquence, no deep reading or retentive memory, but a noble,
straightforward, independent character, a sound and vigorous
understanding, penetration, judgment, taste. She is perfectly natural, open
and sincere, loves conversation and social enjoyment; with her intimate
friends there is an abandon and unreserved communion of thoughts,
feelings, and opinions which renders her society delightful. Of all the
women I ever saw she unites the most masculine mind with the most
feminine heart. Lord Harrowby[8] has all the requisites of disagreeableness,
a tart, short, provoking manner, with manners at once pert and CHARACTER OF

LORD HARROWBY. rigid; but he is full of information, and if made the best of
may yield a good deal of desirable knowledge. Though not illiberal in
politics, he has fallen into the high Tory despondency about the prospects of
the country, and anticipates every evil that the most timid alarmist can
suggest. Still, justice should be rendered to Lord Harrowby; a purer and
more disinterested statesman never existed. He was always devoid of
selfishness and ambition, honourable and conscientious to a degree which
rendered him incapable of a sordid or oblique action. Always acute, but
sometimes crotchety, he had the same fault in politics which was the
reproach of Lord Eldon in law—indecision; and this in no small degree
impaired both his efficacy and his authority. His great idol was Pitt, and,
after him, he was the friend and admirer of Perceval. Bred in their school,
and a Tory by taste, by habit, and in opinion, it is not a little to his honour
that he was able to comprehend the mighty changes which time and
circumstances had effected, and to perceive that an inflexible adherence to
high Tory maxims was dangerous, because their practical operation was no
longer possible; but justice must be rendered to him hereafter, for he will
never obtain it in his own time. By endeavouring to steer between two great
and exasperated factions he became thoroughly obnoxious to both. After
having refused the post of Prime Minister, no one can doubt the sincerity of
his desire to retire from public life, and in the consciousness of rectitude,
the disgust of parties, and a calm and dignified philosophy, he finds ample
consolation for all the obloquy with which he has been assailed.
[7] [This must have been written at Sandon, Lord Harrowby’s seat in
Staffordshire, but the entry is not dated.]
[8] [Dudley Ryder, second Baron and first Earl of Harrowby, born in 1762;
married in 1795 Susan, a daughter of the Marquis of Stafford.]

Burghley, January 28th, 1834
Came here yesterday, and found Lady Clinton, Lady Frederic
Bentinck, Lyne Stephens and Irby, not amusing. Captain Spencer came to-
day. I had almost forgotten the house, which is surprisingly grand in all
respects, though the living rooms are not numerous or handsome enough. I
just missed Peel, who went to Belvoir yesterday. I heard wonderful things
of railroads and steam when I was in Staffordshire, yet by the time anybody

reads what I now write (if anybody ever does), how they will smile perhaps
at what I gape and stare at, and call wonderful, with such accelerated
velocity do we move on. Stephenson, the great engineer, told Lichfield that
he had travelled on the Manchester and Liverpool railroad for many miles
at the rate of a mile a minute, that his doubt was not how fast his engines
could be made to go, but at what pace it would be proper to stop, that he
could make them travel with greater speed than any bird can cleave the air,
and that he had ascertained that 400 miles an hour was the extreme velocity
which the human frame could endure, at which it could move and exist.

February 1st, 1834
Lord Wharncliffe has been here and is gone. He, like Harrowby, is
very dismal about the prospects of the country, and thinks we are
gravitating towards a revolution. He says that the constituency of the great
towns is composed of ultra-Radicals, and that no gentleman with really
independent and conservative principles can sit for them, that the great
majority of the manufacturers and of the respectable persons of the middle
class are moderate, and hostile to subversion and violent measures, but that
their influence is overwhelmed by the numerical strength of the low voters,
who want to go all lengths. He says that he has received greater marks of
deference and respect in his own county, and especially at Sheffield, where
a short time ago he would have been in danger of being torn in pieces, than
he ever experienced, but that he could no more bring a son in for Sheffield
than he could fly in the air. Sir John Beckett is just gone to stand for Leeds,
and certainly the catechism to which he was there forced to submit is very
ominous. A seat in the House of Commons will cease to be an object of
ambition to honourable and independent men, if it can only be obtained by
cringing and servility to the rabble of great towns, and when it shall be
established that the member is to be a slave, bound hand and foot by
pledges, and responsible for every vote he gives to masters who are equally
tyrannical and unreasonable. I know nothing more difficult than to form a
satisfactory opinion upon the real state and prospects of the country amidst
the conflicting STATE OF SPAIN. prejudices and impressions of individuals of
different parties and persuasions, and there are so many circumstances that

tell different ways, that at this moment my judgment is entirely suspended
on the subject.
George Villiers gave a deplorable account of the state of Spain, but he
(unlike the Duke of Wellington) thinks that the only chance of safety for the
Queen is to make common cause with the Liberals. He has been greatly
instrumental to Zea’s removal, having conveyed to the Queen Regent that
England by no means considered his continuance in the Ministry
indispensable, and this intimation, together with the storm which assailed
him from all parts, determined her to dismiss him. Palmerston has never
written to George Villiers once since October. I heard the same thing of him
in some other case, I forget which.

February 6th, 1834
Returned to town yesterday from Newmarket, which I took in my way
from Burghley. Parliament had opened the day before, with a long nothingy
(a word I have coined) speech from the throne, in which the most
remarkable points were a violent declaration against O’Connell, that is,
against Irish agitation, and strong expressions of amity with France. It is
comical to compare the language of the very silly old gentleman who wears
the crown, in his convivial moments, and in the openness of his heart, with
that which his Ministers cram into his mouth, each sentiment being uttered
with equal energy and apparent sincerity. Lord Grey is said to have made a
very good speech on the Address. The House of Commons has commenced
with all the dulness imaginable, but it was enlivened last night by a
squabble on the Hill and Sheil business[9] (dragged on by O’Connell), and
the ultimate arrest of Althorp and Sheil by the Serjeant-at-arms, a very
foolish affair, which must end as it began, in much declaiming and
swearing, and no positive conviction, though complete moral certitude. It
afforded much amusement, as everything personal does. The present
expectation is that the session will go off rather quietly.
[9] [Mr. Hill, a member of Parliament, had stated in a speech that some of
the Irish members most vehemently opposed to the Coercion Bill in the House of
Commons had nevertheless privately stated to members of the Government that
they were glad the Act should be renewed. This charge was denied with great
heat by the Irish members in the House when Parliament met. But upon Mr.

Sheil’s calling upon Lord Althorp to state whether he was one of the members
alluded to, Lord Althorp replied that the honourable gentleman was one of them.
Sheil immediately denied it in the most solemn and emphatic terms; and as it
was feared that a hostile meeting might ensue between him and Lord Althorp,
they were both taken into custody by the Serjeant-at-arms. Further explanations
ensued, and Lord Althorp subsequently withdrew the charge, stating that he
believed Mr. Sheil’s asseveration, and that he must himself have been
misinformed.]

February 13th, 1834
It is observed by everybody that there never was a session of
Parliament which opened with such an appearance of apathy as this. After
the violent excitement which has almost incessantly prevailed for the last
two years or more, men’s minds seem exhausted, and though the
undergrowl of political rancour is still heard, and a feeble cry of the Church
is in danger, on the whole there is less bitterness and animosity, and a
tolerably fair promise that things will go on in a smooth and even course.
The storm that impended over Europe has blown off, and there seems to be
no danger of any interruption of the peace. Esterhazy and Madame de
Lieven both told me last night that they thought so now, and the former that
he had told Palmerston that we might rely upon Austria’s not being an
indifferent spectator of the political conduct of Russia, and if we would
place confidence in them, they would not only prevent any dangerous
aggression on the part of Russia in Europe, but would take such measures
as should contribute largely to the security of our Eastern dominions,
though that was no object of immediate interest to them. Madame de Lieven
told me that it was impossible to describe the contempt as well as dislike
which the whole corps diplomatique had for Palmerston, and pointing to
Talleyrand, who was sitting close by, ‘surtout lui.’ They have the meanest
opinion of his capacity, and his manners are the reverse of conciliatory. She
cannot imagine how his colleagues bear with him, and Lord Grey supports
him vehemently. The only friend he has in the UNPOPULARITY OF LORD PALMERSTON.
cabinet is Graham, who has no weight. His unpopularity in his own office is
quite as great as it is among the foreign ministers, and he does nothing, so
that they do not make up in respect for what they want in inclination.
George Villiers complains that for above three months he has not received a
single line from him, and he is a young minister, unpractised in the

profession, to whom is committed the most delicate and difficult mission in
Europe. He spends his time in making love to Mrs. P—— whom he takes to
the House of Commons to hear speeches which he does not make, and
where he exhibits his conquest, and certainly it is the best of his exploits,
but what a successor of Canning, whom by the way he affects to imitate.
What would be Canning’s indignation if he could look from his grave and
see these new Reformers, who ape him in his worst qualities, and who
blunder and bluster in the seat which he once filled with such glory and
success. It must be owned that we are in a curious condition, and if the
character of the Government, moral and intellectual, be analysed, it will
exhibit a very astonishing result: with a great deal of loose talent of one sort
or another scattered about it, but mixed with so much alloy, that,
compounded as it is, the metal seems very base. However, we are not likely
to get anything better, and these people will very likely hammer on
tolerably well.
Since Parliament met, the foolish business of Sheil and Hill has been
the sole topic of discussion, to the unspeakable disgust of every sensible
person in and out of the House. All feel the embarrassment, the ridicule, the
disgrace of such an occupation, and the members of Parliament are
provoked that the affair was not strangled at the outset. The Speaker is now
generally blamed for not having prevented Althorp from answering
O’Connell’s question, which he ought to have done, at least ought to have
warned the House of the consequences, when undoubtedly the matter would
have been stifled. They say Althorp did what he had to do very well, like a
gentleman and man of honour, and in excellent style and taste, though many
think he need not have said so much. The committee began to sit yesterday;
it was not a secret committee, but they agreed to request members not to
come in; however, the tail would go in, and they found it would be a
difficult matter to exclude them, for which reason, and because Sheil had no
friend on the committee, they unanimously agreed that the House should be
invited to add O’Connell to it, and after some difficulty raised by John
Russell, this was consented to.

February 14th, 1834

Last night at Miss Berry’s met Mrs. Somerville, the great
mathematician. I had been reading in the morning Sedgwick’s sermon on
education, in which he talks of Whewell, Airy, and Mrs. Somerville,
mentioning her as one of the great luminaries of the present day. The
subject of astronomy is so sublime that one shrinks into a sense of
nothingness in contemplating it, and can’t help regarding those who have
mastered the mighty process and advanced the limits of the science as
beings of another order. I could not then take my eyes off this woman, with
a feeling of surprise and something like incredulity, all involuntary and very
foolish; but to see a mincing, smirking person, fan in hand, gliding about
the room, talking nothings and nonsense, and to know that La Place was her
plaything and Newton her acquaintance, was too striking a contrast not to
torment the brain. It was Newton’s mantle trimmed and flounced by
Maradan.

February 17th, 1834
In the House of Commons the Sheil committee came to a sudden
termination. It was a silly and discreditable business, and people were glad
it ended. The course adopted was this: they took the ‘Examiner’ newspaper,
containing the paragraph inculpatory of Sheil, and they called on Hill to
prove his case. Hill called witnesses, one of whom, Macaulay, refused to
speak. He said he would not repeat what had passed in private conversation.
The committee approved, and Hill threw up his case, held out his hand
‘with strong emotion’ to Sheil, made ample apologies, and Sheil was
acquitted. Then came the apologies in the House of Commons. Peel told me
that he was convinced Sheil really had never said what was imputed to him;
but that he said something tantamount, though very loosely, O’CONNELL’S
ATTACK ON BARON SMITH. is probable, and the people who had told Althorp would
not come forward to bear him out, so that he was forced to apologise too,
but he did it very reluctantly. The Irishmen, however, had not done, and
O’Dwyer (formerly a reporter) attacked Pease, asked for explanations, his
card and address. Pease, who is a Quaker, said ‘he gave no explanations but
on his legs in the House of Commons, had no card and no address.’

But there was a more serious matter than Sheil and Hill’s trash—
O’Connell’s attack upon Baron Smith, the circumstances of which
exemplify the way the House of Commons is managed under Althorp’s
auspices, and the general mode of proceeding of the Government there.
O’Connell gave notice of a motion for an address to the Crown to remove
the Baron. Government resolved to oppose it. Littleton authorised Shaw to
write to him and say so, and that he would say nothing in the debate
offensive to him, though he could not but disapprove of his charge. Nobody
thought of any support the motion would receive beyond that of the tail.
The Ministers came down to the House in this mind. Stanley and Graham
went away for some purpose or other, and when they came back they found
that O’Connell had altered the terms of his motion, and that Althorp,
Littleton, and the Solicitor-General had agreed to support it; in short, that
O’Connell had laid a trap for them, and they had gone ding-dong into it.
Stanley was very angry and much annoyed, but the thing being done he
knocked under, and tried to bolster up the business. Graham would not, and
in a maudlin, stupid sort of speech declared his opposition, which was
honest enough. All this annoyed the Government very much, and now
O’Connell is said to be quite satisfied with what he has done, and does not
want to have a committee, but (having thrown a slur on the Judge by the
vote of Parliament) to let the matter drop. Spring Rice also voted against the
Government, and said that he had never known a worse case since he sat in
Parliament, and that nothing could be more mischievous than the effect
such a vote would produce in Ireland. Scarlett, Peel, and Spankie made very
good speeches; Stanley, John Russell, and Campbell as bad.
The same night Althorp made his financial statement, exhibiting a
surplus revenue and reduction of taxation, all very flourishing and
promising; but in announcing his intended reduction of the House Tax, he
said without any disguise that he did not think it an objectionable tax, but
that he took it off on account of the clamour against it. Here are three
exhibitions in one week, and this is the Minister of our finances and organ
of Government in the House of Commons. No matter how he blunders in
word or deed, he smiles in dogged good-humour at ridicule or abuse; his
intentions are good, his mind is straightforward, and his conscious rectitude,
his personal popularity, enable him to commit his blunders with impunity;
but the authority of Government suffers in his hands; maxims get into

vogue which are incompatible with good and strong government, and the
effects of his weakness and facility may be felt long after the cessation of
their immediate operation.

February 19th, 1834
Last night Whittle Harvey’s motion on the Pension List. He made
admirable speeches; but had a majority of nine against him. This division is
not a bad exemplification of the state of parties and of the House of
Commons. Some of the Tories voted (in the majority of course), many
others would not. I asked one of them (Henry Hope, a man of no
consequence, certainly) if he was not going to vote. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I shall
not vote, the Government must manage their own business as they can.’ He
would not vote against a proposition he must regard with the greatest
aversion, because he would thereby be supporting the Government and
prefers the chance of giving a victory to the Radicals, establishing a
dangerous principle, and doing a great injury to a host of individuals, the
greater part of whom are of his own party or among his own friends,
because he thinks that the result may be productive of some embarrassment
to Ministers. This is one of the cases in which the conduct of Government
has been such as their bitterest enemies must applaud, when they risk their
popularity to support a very STATE OF THE TORY PARTY. unsightly list of pensions,
not granted by themselves, or to their friends, from a sense of justice; and
yet these high Tories will not support them even in fighting such a battle as
this. On the other hand, the Government reject their support when they
might avail themselves of it against the Radicals and ultra-Whigs, in such a
case as that of Baron Smith the other night; and so ill blood is constantly
increasing between them, while O’Connell and his tail and the Radical
blackguards sit by and chuckle at the evils these mutual jealousies and
antipathies produce. Richmond told me yesterday that Stanley was greatly
annoyed at Baron Smith’s affair; but finding the mischief done, and feeling
the embarrassment that would arise from his opposing Althorp, he threw
himself into the breach; said he had advised him never to do so again. The
conduct of Althorp, Littleton, and Campbell is inconceivable, unless it were
to give a fresh triumph to O’Connell (he has just carried Dungarvan, Jacob
v. Barron; ‘it is the voice of Jacob but the hand of Esau’), who has had his

own way hitherto in this Parliament. In this business and in Sheil’s he has
done just what he pleased, and made the Government appear in as pitiful a
light as he could possibly desire. O’Dwyer told the Speaker that O’Connell
had never expected or even wished that Ministers should give way to him to
the extent they did.
Knatchbull has given notice of a motion to reverse the decision for a
committee on the case of Baron Smith, and in conjunction with Peel. It
must embarrass the Government, but it is not, I think, judicious, because it
is not the same question, and affords them the opportunity of treating it on
different grounds. In the division last night the three Lennox’s all voted
with the minority, brothers of a Cabinet Minister, and all their sisters being
on the Pension List. Molyneux was going out, and was forcibly retained by
Stanley. It looks as if the whipping in was very unskilfully managed.
Notwithstanding the present prosperity and tranquillity, it is impossible not
to be disturbed at the mode in which business is conducted in the House of
Commons, and at the state and animus of parties, and above all at Althorp
being the leader there. His character is peculiarly fitted to do mischief in
these times, and his virtues are unfortunate, for they serve to bolster him up,
and to keep him where he is in spite of his blunders. His temper is so
admirable, his personal popularity so great, that there is an impression that
the House will be led by him more easily than by Stanley, who alone, of the
present Government, could aspire to that post. Nobody imputes to Althorp a
spark of ambition, and ample credit is given him for the most disinterested
motives, and for making a great personal sacrifice in retaining his present
situation. The consciousness of this makes him comparatively indifferent to
victory or defeat, and careless of that nice management which formerly was
indispensable in a leader. He seems totally blind to the consequences of his
errors, and the advantage that is taken of them by those who not only
meditate mischief to the Administration, but to the great interests they are
bound to protect. Occurrences and circumstances that would have filled
former leaders with vexation, and their followers with dismay, seem to pass
over him without ruffling his serenity or alarming his mind. He acts as if in
utter unconsciousness of a restless spirit of popular aggrandisement, as if
the House of Commons was an innoxious and manageable machine, as if it
was sufficient to mean well, and he lets matters take their chance, without
any of that vigilant and systematic direction which, if guided by a nice

discrimination, might regulate the movements and check the eccentricities
of this vast and unruly body. Since the opening of this session, all that he
has said and done has proved his utter unfitness for the place he occupies.
First, his imprudent answers to O’Connell, and the turn he gave to that
affair. Then, in bringing forward his financial statement, the naïveté with
which he admitted that he had submitted to the clamour against the House
Tax, and withdrawn it contrary to his own judgment; then the facility with
which he gave in to O’Connell’s motion about the Irish Judge, and threw
over his colleagues and his party without an apparent reason or motive. It
produces a LORD ALTHORP’S DEFECTS AS LEADER. feeling allied to despair, all
security is at an end, for that which would be produced by his good
intentions is destroyed by reflecting on his miserable judgment; half
republican in his principles, and incredulous of any danger to be
apprehended from the continual increase of popular influences in the House
of Commons, he does not perceive how much the authority of a leader is
diminished in his hands, and how difficult it will be for any successor of his
to gain that sort of ascendency which is indispensable for the effective
conduct of public business, and the moral character of the Government. To
effect this, besides great talents, great tact, discretion, sagacity, and temper
will be required; more, I fear, than fall to the share of Stanley, who is better
qualified to be a debater than a leader. Moderate men, who do not approve
of this Government, but who do not desire to turn them out, if they would
only act upon tolerably conservative principles, are thrown into despair by
the behaviour of Althorp, and regard with consternation the inevitable
increase of anarchy in the House of Commons, and consequent prevalence
of Radical principles, from the sluggish, inert, vacillating, unforeseeing
character he displays.[10]
[10] [These remarks made at the time are not altogether just to Lord
Althorp, and it is now well known from other sources, equally authentic, that he
was more conscious than anyone else was of his own shortcomings, and
passionately desirous to be released from office. But it was notorious that the
retirement of Lord Althorp from the leadership of the House of Commons would
be the signal for the dissolution of Earl Grey’s Government, and so within a few
months the result proved.]

February 22nd, 1834

Went to the House of Commons last night, where I have not been for
many years. A great change, and hardly a human being whose face I knew. I
heard the end of the debate on Chandos’ motion, when Peel gave O’Connell
a severe dressing, and I heard the debate on rescinding the order for a
committee on Baron Smith. Shaw, who held the Baron’s brief, made a very
fine speech, but afforded a memorable example of the danger of saying too
much, and of the importance of knowing when to stop. Not contented with a
very powerful and eloquent appeal, which he wound up with an energetic
peroration, he suffered himself to be led away into a tirade about
O’Connell’s enmity to religion, and instead of ending as he might have
done with shouts of applause, was coughed and ‘questioned’ to the close.
Stanley made a wretched speech; O’Connell very bad, affecting to be
moderate, he was only dull. Peel spoke very shortly, but very well indeed.
Peel’s is an enviable position; in the prime of life, with an immense fortune,
facile princeps in the House of Commons, unshackled by party connections
and prejudices, universally regarded as the ablest man, and with (on the
whole) a very high character, free from the cares of office, able to devote
himself to literature, to politics, or idleness, as the fancy takes him. No
matter how unruly the House, how impatient or fatigued, the moment he
rises all is silence, and he is sure of being heard with profound attention and
respect. This is the enjoyable period of his life, and he must make the most
of it, for when time and the hour shall bring about his return to power, his
cares and anxieties will begin, and with whatever success his ambition may
hereafter be crowned, he will hardly fail to look back with regret to this
holiday time of his political career. How free and light he must feel at being
liberated from the shackles of his old connections, and at being able to take
any part that his sense of his own interests or of the public exigencies may
point out! And then the satisfactory consciousness of being by far the most
eminent man in the House of Commons, to see and feel the respect he
inspires and the consideration he enjoys. It is a melancholy proof of the
decadence of ability and eloquence in that House, when Peel is the first,
and, except Stanley, almost the only real orator in it. He speaks with great
energy, great dexterity—his language is powerful and easy; he reasons well,
hits hard, and replies with remarkable promptitude and effect; but he is at an
immense distance below the great models of eloquence, Pitt, Fox, and
Canning; his voice is not melodious, and it is a little monotonous; his action
is very ungraceful, his person and manner are vulgar, and he has certain

tricks in his motions which exhibit that vulgarity in a manner almost
offensive, and which is only redeemed SIR ROBERT PEEL’S FUTURE. by the real
power of his speeches. His great merit consists in his judgment, tact and
discretion, his facility, promptitude, thorough knowledge of the assembly he
addresses, familiarity with the details of every sort of Parliamentary
business, and the great command he has over himself. He never was a great
favourite of mine, but I am satisfied that he is the fittest man to be Minister,
and I therefore wish to see him return to power. Stanley told me yesterday
how very glad they were at having been defeated on Baron Smith’s case,
and that they were thereby relieved from a great embarrassment. Times are
mightily altered, when such defeats and such scrapes produce no effect
upon Government, and when they can go on upon two majorities of 4 and 8
and one defeat.

February 25th, 1834
There has been a meeting at Althorp’s to-day, numerously attended, in
which he talked with some effect as it is said, the audience having gone
away in a humour to support Government. He took occasion, on somebody
hinting at the disunion among themselves, to say that though there might
exist differences of opinion on some minor points, he believed there never
had existed a Cabinet of which the members were more firmly knit together
by private friendship and political concurrence.
It was Methuen who harangued, and who said that the meeting was
very unsatisfactory. Althorp began by saying that unless gentlemen would
more regularly and consistently support the Government it could not be
carried on, when Paul[11] rejoined that the Government did not support
itself, and that they seemed divided. Moreover, that when the Chancellor of
the Exchequer himself talked with so much doubt and uncertainty about
reducing particular taxes, he must not be surprised if everybody tried to get
what they could for themselves in the general scramble.
[11] [Paul Methuen, Esq., M.P. for Wiltshire. It was to him that O’Connell
made the memorable but somewhat profane retort, ‘Paul, Paul, why persecutest
thou me?’]

There are letters from George Villiers to-day (not to me, but to his
mother), in which he gives a deplorable account of Spain, that Carlos has a
large party in the north, where the Queen’s person is odious, the monks
have persuaded the people that she is atheistical and republican, that she has
not force enough to crush the rebellion, and what she has is scattered on
different points, without being able to make any combined or vigorous
efforts, that she has no money. The Cortes is to be assembled, but they (I
suppose the Ministers) have rejected all good advice on this subject, and
nobody can anticipate the effect that will be produced by 300 or 400
individuals meeting in a legislative capacity. If Miguel had resolved to give
effectual aid to Carlos, and dashed into Spain, he might certainly have
placed him on the throne, and then secured him as a powerful ally to
himself in his own contest. Miguel’s own case he (George Villiers) by no
means considers hopeless, thinks him much better off than Pedro was when
at Oporto. The stories of the Queen’s[12] gallantries are true. He does not
say so totidem verbis, because he does not dare, but he manages to convey
as much in answer to a question his mother asked him. He thinks that the
great probability is that universal anarchy will convulse that country with
civil war of the most destructive character, and that the provinces,
kingdoms, and districts will be arrayed against each other. The Carlists of
Spain being in the north, and those of France in the south, it is very likely
they will endeavour to make common cause, in which case it will be
difficult for France not to interfere, so he thinks; so do not I, and am more
disposed to believe that Louis Philippe is too prudent to run his head into
such a hornet’s nest, and that he will content himself with keeping matters
quiet in France, without meddling with the Spanish disputes. He had not yet
received any letters from Palmerston.[13]
[12] [Queen Christina the Regent is here meant. Queen Isabella II. was a
young child.]
[13] [Within a few days of the date of this note the Ministry of March 1st
was formed in France, with M. Thiers (for the first time) at the head of it. The
avowed object of that Minister was to induce the King to interfere more actively
in Spain in conjunction with England, ‘Nous entraînerons le Roi’ was a boast he
was heard to utter. But he utterly failed. Mr. Greville’s prediction turned out to
be correct, and in a few months Thiers was again out of office.]

February 26th, 1834
HORNE AND BROUGHAM. Horne, the late Attorney-General, seems likely to
fall between the stools. When Brougham proposed to him to take a puisne
judgeship, he said he had been an equity lawyer all his life, and had no
mind to enter on a course of common law, for which he was not qualified,
and proposed that he should not go the circuits, and be Deputy-Speaker of
the House of Lords. Brougham told him there would be no difficulty, and
then told Lord Grey he had settled it with Horne, but did not tell him what
Horne required. The general movement was made, and when Horne desired
to see Lord Grey he told him that his terms could not be complied with, so
he became a victim to the trickery and shuffling of the Chancellor, who
wanted to get him out, and did not care how. I hear that his colleagues are
quite aware of all his tricks and his intrigues, and have not the slightest
confidence in him. He thinks of nothing but the establishment of political
power on the basis of patronage, and accordingly he grasps at all he can. All
the commissions of enquiry which are set on foot afford him the means of
patronage, but I doubt all will not do. He is emasculated by being in the
House of Lords, and he will hardly get anybody to do his business for him
in the House of Commons.

CHAPTER XXIII.
Spain — Russia and Turkey — Sir R. Peel’s Pictures — Peel
and Stanley — Lord Brougham’s Judicial Changes — Lord
Brougham’s Defence — Admission of Dissenters to the
Universities — Lord Denman’s Peerage — Growing
Ascendency of Peel — An Apology for Lord Brougham —
Personal Reflections — Crime in Dorsetshire — Spain and
Portugal — Procession of the Trades’ Unions — Lady
Hertford’s Funeral — Petition of the London University for a
Charter — Repeal of the Union — Excitement of the King —
Brougham and Eldon at the Privy Council — Duke of
Wellington’s Aversion to the Whigs — Lord Brougham and
Lord Wynford — Fête at Petworth — Lord Brougham’s
Conduct on the Pluralities Bill — Crisis in the Cabinet — Prince
Lieven recalled — Stanley, Graham, and the Duke of Richmond
resign on the Irish Church Bill — History of the Crisis —
Ward’s Motion defeated by moving the previous question —
Affairs of Portugal — Effects of the late Change — Oxford
Commemoration — Peel’s Declaration — Festival in
Westminster Abbey — Don Carlos on his way to Spain —
Stanley’s ‘Thimble-rig’ Speech — Resignation of Lord Grey —
Mr. Greville’s account of the Causes of his Retirement — The
Government reconstituted by Lord Melbourne — Lord
Duncannon Secretary of State.

March 12th, 1834
I have been laid up with the gout for the greater part of a fortnight, but
went to Newmarket for two days to get well, and succeeded. Weather like
summer, nothing particularly new, a long debate on the Corn Laws, which

being called an open question, the Ministers voted different ways—that is,
all the Cabinet voted one way, but the underlings took their own course.
Half the Ruralists are furious with Government for their indecision and way
of acting on this question, but I am so totally ignorant upon it that I cannot
enter into their indignation, or exactly understand from what it proceeds. It
was pretty to see Graham and Poulett Thomson, like two game-cocks got
loose from one pen, pecking at and spurring one another. RUSSIA AND TURKEY.
Everybody agrees that the debate was very dull, and that is all they do agree
upon.
George Villiers writes to his family from Spain, that nothing can be
worse and more unpromising than the state of that country. Notwithstanding
his Liberal opinions and desire to see a system of constitutional freedom
established in the Peninsula, he is obliged to confess that Spain is not fit for
such a boon, and that the materials do not exist out of which such a social
edifice can be constructed. He regards with dismay and sorrow the tendency
towards irremediable confusion and political convulsions, and sees no
daylight through the dark prospect. He appears to regret Zea, to whose
removal he contributed, and finds more difficulties in dealing with the
present Ministers than he had with him.

March 14th, 1834
There is a fresh démêlé with Russia on account of a new treaty
concluded by Achmet Pacha at St. Petersburg. By this Russia agrees to
remit six millions of the ten which Turkey owes her, and to give up the
Principalities, but she keeps the fortress of Silistria and the military road,
which gives her complete command over them. The Sultan, ‘not to be
outdone in generosity,’ in return for so much, kindly cedes to Russia a slip
of sea-coast on the Black Sea, adjoining another portion already ceded by
the Treaty of Adrianople as far south as Poti. This territorial acquisition is
not considerable in itself, but it embraces the line of communication with
Persia, by which we have a vast traffic, and which Russia will be able at
any time to interrupt. This new transaction, so quietly and plausibly
effected, has thrown our Government into a great rage, and especially his
Majesty King William, who insisted upon a dozen ships being sent off

forthwith to the Mediterranean. Nothing vigorous, however, has been done,
and Palmerston has contented himself with writing to Lord Ponsonby,
desiring him to exhort the Sultan not to ratify this treaty, and rather to pay
(or more properly, continue to owe) the whole ten millions than accede to
the wily proposal. This advice will probably seem more friendly than
disinterested, and I have not the slightest idea of the Sultan’s listening to it.
He has, in fact, become the vassal of Russia, and his lot is settled in this
respect, for from Russia he has most to fear and most to hope. The conduct
of our Government in this question, has been marked by nothing but
negligence and indecision, vainly blustering and threatening at one moment
and tamely submitting and acquiescing at another, ‘willing to wound and
yet afraid to strike,’ treating Russia as if she was the formidable foe of
Turkey, and allowing her so to act as to make Turkey think her an ally and
protectress, and finally to throw herself into Russia’s arms.
I went yesterday morning to Peel’s house, to see his pictures; since we
met at Buckenham we have got rather intimate. The fact is that, though I
have never been a great admirer of his character, and probably he is not
improved in high-mindedness, I am so sensible of his capacity, and of the
need in which we stand of him, that I wish to see him again in power, and
he is a very agreeable man into the bargain. His collection is excellent, and
does honour to his taste. We talked of various matters, but the thing that
struck me most was what he said had passed between him and Stanley the
night before indicative of such good feeling between them. It was about the
job of Lord Plunket’s with regard to the Deanery of Down (concerning
which they say there is a very good case; not that it will do, be it ever so
good, for Plunket has a bad name, and public opinion will not pause or
retract in any concern of his). He and Stanley met at Madame de Lieven’s
ball, and Peel said to him, ‘Why did you let that appointment take place?’
Stanley replied, ‘The fact is, I could not give the true and only excuse for
Plunket, viz., that he had signed the report, but had never read it.’ Peel said,
‘You had better give him some other deanery and cancel this appointment.’
They talked for a long time, but this tone and this advice exhibit a state of
sentiment by no means incompatible with a future union, when matters are
ripe for it. I found Peel full of curiosity to know for what purpose
Brougham and Denman had been hunting each other about the County of
Beds. The Chief Justice was on the circuit at Bedford, and the Chancellor

sent to him by special messenger to appoint a
LORD BROUGHAM’S JUDICIAL CHANGES.
meeting. The Chancellor went to Ampthill, and then to Bedford. The Chief
Justice had left Bedford in the morning, and went towards London.
Brougham had left his carriage at Ampthill and hired a job one, that he
might enter Bedford incognito. Somewhere between Barnet and St. Albans
they met, and returned to town together in the Chancellor’s job coach. They
went to Lord Grey’s, and the next day Denman returned to the circuit,
which he had left without notice to his brother judge or to anybody—a
mystery.

March 16th, 1834
Heard last night the explanation of the above. Brougham found that
Williams would not do in the Exchequer, so he shuffled up the judges and
redealt them. Williams was shoved up to the Common Pleas, Bosanquet
sent to the King’s Bench, and James Parke put into the Exchequer. I thought
this was odd, because the Exchequer is an inferior court; but I was told that
Parke likes to be with Lord Lyndhurst, who has now made the Court of
Exchequer of primary importance. 48,000 writs were issued from the
Exchequer last year, and only 39,000 from the King’s Bench. I forget what
the proportions used to be, but enormously the other way. It is quite
ludicrous to talk to any lawyer about the Chancellor; the ridicule and
aversion he has excited are universal. They think he has degraded the
profession, and his tricks are so palpable, numerous, and mean, that
political partiality can neither screen nor defend them. As to the separation
of the judicial from the ministerial duties of his office, it is in great measure
accomplished without any legislative act, for nobody ever thinks of
bringing an original cause into his Court. He has nothing to hear but
appeals, which must come before him, and lunacy and other matters, over
which he has sole jurisdiction.

March 19th, 1834
The night before last Sheil brought on a debate on the Turkish
question, when Palmerston made a wretched speech, and Peel attacked him

very smartly, as it is his delight to do, for he dislikes Palmerston. Talleyrand
said to me last night, ‘Palmerston a très-bien parlé.’ I told him everybody
thought it pitiable. He certainly took care to flatter France and not to offend
Russia. In the Lords Brougham took occasion, in replying to some question
of Ellenborough’s, to defend himself from the charges which have been
brought against him of negligence and incapacity in his judicial office, and
he made out a good case for himself as far as industry and despatch are
concerned. Nobody ever denied him the merit of the former quality. The
virulent attacks of the Tory press (that is, of the ‘Morning Post,’ by Praed,
for the ‘Standard’ rather defends him) have overshot their mark, and,
though the general opinion of the Bar seems to condemn him as a bad
Chancellor, he is probably not near so bad as they endeavour to make him
out. A mind so vigorous as his will master difficulties in a short time at
which an inferior capacity would in vain hammer away for years; but his
life, habits, and turn of mind seem all incompatible with profound law-
learning. He said to Sefton, after he had spoken, ‘They had better leave me
alone. I was afraid that when Londonderry was gone nobody would attack
me, and I did not think Ellenborough would have been damned fool
enough.’ They certainly can’t get the best of him at the gab.
George Villiers continues to give a deplorable account of Spanish
affairs—of the imbecility of the Government, and of the conduct of the
Queen, about whom the stories of gallantry are quite true, and he says it has
done irreparable injury to her cause. An embassy had arrived from Pedro,
with a proposition that they should concert a combined operation for
crushing the Miguelites and the Carlists both, beginning with the former.
George Villiers seems to think it feasible, but doubts if the Spanish
Government has sufficient energy and courage to undertake such an
operation.

March 25th, 1834
Dined with Peel on Saturday; a great dinner with the Duke of
Gloucester and the Ambassadors. The day before, in the House of Lords,
Lord Grey presented a petition from certain members of the University of
Cambridge, praying for the admission of Dissenters to take degrees, which

he introduced with a very good speech. The DINNER AT SIR ROBERT PEEL’S. Duke of
Gloucester, who, as Chancellor of the University, ought properly to have
said whatever there was to say, was not there (in which Silly Billy did a
wise thing), so the Duke of Wellington rose to speak in his stead. It may
have been that considering himself to stand in the Duke of Gloucester’s
shoes, he could not make too foolish a speech, and accordingly he delivered
one of those harangues which make men shrug their shoulders with pity or
astonishment. It is always a matter of great regret to me when he exposes
himself in this manner. After dinner at Peel’s I talked to Lyndhurst about it,
who said, ‘Unlucky thing that Chancellorship of Oxford; it will make him
commit himself in a very inconvenient manner. The Duke is so very
obstinate; if he thought that it was possible to act any longer upon those
High Church principles it would be all very well, but you have transferred
power to a class of a lower description, and particularly to the great body of
Dissenters, and it is obvious that those principles are now out of date; the
question is, under the circumstances, What is best to be done?’ Lord
Ellenborough entirely threw the Duke over, and made a very good speech,
agreeing to the prayer of the petitioners, with the reservation only of certain
securities which Lord Grey himself approves of. I dined with him the day
following, and he said so, adding at the same time, ‘though I dare say they
will consider them as an insult, and make great complaints at their
imposition. However, I don’t care for that, and if they don’t choose to
accept what is offered them on such conditions, they may go without it.’
There are two things which strike one (at least strike me) in the discussion
—that of the two principal actors the Duke of Wellington is incomparably a
man of a more vigorous understanding, and of greater firmness, energy, and
decision than Lord Grey, but that Lord Grey appears like an accomplished
orator, and prudent, sagacious, liberal statesman, while the other exhibits
bigoted, narrow-minded views, ignorance almost discreditable, and nothing
but a blind zeal in deference to the obstinate prejudices of the academical
body with which he has connected himself. Who would imagine (who heard
the two men and knew nothing more of them) that the latter is in reality
immensely superior to the former in mind and understanding? Nor must it
be supposed that the Duke of Wellington, if he came into power, would act
in a manner corresponding with his declared opinions. Very far from it; he
would do just as he did with regard to the Test Act and the Catholic
question, and if he was at the head of the Government, he would calculate

what sort and amount of concession it was necessary to make, and would
make it, without caring a farthing about the University of Oxford or his own
former speeches. The ‘Times’ in its remarks on his speech was very
insolent, but excessively droll.
Denman’s peerage is much abused; it is entirely the Chancellor’s
doing. Denman has no fortune and a feeble son to succeed him, and it was
hoped that the practice of making all the Chief Justices Peers would have
been discontinued in his person. Brougham wrote to Lyndhurst, ostensibly
to inform him of this event, but really to apologise for the misstatements he
had made in his speech about the business he (Lyndhurst) had done in the
House of Lords and in the Court of Chancery. Lyndhurst said (to me),
‘What nonsense it is. He has done all he could do, and so did his
predecessors before him; he has sat as long as he could, and if he has not
got through as much business it is because counsel have made longer
speeches, for I am told his practice is never to interrupt them, to take away
his papers, and come down a few days after and deliver a written
judgment.’
On Sunday at dinner at Lord Grey’s I sat next to Charles Grey, who
talked of the House of Commons, and said that there could be no question
of Peel’s superiority over everybody there, that Stanley had not done so
well this session, had displayed so much want of judgment now, as well as
formerly, that he was evidently not fit to be leader. He owned that Peel’s
conduct was very fair as well as prudent, and said that if his father was to
resign, he himself, and he believed many others, would be willing to
support a Government headed by Peel. It is remarkable how men’s minds
are gradually turning to Peel. I was amused yesterday ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS
TO THE UNIVERSITY. with Poulett Thomson, who told me that Peel had been very
courteous to him, and that they had some important points of coincidence of
opinion; that Peel did not like Graham, Palmerston, or Grant, but to the rest
of the Government he was remarkably civil. I think he reckons without his
host if he calculates upon Peel’s politeness extending to the offer of a place
to our Vice-President in the event of his coming in.

March 29th, 1834

At the beginning of the week there was a discussion in the House of
Commons which lasted for three mornings on the Cambridge petition.
Spring Rice, O’Connell, Stanley, and Palmerston spoke for it; Goulburn,
Inglis, and Peel against it. Old Cobbett made as mischievous a speech as he
could to blow the coals between the parties. Peel spoke last, and as usual
very well; but several people expected he would have supported it, and have
abstained (from prudential motives) from saying anything likely to offend
the Dissenters. I expected no such thing; he was not violent, and addressed
his argument to the weak parts of his adversaries’ speeches rather than
against the general principles of toleration; and I still think that when the
great question of concessions to the Dissenters comes to be argued he will
not be found in the ranks of their virulent and uncompromising opponents.
It would have been an extraordinary thing indeed if he had all of a sudden
stood forth in the character of an anti-Churchman, for such he especially
would have been considered if he had united himself with the petitioners,
and he would have disgusted and alienated all the High Churchmen and
High Tories to a degree which must have made a fresh and irreconcilable
breach between them. This would not have been judicious in his position,
and I am satisfied that he took the most prudent course. I am the more
satisfied of it from the circumstance that his speech by no means gave
unalloyed pleasure to the ‘Standard,’ which is the organ of the High Church
party. I feel it a strange thing to find myself the advocate and admirer of
Peel; but there is such a dearth of talent, his superiority is so obvious, and it
is so very desirable that something like strength should be infused into the
Government, that I am compelled to overlook his faults without being the
least blind to them. I ascribe to him no more elevation of character than I
did before; but we must take what we can get and make use of the existing
materials, and for this reason I watch with anxiety his conduct, because I
am persuaded that he is under present circumstances our best and only
refuge.
The Vice-Chancellor[1] called on me the other day, and talking over the
business that had been done by Brougham, and the recent discussion about
it, he said that he had taken the trouble to examine the returns of hearings,
decrees, and orders, and he found that there was scarcely a shade of
difference between what had been done severally by Eldon, Lyndhurst, and
Brougham in equal spaces of time. (Eldon and Lyndhurst had the

Bankruptcy business besides.) This is a clear case for the Chancellor, and it
is only fair that it should be known. His friends think him much altered in
spirits and appearance; he has never shaken off his unhappiness at his
brother’s death, to whom he seems to have been tenderly attached. It is only
justice to acknowledge his virtues in private life, which are unquestionably
conspicuous. I am conscious of having often spoken of him with asperity,
and it is some satisfaction to my conscience to do him this justice. When the
greatest (I will not say the best) men are often influenced by pique or
passion, by a hundred petty feelings which their philosophy cannot silence
or their temperament obeys, it is no wonder that we poor wretches who are
cast in less perfect moulds should be still more liable to these pernicious
influences; and it is only by keeping an habitual watch over our own minds
and thoughts, and steadily resolving never to be turned from considerations
of justice and truth, that we can hope to walk through life with integrity and
impartiality. I believe what I have said of Brougham to be correct in the
main—that he is false, tricking, ambitious, and unprincipled, and as such I
will show him up when PERSONAL REFLECTIONS. I can—but though I do not like
him and he has offended me—that is, has wounded my vanity (the greatest
of all offences)—I only feel it the more necessary on that account to be on
my guard against my own impressions and prejudices, and to take every
opportunity of exhibiting the favourable side of the picture, and render
justice to the talents and virtues which cannot be denied him.
[1] [Sir Lancelot Shadwell, Vice-Chancellor of England.]

April 3rd, 1834
Yesterday I was forty years old, an anniversary much too melancholy
to think of; and when I reflect how intolerably these forty years have been
wasted, how unprofitably spent, how little store laid up for the future, how
few the pleasurable recollections of the past, a feeling of pain and
humiliation comes across me that makes my cheeks tingle and burn as I
write. It is very seldom that I indulge in moralising in this Journal of mine;
if anybody ever reads it, what will they care for my feelings and regrets? It
is no reason, they will think, that because I have wasted my time they
should waste theirs in reading the record of follies which are nothing more

than the great mass of the world are every day committing; idleness, vanity,
and selfishness are our besetting sins, and we are perpetually whirled about
by one or other of them. It is certainly more amusing, both to other people
and to myself (when I look back at what I have written), to read the
anecdotes and events of the day than all this moral stuff (by which I mean
stuff as applied to me, not as being despicable in itself), but every now and
then the fancy takes me, and I think I find relief by giving vent on paper to
that which I cannot say to anybody. ‘Cela fait partie de cette doctrine
intérieure qu’il ne faut jamais communiquer’ (Stendhal). Jam satis est, and I
will go to other things—the foreign or domestic scraps I have picked up.
Parliament being en relâche, there are few people in town. William
Ponsonby, whom I met the other evening, told me he had just returned from
the assizes at Dorchester, where some men had been convicted of illegal
association. On the event of this trial, he said, the lower and labouring
classes had their eyes fixed, and the conviction was therefore of great
consequence; any relaxation of the sentence would have been impossible
under the circumstances, and though a great disposition was evinced, partly
by the press, by petitions, and by some speeches in Parliament, to get them
left off more easily, Melbourne very wisely did not wait for more
manifestations, but packed them off, and they are gone. William Ponsonby
told me that the demoralisation in that part of the country is very great—the
distress not severe, no political disaffection, but a recklessness, a moral
obtuseness, exceedingly disgusting. There was a certain trial, or rather case
(for the grand jury could not find a bill), in which a woman had murdered a
child, got by her son out of a girl who lodged in her cottage. The only
evidence by which she could have been convicted would have been that of
the son himself, and he refused to speak. The crime went unpunished; but I
mention this to introduce what grew out of it. One of the lawyers said that
in the course of the investigations which this case had occasioned it had
been discovered (though not in a way which admitted of any proofs being
adduced and any measures adopted upon it) that there was a woman whose
trade was to get rid of bastard children, either by procuring abortions or
destroying them when born, and that she had a regular price for either
operation.[2] I don’t suppose that the average state of morals is much worse
in one county than in another; but it is very remarkable that while education
has been more widely diffused than heretofore, and there is a strong

Puritanical spirit at work and vast talk about religious observances, there
should be such a brutish manifestation of the moral condition of the lower
classes, and that they should be apparently so little humanised and
reclaimed by either education or religion. In this country all is contrast—
contrast between wealth the most enormous and poverty the most wretched,
between an excess of sanctity and an atrocity of crime.
[2] [The same thing was proved more than thirty years later, on the trial of
Charlotte Winsor, who eventually escaped the fate she deserved on the ground of
some legal technicality which was taken up to the House of Lords, and though it
was decided against the prisoner, the Government refused, after a considerable
lapse of time, to have her executed.]

George Villiers and Howard write equally bad
OXFORD ADDRESS TO THE KING.
accounts from their respective Courts, neither seeing any hope of the
termination of the Peninsular contests, and each of them alike disgusted
with the men they have to deal with. Howard says that we could put an end
to the Portuguese affair whenever we chose, and that they would submit to
British power without thinking it a degradation; that Miguel is not popular
in Portugal, but that the priests have made a crusade against Pedro and
Liberal principles, and that they drive the peasantry into the Miguelite ranks
by the terrors of excommunication; that the only reason why Pedro’s
military operations are successful is that he has got an English corps,
against which the Portuguese will not fight.

April 21st, 1834
At Buckenham and Newmarket for the last fortnight, and all things
forgotten but racing. Seymour Bathurst’s sudden death called me up to town
on Tuesday night, to go to Court on Wednesday. Then I saw the Duke of
Wellington march up at the head of the Doctors to present the Oxford
petition, attired in his academical robes; and as I looked at him thus bedight,
and then turned my eyes to his portraits in the pictures of his battles which
adorn the walls, I thought how many and various were the parts he had
played. He made a great boggling of reading his petition, for it was on a
long and broad parchment, and he required both hands to hold it and one to
hold his glasses. This is the day for the procession of the Trade Unions, and
all London is alive with troops, artillery and police. I don’t suppose

anything will happen, and so much has the general alarm of these Unions
subsided that there is very little apprehension, though some curiosity to see
how it goes off.

April 23rd, 1834
Nothing could go off more quietly than the procession on Monday.
There were about 25,000 men, mostly well dressed, no noise or tumult, a
vast crowd. It was a failure altogether; Melbourne’s answer was good. They
say 250,000 men are enrolled in the Unions, and the slang name for those
who won’t belong to them is ‘dungs;’ the intimidation used is great. There
was quite as great a crowd assembled yesterday to see old Lady Hertford’s
funeral go by. The King sent all the royal carriages, and every other carriage
in London was there, I believe—a pompous piece of folly, and the King’s
compliment rather a queer one, as the only ground on which she could
claim such an honour was that of having been George IV.’s mistress.
Brougham made one of his exhibitions in the House of Lords the other
night about the Cambridge petition, quizzing the Duke of Gloucester with
mock gravity. It was very droll and very witty, I fancy, but very unbecoming
his station. Last night O’Connell spoke for five hours on the repeal of the
Union.

April 25th, 1834
Yesterday the Privy Council met to hear the London University
petition, praying for a charter, and the counter-petitions of Oxford and
Cambridge and the medical bodies. The assemblage was rather curious,
considering the relative political position of some of the parties. All the
Cabinet Ministers were summoned; Lords Grey and Holland were there, the
Chancellor, Denman, Lyndhurst, Eldon, the two Archbishops, and the
Bishop of London. Old Eldon got a fall as he came into the house and hurt
his head. Brougham and the rest were full of civilities and tenderness, but
he said ‘it was of no consequence, for the brains had been knocked out long
ago.’ Wetherell made an amusing speech, and did not conclude. It is seldom
that the sounds of merriment are heard within those walls, but he made the

Lords laugh and the gallery too. There were Allen of Holland House and
Phillpotts sitting cheek by jowl to hear the discussion.

May 11th, 1834
More than three weeks, and rebus Newmarketianis versatus, I have
written nothing. The debate on the repeal of the Union was more
remarkable for the length than the excellence of the speeches, except Spring
Rice’s, which was both long and good, and Peel’s, the latter supereminently
so. O’Connell spoke for five hours and a quarter, and Rice for six hours;
each occupied a night, after the manner of American orators. The minority
was much smaller than was expected. Since that the only question of
consequence in the House of Commons has been the Pension LONDON
UNIVERSITY CHARTER. List, on which Government got a larger majority than they
had hoped for, and such an one as to set the matter at rest for some time.
Peel again spoke very well, and old Byng made a very independent,
gentlemanlike speech. Independence now-a-days relates more to
constituents than to the governing power. Nobody is suspected of being
dependent on the Crown or the Minister, and the question is if a man be
independent of the popular cry or of his own constituency.
The King has been exhibiting some symptoms of a disordered mind,
not, however, amounting to anything like actual derangement, only morbid
irritability and activity—reviewing the Guards and blowing up people at
Court. He made the Guards, both horse and foot, perform their evolutions
before him; he examined their barracks, clothes, arms, and accoutrements,
and had a musket brought to him, that he might show them the way to use it
in some new sort of exercise he wanted to introduce; in short, he gave a
great deal of trouble and made a fool of himself. He was very angry with
Lord de Saumarez for not attending Keat’s funeral, and still more angry
because he would begin explaining and apologizing, first at the levee and
then at the drawing-room; and he reprehended him very sharply at both
places. An explanation afterwards took place through Lord Camden, to
whom he said that he was angry because de Saumarez would prate at the
levee, when he told him that it was not a proper place for discussing the
subject.

The debate at the Council Board terminated after two more days’
speaking. It was tiresome on the whole. Brougham is a bad presiding judge,
for he will talk so much to the counsel, and being very anxious to
abbreviate the business, he ought to have avoided saying pungent things,
which elicited rejoinders and excited heat. The extreme gravity and patient
attention of old Eldon struck me forcibly as contrasted with the air of ennui,
the frequent and audible yawns, and the flippant and sarcastic interruptions
of the Chancellor. Wetherell made a very able speech, which he afterwards
published. The most striking incident occurred in an answer of Bickersteth’s
to one of the Chancellor’s interruptions. He said, talking of degrees, ‘Pray,
Mr. Bickersteth, what is to prevent the London University granting degrees
now?’ to which, he replied, ‘The universal scorn and contempt of mankind.’
Brougham said no more; the effect was really fine. There was a little debate
upon Portugal in the House of Commons on Friday, in which Palmerston
got roughly handled by Baring. A report was believed that Don Carlos had
sailed for England, and that an agreement had been concluded between
Miguel and Pedro, but it turned out to be false. Nobody, however, doubts
that the quadruple alliance will settle the Portuguese business, if not the
Spanish.

May 12th, 1834
There was a report yesterday that Palmerston was out and Durham in
his place. The latter was under the gallery when Palmerston made that
woful exhibition the other night, and must have been well satisfied. I met
Peel at dinner yesterday, and after it he talked to me of this report, which he
concluded was not true; but he said that Palmerston had seemed bereft of
his senses, and that in his speech he had attempted a new line quite unusual
with him—that of humour—and anything so miserable he had never heard.
He then talked of Stanley; expressed his indignation at hearing O’Connell
bepraised by the men he is always vilifying, especially by Stanley himself,
of whom he had spoken in the early part of the same night in such terms as
these: ‘The honourable gentleman, with his usual disregard of veracity, ...’
and again ‘he attacked him, but took care how he attacked others, who he
knew were not restrained by obligations such as he was under to bear with
his language;’ in other words, calling him a liar and a coward; and after this

Stanley condescended to flatter him and applaud his speech. He said that he
had expected better things of Stanley, and was really distressed to hear it.
I dined with the Duke of Wellington on Saturday. Arbuthnot was there,
and he said the Duke is in a state of unutterable disgust with the present
Government and their proceedings, particularly with their foreign policy,
which he fancies they shape in systematic and wilful opposition to his DUKE
OF WELLINGTON AND THE WHIGS. own. This, of course, is merely his imagination,
and rather a preposterous notion. He says the Duke does not think well of
the state of the country, but that he grasps with eagerness at any symptoms
of returning or increasing prosperity, and (what is rather inconsistent with
his bad opinion of affairs) he is always telling the foreigners (i.e. the
Ambassadors) who talk to him that they will fall into a great error if they
think the power or resources of England in any way impaired. His antipathy
to the Whigs, is, however, invincible, and of very ancient date, as this
proves. Arbuthnot said that he was looking over a box of papers the other
day, and hit upon the copy of a letter he had written to Lord Liverpool, by
desire of some of his principal colleagues, to dissuade him from quitting
office, which, he thought of doing at the time of the first Lady Liverpool’s
death. With it there was a scrap on which was written, ‘Taken down from
the Duke of Wellington’s own lips;’ and this was an argument that, in the
event of his refusing, he (the Duke) should think himself at liberty to join
any other party or set of men, but that his great object was to keep the
Whigs out of power, as he was convinced that whenever they got in they
would ruin the country. Lord Liverpool said that they (The Tories) had been
too long in possession of the Government.

May 23rd, 1834
Newmarket, Epsom, and so forth. Nothing remarkably new. In the
House of Commons the Poor Law Bill has been going on smoothly; in the
House of Lords little of note but one of Brougham’s exhibitions. Old
Wynford brought in a very absurd Bill for the better observance of the
Sabbath (an old sinner he, who never cared three straws for the Sabbath),
which Brougham attacked with excessive virulence and all his powers of
ridicule and sarcasm. His speech made everybody laugh, very heartily, but

on a division, the Bishops all voting with Wynford, the latter carried the
second reading by three in a very thin House. The next day the Chancellor
came down with a protest, written in his most pungent style, very smart, but
more like a bit of an article in the ‘Edinburgh Review’ than a Parliamentary
protest. Wynford was in the House when he entered his protest, and he
called out to him, ‘Holloa, Best, look at my protest!’
There is a very strong impression abroad that the King is cracked, and
I dare say there is some truth in it. He gets so very choleric, and is so
indecent in his wrath. Besides his squabble with old Lord de Saumarez, he
broke out the other day at the Exhibition (Somerset House). They were
showing him the pictures, and Sir Martin Shee (I believe, but am not sure),
pointing out Admiral Napier’s, said, ‘That is one of our naval heroes; to
which his Majesty was pleased to reply that if he served him right he should
kick him downstairs for so terming him. But the maddest thing of all is
what appeared in the ‘Gazette’ of Tuesday—the peerage conferred on ——.
She is a disreputable, half-mad woman! he, perhaps, thought it fair to give
her this compensation for not being Queen, for he wanted to marry her, and
would have done so if the late king would have consented.
On Monday last I went to Petworth, and saw the finest fête that could
be given. Lord Egremont has been accustomed some time in the winter to
feast the poor of the adjoining parishes (women and children, not men) in
the riding-house and tennis court, where they were admitted by relays. His
illness prevented the dinner taking place; but when he recovered he was
bent upon having it, and, as it was put off till the summer, he had it arranged
in the open air, and a fine sight it was; fifty-four tables, each fifty feet long,
were placed in a vast semicircle on the lawn before the house. Nothing
could be more amusing than to look at the preparations. The tables were all
spread with cloths, and plates, and dishes; two great tents were erected in
the middle to receive the provisions, which were conveyed in carts, like
ammunition. Plum puddings and loaves were piled like cannon balls, and
innumerable joints of boiled and roast beef were spread out, while hot joints
were prepared in the kitchen, and sent forth as soon as the firing of guns
announced the hour of the feast. Tickets were given to the FÊTE AT PETWORTH.
inhabitants of a certain district, and the number was about 4,000; but, as
many more came, the old Peer could not endure that there should be
anybody hungering outside his gates, and he went out himself and ordered

the barriers to be taken down and admittance given to all. They think 6,000
were fed. Gentlemen from the neighbourhood carved for them, and waiters
were provided from among the peasantry. The food was distributed from the
tents and carried off upon hurdles to all parts of the semicircle. A band of
music paraded round, playing gay airs. The day was glorious—an
unclouded sky and soft southern breeze. Nothing could exceed the pleasure
of that fine old fellow; he was in and out of the windows of his room twenty
times, enjoying the sight of these poor wretches, all attired in their best,
cramming themselves and their brats with as much as they could devour,
and snatching a day of relaxation and happiness. After a certain time the
women departed, but the park gates were thrown open: all who chose came
in, and walked about the shrubbery and up to the windows of the house. At
night there was a great display of fireworks, and I should think, at the time
they began, not less than 10,000 people were assembled. It was altogether
one of the gayest and most beautiful spectacles I ever saw, and there was
something affecting in the contemplation of that old man—on the verge of
the grave, from which he had only lately been reprieved, with his mind as
strong and his heart as warm as ever—rejoicing in the diffusion of
happiness and finding keen gratification in relieving the distresses and
contributing to the pleasures of the poor. I thought how applicable to him,
mutatis mutandis, was that panegyric of Burke’s on the Indian kings:
‘delighting to reign in the dispensation of happiness during the contracted
space of human life, strained with all the reachings and graspings of a
vivacious mind to extend the dominion of his bounty ... and to perpetuate
himself from generation to generation as the guardian, the protector, the
nourisher of mankind.’

May 24th, 1834
The Chancellor, who loves to unbosom himself to Sefton because he
knows the latter thinks him the finest fellow breathing, tells him that it is
nuts to him to be attacked by noble Lords in the Upper House, and that they
had better leave him alone if they care for their own hides. Since he loves
these assaults, last night he got his bellyful, for he was baited by a dozen at
least, and he did not come out of the mêlée so chuckling and happy as usual.
The matter related to the Pluralities Bill, which he had introduced some

nights before, in an empty House, without giving notice, and after having
told many people (the Archbishop of York among others) that there was
nothing more to be done that night. In short, he was at his tricks again, lying
and shuffling, false and then insolent, and all for no discernible end. The
debate exhibits a detail of his misstatements, and of all his wriggling and
plunging to get out of the scrape he had got himself into. It is because
scarcely any or rather no motive was apparent that it is with difficulty
believed that he meant to deceive anybody. But it is in the nature of the
man; he cannot go straightforward; some object, no matter how trivial,
presents itself to his busy and distempered mind, and he immediately begins
to think by what artifice and what underhand work he can bring it about;
and thus he exposes himself to the charges of dishonourable conduct
without any adequate consideration or cause. He reminds me of the man in
‘Jonathan Wild’ who was a rogue by force of habit, who could not keep his
hand out of his neighbour’s pocket though he knew there was nothing in it,
nor help cheating at cards though he was aware he should not be paid if he
won. It is thought that the exhibition of last night will not be without its
influence upon the fate of this Administration.

May 27th, 1834
The Government is on the very brink of dissolution. The Irish Church
Bill is the immediate cause, Stanley and Graham standing out against the
majority of the Cabinet with regard to the Appropriation clause. Stanley,
they think, would have knocked under if Graham had not been very fierce
and urged him on to resistance. They attribute all the present bother to
Graham, who pleads conscience and religious feelings. It is impossible to
guess how it will SPLIT ON THE IRISH CHURCH. end, and there is a terrible turmoil.
Stanley was with the King for two hours yesterday. The violent party
evidently wish Lord Grey to let Stanley go out, and those who choose to go
with him, and to reinforce the Cabinet with Durham, Mulgrave, and that
sort of thing, and what they call ‘throw themselves on the House of
Commons and the country.’ On the other hand the half-Tories and
moderates wish the Government to adopt a moderate tone and course, and
seek support from the House of Lords. As to the House of Commons, it is a
curious body, supporting the Ministers through thick and thin one day and

buffeting them the next. On the Bank question the night before last Althorp
was beaten, after imploring everybody to come and support him and
making the strangest declarations. I am very sorry that there should be a
chance of a split on such a question as the Irish Church, which really is not
tenable. His colleagues (or their friends at least) suspect that Graham kicks
up this dust with ulterior views, and they think he aims at a junction with
Peel—Stanley of course included—and coming into office with a moderate
mixed party. It will be a great evil if the Government is broken up just now,
but it is quite clear that they cannot go on long; it is a question of months.
The Duke of Wellington told me yesterday that he could do nothing, and he
will be rather shy of giving to the world a second volume of that old
business in which he got so bedevilled two years ago.
The Lievens are recalled, which is a great misfortune to society. She is
inconsolable. The pill is gilded well, for he is made governor to the Imperial
Prince, the Emperor’s eldest son; but the old story of Stratford Canning, and
Palmerston’s obstinate refusal to appoint anybody else, has probably
contributed to this change. His colleagues have endeavoured to persuade
him to cancel the appointment and name Mulgrave, whom they wish to
provide for, but he will not hear of it. I can’t conceive why they don’t let
him go out upon it; they would be the gainers in every way. We are now in
what is called a mess; the Whigs have put matters in such a condition that
they cannot govern the country themselves and that nobody else can govern
it either. ‘Time and the hour run through the roughest day.’

May 28th, 1834
On returning from Epsom I heard that Stanley, Graham, and Richmond
had resigned, and it was supposed Ripon would follow their example.[3]
Althorp adjourned the debate till Monday next. Sefton ‘never was so happy
in his life.’ It is a bad sign when he is happy—not meaning to be wicked,
only very foolish and violent. I have rarely seen the effects of a neglected
education and a vivacious temperament manifested in a more remarkable
way than in Sefton, who has naturally a great deal of cleverness, but who,
from the above causes and the absence of the habit of moral discipline and
of calm and patient reflection, is a fool, and a very mischievous one. They

will be forced to put Peers in the vacant places, because nobody can get re-
elected. The rotten boroughs now seem not quite such abominations, or at
all events they had some compensating advantages.
[3] [The members of the Grey Administration who seceded on the
Appropriation Resolution (as it was termed), moved by Mr. Ward, were the Duke
of Richmond, Postmaster-General; the Earl of Ripon, Privy Seal; Mr. Stanley,
Cabinet Secretary; and Sir James Graham, First Lord of the Admiralty. The
Marquis of Conyngham became Postmaster-General, the Earl of Carlisle Privy
Seal, Lord Auckland first Lord of the Admiralty, and Mr. Spring Rice Colonial
Secretary.]

June 1st, 1834
The arrangements rendered necessary by the recent resignations were
pretty quickly made, but they have given universal dissatisfaction. Whigs,
Tories, and Radicals join in full cry against them, and the ‘Times,’ in a
succession of bitter, vituperative articles, very well done, fires off its
contempt and disgust at the paltry patching up of the Cabinet. The most
unpopular appears to be Lord Auckland’s appointment, and, though I like
him personally, it certainly does appear strange and objectionable. He has
neither reputation nor political calibre to entitle him to such an elevation,
and his want of urbanity and forbidding manner seem to render him
peculiarly unfit for the post they have conferred on him. [Auckland turned
out a very popular THE IRISH CHURCH. and, I believe, very good First Lord of the
Admiralty. I have heard many praises and not one complaint of him.—
December 7th, 1834.] The general opinion is that this Cabinet, so amended,
cannot go on long; but as they clearly mean to throw themselves upon the
House of Commons, and as the House will at all events support them for the
present, they will probably last some time longer; they will at any rate,
scramble through this session, and during the recess it will be seen whether
they can acquire public confidence and what chance they have of carrying
on the government.
After much conversation with Duncannon, Sefton, Mulgrave, and
others, I have acquired a tolerably correct understanding of the history of
these inconvenient proceedings. The speech of Lord John Russell, to which
all this hubbub is attributed, may have somewhat accelerated, but did not

produce, the crisis. The difference has long existed in the Cabinet on the
subject of the Irish Church, and was well known, for Althorp stated as much
last year. Stanley and Graham were both vehemently opposed to any
Parliamentary appropriation of the surplus revenues of the Irish Church, but
not exactly on the same grounds. Stanley denies the right of Parliament to
interfere at all; that is, he asserts that Parliament has no more right to deal
with the revenues of the Church than it would have to deal with his estate.
Graham does not deny the right, but contends that it is not expedient, that
the connexion between the two countries is mainly held together by the
Protestant Church, and that any meddling with the Establishment will
inevitably lead to its downfall. He stands upon religious grounds. I confess
myself to be lost in astonishment at the views they take on this subject; that
after swallowing the camel of the Reform Bill, they should strain at the
gnats which were perched upon the camel’s back, that they should not have
perceived from the first that such reforms as these must inevitably be
consequent upon the great measure, and, above all, that the prevalence of
public opinion, abstract justice, and the condition of Ireland all loudly call
for their adoption. However, such are their opinions, and doubtless very
conscientiously entertained. Upon Ward’s motion being announced, it was
proposed in the Cabinet that the difficulty should be waived for the present
by moving the previous question, and to this the dissentients agreed; but on
further investigation they discerned that if this was moved, in all probability
it would not be carried, and under these circumstances Stanley proposed at
once to resign. In the Cabinet some were for accepting and others for
refusing his resignation, and matters remained unsettled when Althorp went
down to the House of Commons on the night of Ward’s motion. It was
strictly true (as he said) that he was informed while Ward was speaking that
they had resigned. The King accepted their resignations at once, and
appears to have expressed his opinion that they adopted the proper course,
but he told the Duke of Richmond that the four members of the Cabinet
who had quitted it were the four whom he liked best of them all. When they
were gone it was to be settled how their places were to be supplied. Ellice
and Spring Rice were indispensable; the Radicals wanted Durham; the
Whigs wanted Radnor, Abercromby, and Hobhouse; Lord Lansdowne was
wavering, for he is likewise opposed to any meddling with the Church,
though not perhaps to the extent that the seceders are, or to such a degree as
to make his resignation imperative. However, he haggled, and they appear

to have thought him of consequence enough to bribe him high to remain.
He made Durham’s exclusion a sine quâ non, but I believe all the others
were equally opposed to his re-admission. Spring Rice and Auckland are
Lansdowne’s personal friends and firmest adherents, and their promotion is
very agreeable to him (if he did not insist upon it). Mulgrave so entirely
expected to come in that he told me on Epsom racecourse on Thursday last
that he was to be one of the new Ministers, though he did not know which
place he was to have. Great, therefore, was his disgust when they only
offered him the Post Office without the Cabinet. He refused it with some
indignation, and thinks himself very ill used. I do not yet know what are the
reasons which induced them to make the arrangements they HISTORY OF THE
CRISIS. have done, and deterred them from applying to any of the above-
mentioned men. It certainly has given great disgust, and will not serve to
make the Administration more popular than before. Durham is of course
furious, and if Abercromby and the others did not expect or desire to come
in, they will nevertheless resent being passed over, and in favour of such
people.

June 2nd, 1834
Yesterday I dined with Stanley; there was a vast deal of fine company,
outs and ins, Richmond, who would not stay in the Post Office, and
Mulgrave who would not come into it, Auckland, Palmerston, &c. After
dinner Stanley talked to Mulgrave and me about the whole business; he said
that above three weeks ago, in consequence of the difference in the Cabinet,
which everybody knew, he had pressed his resignation on his colleagues,
who refused to take it, that he had agreed to vote for the previous question
on Ward’s motion, but they were informed it would not be carried. He then
said, ‘Why don’t you take my resignation?’ Still they demurred, and on that
day nothing was settled. He then saw the King, who agreed to accept his
resignation conditionally, provided Lord Grey could make other
arrangements, and desired Stanley to go down to his colleagues and talk it
over. He replied that it was too late, that he ought then to be in his place in
the House of Commons, as the debate was going on. He went down, saw
Lord Grey, settled with him that he should resign, and then sent into the
House of Commons to Althorp to let him know that it was so settled. In

such hurry, uncertainty, and confusion was this business done. Stanley
talked not with acrimony, but with something like contempt of the strange
situation in which the Government, and particularly Lord Grey, is placed,
and he ‘hoped’ they might be able to go on in a tone which, implied great
doubt if they would. He said ‘that Lord Grey continues to preside over a
Cabinet which is to a certain degree committed to the principle of a measure
of which he disapproves, and he accepts the resignation of the colleagues
with whom he agrees; that if in the House of Commons to-night no
concession is made to the principle of the measure under discussion, it will
appear strange and unaccountable why the seceders have been suffered to
go. If any be made, it will be inconsistent with the letter which Lord Grey
has just written to Ebrington, in a strain as conservative as the King’s
speech to the bishops.’ Thus Lord Grey appears to be tossed on the horns of
a very inconvenient dilemma. This speech of the King’s, which Stanley
alluded to, has made a great noise, and is matter of considerable triumph to
the Conservatives. It is reported in the papers as it was really delivered,
except some absurdities with which it was mixed. It is by no means a bad
speech, and very decided in its tone; but what matters decision and a
peremptory tone from a man so easily led or misled as the King? Lord
Grey’s letter was addressed to Ebrington in reply to an address signed by
many supporters of Government, and has been lying on the table at
Brookes’ for public inspection.

June 3rd, 1834
Lord Althorp summoned a meeting yesterday in Downing Street,
which was numerously attended, though some of the usual supporters of
Government stayed away as followers of Stanley. He invited them to
support the previous question, when there was a good deal of speaking for
and against, chiefly among county members, and a good deal of cheering at
his saying he hoped he had their confidence; but the meeting broke up
without any satisfactory conclusion, and at five o’clock the general
impression was that Government would be beaten, and this in spite of a
conviction that they would resign if they were. In the morning I met
Graham, who said that he did not know whether he and Stanley would
speak or not, that they could not support the previous question without

repudiating the declaration with which it was to be accompanied, that he
considered the question to involve the fate of the Irish Church, and with it
the connexion between the two countries. I told him we differed entirely,
but that I would not enter upon any argument on the subject; that it was
very unfortunate, and I thought the Government would not stand. He said a
MR. STANLEY IN OPPOSITION. tremendous contest must ensue upon the great
question, and so we parted.
In the evening a very full House. Lord Althorp stated that the King had
issued a Commission, or rather extended the powers of one that already
existed, for the purpose of effecting the objects contemplated by the
resolution, and begged Ward to withdraw his motion. He would not, and
then Althorp moved the previous question, which, to the astonishment of
everybody, was carried by a very great majority, all the Tories voting with
Government. Stanley spoke, and spoke very well, but with considerable
acrimony and in a tone which demonstrates the breach between him and his
old colleagues to be irreparable. He was vociferously cheered by the Tories,
especially at one passage of his speech about a Chancellor of the Exchequer
and his clerical budget which, however pungent and smart, appears to me
imprudent and worth nothing as argument. I am very sorry he has taken
such a line upon this question. His scruples have come too late to be
serviceable to the cause he espouses, and all he can do is to fan the flame of
religious discord and throw innumerable embarrassments in the way of
settling a very difficult question, the ultimate solution of which is no longer
doubtful.

June 5th, 1834
The Portuguese business is over—that is, for the present—but Lord
William Russell (whom I met at dinner at Richmond the day before
yesterday) told me he did not think Pedro would be able to keep possession
of the country, and that another revolution would probably take place
whenever the foreign troops in his pay were disbanded; the party against
him is too strong; he said that nothing but an inconceivable succession of
blunders and great want of spirit and enterprise on the part of Miguel could
have prevented his success, as at one time he had 70,000 men, while the

other had not above 8,000 or 10,000 cooped up in Oporto, which is not a
defensible place; that Miguel might at any moment during the contest have
put an end to it. The country is in a dreadfully ruined state from frequent
exactions and the depression of commerce and cultivation, but Carvalho,
Pedro’s Minister of Finance, told Lord William he should have no difficulty
with his budget, and could find money to discharge all the claims upon
Government. The source from which he expects to derive his assets is the
confiscated Church property, which is very great. Money, however, is so
plentiful here, that the Portuguese Government have been offered a loan of
a million at eighty, which they have declined[4].
[4] [The Quadruple Treaty for the pacification of the Peninsular kingdoms
was signed in London on the 22nd of April; and on the 9th of May a decisive
battle had been gained by the troops of Don Pedro over those of Don Miguel.
Don Carlos and Don Miguel soon afterwards withdrew from the Peninsula.]

June 7th, 1834
I was in the House of Lords last night to hear a long debate on the
Commission, when Goderich made a very good speech, defending himself
for his resignation and attacking the instrument; like other people, as soon
as he got out of office he spoke with greater energy and force. I thought
Lord Grey was rather feeble, though energetic enough in declaration and
expression. Phillpotts I did not hear, but he was wretchedly bad, they told
me. The Chancellor, to the surprise of everyone, made the strongest
declaration of his resolution not to permit a fraction of the revenues of the
Irish Church to be diverted to Catholic purposes—the purposes, in my
mind, to which they ought to be diverted, and to which they in the end must
and will be. The Government is now reformed, and will scramble and totter
on for some time. Things are not ripe for a change, but people will continue
more and more to look for a junction between Peel and Stanley. God forbid,
however, that we should have two parties established upon the principles of
a religious opposition to each other; it would be the worst of evils, and yet
the times appear to threaten something of the sort. There is the gabble of
‘the Church in danger,’ the menacing and sullen disposition of the
Dissenters, all armed with new power, and the restless and increasing

turbulence of the Catholics, all hating one another, and the elements of
discord stirred up first by one and then another.

June 9th, 1834
Melbourne said to me on Saturday night, ‘You DUKE OF WELLINGTON AT
OXFORD. know why Brougham made that violent declaration against the
Catholics in his speech the other night, don’t you?’ I said, ‘No.’ Then he
added, ‘That was for Spring Rice’s election, to please the Dissenters.’
However, Duncannon says he does not believe it was for that object, but
certainly thrown out as a sop to the Dissenters generally, who are violently
opposed to any provision being made for the Catholic Clergy. Duncannon
added that ‘those were his (Brougham’s) opinions as far as he had any, as
they were not very strong on any subject.’

June 15th, 1834
Ascot races last week; many people kept away at Oxford, which seems
to have been a complete Tory affair, and on the whole a very disgraceful
exhibition of bigotry and party spirit; plenty of shouting and that sort of
enthusiasm, which is of no value except to the foolish people who were the
object of it, and who were quite enraptured.[5] The reception of the Duke,
however vociferous, can hardly on reflection have given him much pleasure
when he saw Newcastle, Winchelsea, Wetherell, and hoc genus omne as
much the objects of idolatry as himself. Peel very wisely would have
nothing to do with the concern, and they are probably very angry with him
for absenting himself. The resentment he must feel towards the University
on account of their conduct to him must afford full scope to all the contempt
these proceedings are calculated to excite. There was a vast mob of fine
people, Mrs. Arbuthnot among the rest. The Duke made rather indifferent
work of his Latin speeches. As usual he seemed quite unconcerned at the
applause with which he was greeted; no man ever courted that sort of
distinction less.

[5] [The Duke of Wellington was installed as Chancellor of the University
of Oxford on the 10th of June.]

June 18th, 1834
Lord Conyngham and George Byng are to be Postmaster and a Lord of
Treasury, Abercromby is to be Master of the Mint, and Cutler Fergusson
Judge Advocate, appointments sneered and laughed at. When Althorp
announced the first in the House of Commons Hume said, ‘God bless us! is
it possible?’ Some think Abercromby will be of use to them—that he is
grave, practical, industrious, and carries weight in the House. I am unable to
discover anything in him, except his consistency, to entitle him to any
praise. An odd thing happened to Brougham the other day. He got a note
from Althorp while he was sitting in his Court about the insolence and
violence of the ‘Times,’ and that its lies and abuse of the Government ought
to be put a stop to by some means. The Chancellor tore the note up, and
after finishing his business departed. Two hours after Lemarchant got a note
from the editor to say that the note had been picked up, put together, and
was in his possession. Brougham was furious, and sent to ask the name of
the person who gave it, promising to forgive him if it was given up, and
threatening if it was not to dismiss every officer in his Court, and not to
replace any of them till the culprit was discovered.

June 20th, 1834
The Tories are in arms and eager for the fray. There was a dinner of
fifty at the Conservative Club on the 18th (Waterloo day), with healths and
speeches, when Peel delivered himself of a speech half an hour long, to
which vast importance is attached. People, however, hear things, as they see
things, differently. Theodore Hook, who was present, told me ‘it was very
satisfactory, a declaration of war; that he announced his having supported
the Government while he could from a sense of duty, but that seeing they
were resolved to attack the Church, he was prepared to act with, or lead (I
forget which), any party which might be formed upon the principle of
supporting the Establishment; that the Tories were few in numbers, but

strong in character,’ and so on. Vesey Fitzgerald, who was likewise there,
said it was no declaration of war whatever—a strong Conservative speech,
but not violent in any way, nor indicative of any intended deviation from
the course Peel has heretofore pursued. So his acts must show which report
is the more correct. When we hear that his speech pleased Chandos and
Falmouth, one can’t help believing it must have been somewhat fierce. I
have great confidence in Peel’s watchful sagacity, but his game is a very
difficult one, and with all his prudence he may make a false step. It is so
much his interest to ascertain TORY WARFARE. the real disposition of the country
that I am disposed to defer very much to his views and notions of
probabilities, otherwise I can with difficulty believe that it is wise in him to
encourage and head a High Church party and promote the senseless cry of
the Church in danger. It is the contest itself as much as the triumph of any
party that is to be deprecated, for nothing is like the exasperation of
religious quarrels, and victory is always abused and moderation forgotten,
whichever side has the ascendant. Every day, however, it becomes more
apparent that this Government cannot last; living as I do with men of all
parties, I collect a variety of opinions, some of them intrinsically worth
little, except as straws show which way the wind blows, but which satisfy
me that the present House of Commons has no great affection for them, and
would not have much difficulty in supporting any other Administration that
presented a respectable appearance, and would act upon principles at once
liberal and moderate. The majority of the members dread a dissolution,
knowing that the next elections must be fiercely contested, and be
expensive and embarrassing in all ways. Altogether it is difficult to
conceive a more unsettled and unsatisfactory state of things, nor one from
which it appears more hopeless to emerge. In the state of parties and of the
country the one thing needful—a strong Government—appears the one
thing that it is impossible to obtain.

June 24th, 1834
Lord Auckland told me the other night that Government are prepared
for the Dissenters Bill being thrown out in the House of Lords, and that they
don’t care. He thinks it never will be carried, and will be a standing
grievance of no great weight. The Chancellor made an admirable speech on

secondary punishments, connecting with it the question of education. He
told me he was called on to pronounce an essay without any preparation,
and he did the best he could. I did not hear it, but was told it was excellent.
He shines in this sort of thing; his views are so enlarged and philosophical,
and they are expressed in such becoming and beautiful language.

June 26th, 1834
There was a good debate on Monday in the House of Commons on the
Irish Tithes Bill. Peel made a very clever speech, attacking the Commission
with great felicity, and John Russell made an excellent speech in reply,
failing to excuse the Commission, which is inexcusable, but very good upon
the question. Both he and Ellice spoke out. I was at the Abbey on Tuesday
and yesterday for a performance and a rehearsal of the ‘Messiah.’ The
spectacle is very fine, and it is all admirably managed—no crowd or
inconvenience, and easy egress and ingress—but the ‘Messiah’ is not so
effective as I expected, not so fine as in York Minster; the choruses are
admirably performed, but the single voices are miserable—singers of
extreme mediocrity, or whose powers are gone; old Bellamy, who was at
Handel’s commemoration as a singing boy, Miss Stephens, &c.

June 27th, 1832
Lord William Russell told me last night that his brother John has
frequently offered to resign, and they never would let him; at last he said he
must speak out on this Church appropriation question, or positively he
would not stay in, so that his speech was not blurted out, as I supposed, but
was the result of a fixed resolution. This alters the case as far as he is
concerned, and it can’t be denied that he was right in thinking it better that
Government should make itself clearly understood, and that a break-up was
preferable to going on without any real cordiality or concurrence amongst
each other and the Administration an object of suspicion to all parties.
William Russell said that Government were quite aware that Peel and the
Duke could turn them out when they would, but that they would not know
what to do next.

Don Carlos is coming to town to Gloucester Lodge. When they told
him the Spanish Ambassador (Miraflores) was come to wait upon him, he
replied, ‘I have no Ambassador at the Court of London.’ He will not take
any money, and he will neither relinquish his claims to the Spanish throne
nor move hand or foot in prosecuting them. ‘If chance will have me king,
why let chance crown me, without my stir.’ (He was meditating evasion at
this time, and got away undiscovered soon after.) They say he can get all the
money he wants DON CARLOS ON HIS WAY TO SPAIN. from his partisans in Spain, and
that there is no lack of wealth in the country. Strange infatuation when men
will spend their blood and their money for such a miserable object. If he
had anything like spirit, enterprise, and courage, he would make a fine
confusion in Spain, and probably succeed; his departure from the Peninsula
and taking refuge here has not caused the war to languish in the north.
Admiral Napier is arrived, and has taken a lodging close to him in
Portsmouth. Miraflores paid a droll compliment to Madame de Lieven the
other night. She was pointing out the various beauties at some ball, and
among others Lady Seymour, and asked him if he did not admire her. He
said, ‘Elle est trop jeune, trop fraîche,’ and then, with a tender look and
squeezing her hand, ‘J’aime les femmes un peu passées.’

July 4th, 1834
The other night Stanley made a fierce speech on Irish tithes, and
plainly showed that no reconciliation between him and the Government is
feasible. Last night Littleton made a melancholy exhibition with O’Connell.
Formerly a Minister must have resigned who cut such a figure; now it is
very different, for no matter how unfit a man may be, it is ten to one nobody
better can be found to replace him. A more disgraceful affair never was
seen; the Tories chuckled, the Government and their friends were disgusted,
ashamed, and vexed; Durham sat under the gallery and enjoyed the fun.
I was at Woolwich yesterday to see the yacht in which the Queen is to
sail to the Continent. Such luxury and splendour, and such gorgeous
preparations. She will sail like Cleopatra down the Cydnus, and though she
will have no beautiful boys like Cupids to fan her, she will be attended by
Emily Bagot, who is as beautiful as the Mater Cupidinum. She will return to

her beggarly country in somewhat different trim from that in which she left
it, with all her earls and countesses, equipages, pages, valets, dressers, &c.
The Duke of Wellington gave a great ball the other night, and invited all the
Ministers. The Chancellor was there till three or four o’clock in the
morning, and they say it was very amusing to see the Duke doing the
honours to him. The Tories have had a great disappointment in the Finsbury
election, which they fancied Pownall was sure of carrying the first day, but
Tommy Duncombe beat him hollow the second. It is certainly a great
exhibition of Radical strength in that metropolitan district, and may serve to
sober the Tories a little, and bring some of them down from their high
horses.

July 6th, 1834
When I wrote the above I had not read Stanley’s speech, and had only
heard he had used very strong language. I was greatly astonished when I did
read it, and fully concur in the nearly universal opinion that, however clever
and laughable it may have been, it was a most injudicious and unfortunate
exhibition, and is calculated to do him a serious and lasting injury. (This
was the famous ‘thimblerig’ speech.) I do not know when I have read or
heard so virulent and coarse an invective, and it is rather disgusting than
anything else to see such an one fired off at the men with whom he has been
acting for some years (up to three weeks ago), with whom he declared his
entire concurrence on every other question, from whom he expressed the
liveliest regret at separating, and to whom he was individually bound by the
strongest ties of friendship and regard. (It will be seen that he made similar
professions when he separated from Peel’s Government in ’46, and instantly
rushed into a similar opposition.) The Tories cheered him lustily; and what
must he on reflection think of such cheers, and of his position in the House
—to be halloa’d on by the party which he has hitherto treated with the
greatest contempt, and which he thinks the very essence of bigotry and
prejudice, at least on all secular matters, against his old friends and
colleagues, to whom he is still allied in opinion upon almost every great
question of foreign or domestic policy? He availed himself of his
knowledge that there was nobody on the Treasury Bench who could answer
him to fling out this spiteful and intemperate invective. If Brougham could

have been thrown for half an hour into the House, ‘like an eagle into a
dovecot,’ what a grand opportunity there would have been for his
tremendous sarcasm to vent itself. As it was, Stanley went away unscathed,
for though Althorp was STANLEY’S THIMBLERIG SPEECH. not bad in the few words
he said with great good-humour, and Littleton made a very tolerable speech,
the former twaddled, and the latter has been too much damaged to allow of
his saying anything with effect; besides, he quoted a speech of Stanley’s
against him (at all times a poor argument) and did not quote the whole of it.
I dare say Peel was not very sorry to hear Stanley’s speech, and justly
estimated the value of the cheers with which it was hailed. It places him at
an immeasurable distance below Peel, and puts an end to any pretensions of
rivalship, if he ever entertained any. If a junction is to take place between
them, Stanley must be content with a subordinate part; and, act with
whomsoever he may, he will never inspire real confidence or conciliate real
esteem. I entertain this opinion with regret, and could have wished he had
cut a better figure. I dined with a Tory at the ‘Travellers’ yesterday, and he
said, ‘Of course we cheered him as loudly as we could; we want to get him,
but I must own that it was a very injudicious speech and very unbecoming.’
These are the sort of events in a man’s life which influence his destiny ever
after; it is not that his political career will be marred, or that anything can
prevent his talents rendering it on the whole important, and probably
successful, but there is a revulsion in men’s minds about him, which cannot
fail to produce a silent, but in the end a sensible effect upon his fortunes. It
is remarkable that Lord Derby, who is a very shrewd and sagacious old
man, never would hear of his grandson’s superlative merits, and always in
the midst of his triumphs questioned his ultimate success.

July 10th, 1834
Came to town last night from Newmarket, and found things in a fine
state. Althorp had resigned three days ago; his resignation was accepted, on
which Lord Grey resigned too. Both of them explained in Parliament last
night, Lord Grey, as they tell me, in a very moving and gentlemanlike
speech, admirably delivered. The Duke of Wellington made a violent attack
upon him in reply, which it is thought he might as well have omitted. (The
Duke’s speech gave great disgust to many even of his own party, and was

afterwards assigned as a reason by Stanley and his friends for not taking
office with the Duke.) Nobody knows what is to happen. The King sent for
Melbourne, and his nephew, John Ponsonby, told me last night he believed
he would endeavour to carry on the Government; but whether he does or
not it can’t last; the Whig Government is virtually at an end. The Tories,
who were shouting the night before last, are considerably disappointed that
the King did not instantly avail himself of Lord Grey’s resignation to send
for them, or at least for Peel. I don’t suppose, however, that it is from any
predilection for the Whigs that he tries to bolster up this Government, but
he is said to have an exceeding horror of a dissolution, and it is just possible
he may be acting under some good advice surreptitiously conveyed to him,
for under all circumstances I think he is taking the most prudent part he can.
It is very essential that he should have no hand in the dissolution of this
Cabinet, and if he does his best to reconstruct it, and gives the remaining
Ministers a fair trial, he will have a good right to call upon the House of
Commons and the country to support him in any ulterior measures that
circumstances may compel him to adopt.
Thus Littleton has been the instrument of breaking up this
Government; a man powerless to serve his party has contrived to destroy it.
It is curious to trace this matter from the outset. When Hobhouse threw up
his office and his seat, it was extremely difficult to find a successor to him
in the Irish Office, principally because not one man in fifty could procure a
seat in Parliament, or his re-election if already there. In this emergency
Littleton volunteered his services; he was sure of his seat, and he wanted
eventually a peerage, so he wrote to Lord Grey, and said that if he thought
him capable of filling the place he would undertake it.[6] Nothing better
suggested itself; it was a way out of the CAUSES OF THE RETIREMENT OF LORD GREY.
difficulty, and they closed with his offer. No man could be less fit for such a
situation; his talents are slender, his manners unpopular, and his vanity
considerable. When warned against O’Connell he said, ‘Oh, leave me to
manage Dan,’ and manage him he did with a vengeance, and a pretty Tartar
he caught. His first attempts at management were exhibited in the business
of Baron Smith. When the Coercion question came to be agitated, he
thought himself very cunning in beginning a little intrigue without the
knowledge of his colleagues, and he wrote to Lord Wellesley for the
purpose of prevailing upon him to recommend to the Cabinet that the Bill

should pass without the strong clauses, and most unaccountably Lord
Wellesley did so.[7] He stated that this omission was desirable on account of
circumstances connected with the Government in England, and Lord
Wellesley replied that if it was necessary on that account he would contrive
to manage matters without the clauses. Upon this he put himself in
communication with O’Connell, and never doubting that his and Lord
Wellesley’s advice (in accordance as it was with the opinions of certain
members of this Cabinet) would prevail, he gave O’Connell those
expectations the disappointment of which produced the scene between them
in the House of Commons. Lord Grey, however, was equally astonished and
dissatisfied with this last recommendation of Lord Wellesley’s, which was
directly at variance with the opinion he had given some time before, and he
accordingly asked him to explain why he had changed his mind, and
requested him to reconsider his latter opinion. He still replied that if it was
necessary, he would do without the clauses. Upon this there was a
discussion in the Cabinet, and Althorp, Grant, Ellice, Abercromby, and Rice
were in a minority, who, however, ultimately gave in to the majority. All
this time Littleton went on negotiating with O’Connell,[8] having told
Althorp alone that he was doing so, though not telling him all that passed,
and neither of them telling Lord Grey. Upon the blow-up which O’Connell
made, Althorp very unnecessarily resolved to resign, and when he did Lord
Grey followed his example.
[6] [This statement, though doubtless current at the time, is to my certain
knowledge entirely inaccurate. Mr. Littleton was confined to his sofa at the time
by an accident, and knew little of what was going on. Nobody was more
surprised than himself to receive from Lord Grey a spontaneous and unexpected
offer of the Chief Secretaryship of Ireland. He was fully aware of the extreme
difficulties of the office, which was at that moment perhaps the most important
in the Government. With equal modesty and candour he distrusted his own
ability to fill it, and he still more distrusted his own want of caution and
prudence, which was his weak point. He accepted it, however, to relieve the
Government from embarrassment, but he accompanied his acceptance with a
declaration to Lord Grey that he would gladly resign his office whenever a better
man could be found to fill it. It had previously been offered to Mr. Abercromby,
who refused to accept it without a seat in the Cabinet.]
[7] [These details are also far from accurate, as has now been demonstrated
by the publication (1872) of Lord Hatherton’s own memoir on the subject, and of
the original correspondence, which proves that the letter to Lord Wellesley was
written at the instigation of the Lord Chancellor, and that it expressed the
deliberate opinions of several members of the Cabinet. It must, however, be
acknowledged that it was written without the knowledge of Lord Grey and in

opposition to his views. The subsequent communication made by Mr. Littleton to
O’Connell was made with the knowledge and concurrence of Lord Althorp,
though Mr. Littleton said more to O’Connell than Lord Althorp had intended—
an indiscretion which Mr. Littleton himself admitted: but O’Connell made a very
base and ungenerous use of the confidence which had been extended to him.]
[8] [Mr. Littleton had but one conversation with O’Connell.]

The Tories have been mighty cock-a-hoop, but their joy is a good deal
damped within the last twelve hours, for it is now universally believed that
Althorp will be prevailed upon to remain, and will himself be at the head of
the Government. His popularity is so great in the House of Commons, and
there is such a dread of a dissolution, that if this arrangement takes place
they will scramble on some time longer, and at this advanced period of the
session it may be doubted whether the House of Lords will throw out any of
their essential measures. I met Duncannon, Ellice, and John Russell this
evening riding, and they seemed in very good spirits. I have no doubt Ellice
and Duncannon have had a main hand in all this business, and that they
urged on Littleton to do what he did. The House was adjourned till Monday,
to afford time for the new arrangement. Brougham spoke like a maniac last
night, and his statements were at direct variance with Althorp’s, the latter
declaring that they were all out and the former that they were all still in
office, and that Grey and Althorp had alone resigned.

July 12th, 1834
POPULARITY OF LORD ALTHORP.I went out of town yesterday morning, and did
not return till seven o’clock; in the meantime affairs were materially altered.
I met Duncannon riding with a face as long as the pictures of Hudibras,
which at once told the tale of baffled hopes. Melbourne’s negotiation had
failed entirely. ‘Jack,’[9] who was backed at even against the field the night
before in the House of Commons, would have nothing to say to it. I have
not yet heard in detail the circumstances of this failure, but it will probably
turn out that the King insisted upon some Conservative conditions, or an
attempt at coalition, which is a favourite plan of his. Yesterday it was
generally expected that Peel would be sent for, or the Duke of Wellington.
Peel called at Apsley House and was with the Duke a long time yesterday,
and afterwards, as the Duke rode through the Park, Ellice, who was sitting

on his horse talking to Sir Edward Kerrison, said, ‘There goes a man who
knows more than he did an hour ago.’ It is expected that Peel, if called
upon, will endeavour to form and carry on a Government; but opinions are
greatly divided as to the support he would get in the House of Commons,
and as to the effect of a dissolution, should he be driven to adopt that
hazardous alternative. I think that almost everything depends upon the
course which Althorp takes, as far as the rest of this session is concerned.
His popularity in the House of Commons is very great, and even surprising;
it is a proof of the influence which personal character may obtain when
unadorned with great abilities and shining parts; his remarkable
bonhommie, unalterable good nature and good temper, the conviction of his
honesty and sincerity, and of his want of ambition, his single-mindedness,
his unfeigned desire to get out of the trammels and cares of office, have all
combined to procure for him greater personal regard, and to a certain degree
greater influence, than any Minister ever possessed in my recollection.
There is no such feeling as animosity against Althorp. Some detest his
principles, some despise his talents, but none detest or despise the man; and
he is said by those who are judges of such matters to have one talent, and
that is a thorough knowledge of the House of Commons and great
quickness and tact in discovering the bias and disposition of the House. If
Althorp abstains from any rough opposition, and endeavours to restrain
others, upon the principle of giving a fair trial to those who may have taken
his place because he would not continue to hold it, it is probable that the
majority will avail themselves of such an opportunity for avoiding a
dissolution, and give a sulky and suspicious assent to the measures of the
new Ministry, for a cordial support cannot be expected. This, however, must
depend upon circumstances which are still in nubibus. To-day must, in all
probability, decide who is to attempt the task of forming a Government.
Stanley, it is supposed, if invited, will not join Peel, at least not at present;
all, however, is speculation, curiosity, and excitement.
[9] [The cant name given at the time to John, Lord Althorp.]

July 13th, 1834

All yesterday nothing was done; the King remains very quietly at
Windsor, still in communication with Melbourne, and I believe with the
Chancellor. He declines talking upon the present state of affairs to anybody.
What he wanted was, that some attempt should be made towards a
coalition, but this the remaining Ministers would not consent to. Poulett
Thomson called on me at my office in the afternoon, and told me that it was
by no means true that Althorp would not on any terms take the Government;
but that he would not unless he had carte blanche, in which case he could
not refuse it; if he did refuse, Thomson added, that everybody ought to
support Peel or any Tory Government. He is convinced that if Peel took the
Government he would be driven out by the House of Commons instanter,
unless he could show that he had done so in consequence of the King being
deserted by the present men. I afterwards met Mulgrave, who had been
riding with Althorp, who told him that though it would be very disagreeable
to him on every account, and especially as regards Lord Grey, he might
have it put to him in a way that left him no option. Lord Grey and his
friends and family think that he has been extremely ill-used, and they are
indignant with all LORD GREY AND STANLEY. the actors in the Littleton affair, and
only burning with desire to expose those who are still concealed. Charles
Grey talked to me for half an hour in the lobby of the Opera House last
night, and said that Lord Wellesley ought to disclose all that was still secret
in the transaction, and produce the private letters he had received from
England, and by which his opinions and advice had been influenced. Such
letters they know were written, and they believe by the Chancellor; this
belief, whether it turns out to be true or false, is, I perceive, very general. It
is inconceivable what a reputation that man has, and how universally he is
distrusted, and despised as much as anybody with such great abilities can
be. His political character is about on a par with Whittle Harvey’s moral
character; his insolence and swaggering, bullying tone in the House of
Lords have excited as much disgust out of the House as they have given
offence in it, and the only excuse for him is—what many people believe—
that there is a taint of madness about him. The other night, in his reply to
the Duke of Wellington’s violent and foolish speech, he chose to turn upon
Lord Rolle, a very old man and a choleric, hard-bitten old Tory. Rolle was
greatly exasperated, and after he sat down went up to him on the Woolsack
and said, ‘My Lord, I wish you to know that I have the greatest contempt
for you both in this House and out of it.’

While Lord Grey has been very indignant against the plotters in his
Cabinet he has been sorely wounded by the seceders, or rather by the chief
of them, Stanley; but this has been all made up in a way soothing enough to
his feelings, but not advantageous, though not discreditable, to Stanley. The
latter wrote a letter to Lord Grey expressing his deep regret at having said
anything to offend him, disclaiming the slightest intention of the kind,
pouring forth the warmest protestations of gratitude, veneration, and
attachment to him, and finishing by an assurance that he would take office
under nobody else. After the gross attack he made it is honourable in him to
make such an apology, but it only enhances the folly of his former conduct
to find himself placed under the necessity of writing a penitential letter.
Lord Grey replied in corresponding terms, and he says they shall be as good
friends again as ever, and that Stanley’s speech shall henceforward be
forgotten; but it will be very long before the effect produced by it will be
forgotten, or that the recollection of it will cease to have an influence on
Stanley’s reputation and prospects. His especial friends, the other seceders,
were as much annoyed at it as anybody; and the Duchess of Richmond told
me that her husband regretted it very bitterly. It is but justice to Richmond
to own that he has acted a fair, open, and manly part in this business, and
has satisfied all parties. Lord Grey was not annoyed at what passed between
them in the House of Lords, and their friendship has never suffered any
interruption.

July 15th, 1834
This interval of feverish anxiety has ended by the formation of the
Administration being entrusted to Lord Melbourne. He refused to undertake
it unless Althorp could stay with him. The King wanted Lord Grey to come
back, and spoke to Taylor about it, but he told him it was out of the
question, and therefore the King did not propose it, but he has constantly
written to him in the most flattering terms, and desired he might be
consulted in every step of these proceedings. Lord Grey has acted very
cordially towards Melbourne, and pressed Althorp so earnestly to stay that
he has consented, and last night the announcements were made to the two
Houses. The Tories (the High and foolish) are down in the mouth, but Peel
is himself well content not to have been mixed up in the concern. The

present conjecture is that Abercromby will go to the Home Office and
Durham to Ireland. Nobody thinks the Government will last long, and
everybody ‘wonders’ how Melbourne will do it. He is certainly a queer
fellow to be Prime Minister, and he and Brougham are two wild chaps to
have the destinies of this country in their hands. I should not be surprised if
Melbourne was to rouse his dormant energies and be excited by the
greatness of his position to display the vigour and decision in which he is
not deficient. Unfortunately his LORD DUNCANNON HOME SECRETARY. reputation is
not particularly good; he is considered lax in morals, indifferent in religion,
and very loose and pliant in politics. He is supposed to have consented to
measures of which he disapproved because it suited his ease and
convenience to do so, and because he was actuated by no strong political
principles or opinions.

July 17th, 1834
Yesterday it was announced that Duncannon is to be Secretary of State
and called to the House of Peers; Hobhouse in his place and in the Cabinet,
and to stand for Nottingham. This completes the concern; Duncannon
Secretary of State! Who could ever have thought of him in such a station?
His proper element seemed to be the House of Commons, where he was a
bustling, zealous partisan and a very good whipper-in; but he cannot speak
at all, and though a tolerably candid talker, his capacity is slender; he has no
pretensions of any sort to a high office, and nothing but peculiar
circumstances could put him in one; but the difficulty has been how to deal
with Durham, for the majority of the Cabinet were decided upon having
nothing to do with him, although there were some few who wanted to take
him in. By I know not what process of reasoning they arrived at the
conclusion that Duncannon’s elevation was the only solution of this
difficulty, but so it is, for I believe he would have preferred to stay in his old
place. They are all in raptures with the King, and with his straightforward
dealing on this occasion. In the first instance he desired Melbourne to write
to the Duke, Peel, and Stanley, stating his wish that an Administration
should be formed upon a wide and comprehensive plan. He wrote
accordingly to each, and with his letters he sent copies of his own letter to
the King, in which he gave his opinion that the formation of such a

Government was impossible. The Duke and Peel each replied, with
expressions of duty, to his Majesty, that they agreed with Lord Melbourne,
but did not see any necessity for giving reasons for their opinions. The
King, however, desired to have their reasons, which have since been sent to
him by them. Stanley wrote a long letter, with a peremptory refusal to form
part of any such Government. He appears anxious to pacify the Whigs by
disclaiming any intention of connecting himself with the Tories. Though all
the Grey family are very indignant, and by no means silent, at the way the
Earl has been treated, he has behaved with great temper and forbearance,
and has lent his old colleagues his cordial assistance in patching up the
broken concern.

July 19th, 1834
Two angry debates in the Lords last night and the night before; I was
present at the last, but not at the first. On Thursday Lord Wicklow made a
virulent attack on the Government; the Duke of Buckingham was coarse,
the Chancellor rabid, and a disgraceful scene of confusion and disorder
arose. Melbourne made his first speech, declaration, and explanation, and is
thought to have done it very well—a good beginning. Last night
Wharncliffe moved for the production of Lord Wellesley’s letter, by which
the opinion of the Cabinet had been shaken about the Coercion Bill. Lord
Grey made a very handsome speech indeed, throwing his shield over his old
colleagues, declaring he neither complained nor had he been ill-used, and
entreated that the new Government might be fairly tried, and not
embarrassed without cause in the outset. It was certainly the speech of a
thorough gentleman, but the case is after all a bad one. The dates show what
must have happened. It was on the 20th of June that Mr. Littleton told
O’Connell there was a discussion going on in the Cabinet, and that the
Coercion Bill was not yet settled. Now on the 20th of June it was settled,
but on the 23rd of June came Lord Wellesley’s letter, which unsettled it.[10]
It is clear, then, that a communication was made O’CONNELL AND THE COERCION
BILL. to Lord Wellesley which it was confidently expected would elicit from
him such a letter as would enable the authors of the communication to
revive the discussion, and Littleton, not being able to wait for its arrival,
anticipated it, and told O’Connell that the discussion was begun before the

cause of it was in operation. There certainly never was a more complete
underhand intrigue perpetrated than this, and although no official document,
or demi-official will now be produced to reveal the name of the prime
mover, everybody’s finger is pointed at Brougham, and the young Greys
make no secret of their conviction that he is the man. But undoubtedly the
greatest evil resulting from the proceedings and the termination of them (in
the reconstruction of this Government, with its additions, and the alteration
of the Bill) is the vast increase which must be made to the power and
authority of O’Connell. He has long been able to make the Irish believe
anything he pleases, and he will certainly have no difficulty in persuading
them that he himself has brought about this state of things, that he has
ousted Lord Grey, introduced Duncannon (who of all the Whigs has been
his greatest friend), and expunged the obnoxious clauses from the Coercion
Bill, and the fact is that all this is not very far from the truth. Between his
dexterity in availing himself of circumstances and his betrayal of Littleton,
between the folly of some men and the baseness of others, he has appeared
the most prominent character in the drama. Even now I cannot make out
why everybody wished the Bill to be thus emasculated, for there would have
been no difficulty in passing it through both Houses. To the surprise of
everybody Littleton is suffered to keep his place, probably by the protection
of Althorp, who may have been as dogged about him on this occasion as he
was about the Speakership, and as he is considered (on account of his
character) so indispensable in the House of Commons, of course he can
make his own terms.[11]

[10] [This again is not accurate. It was on the 23rd of June, after the arrival
of Lord Wellesley’s letter, that Mr. Littleton saw O’Connell. The question was
still under discussion on that day, and the opinions of different members of the
Cabinet were much divided. Those Ministers (including the Chancellor) who
were opposed to the renewal of the Coercion Bill in its integrity wished to secure
the assent of Lord Wellesley to their views. After the receipt of Lord Wellesley’s
letter of the 21st of June both Lord Melbourne and Lord Althorp declared that ‘it
was impossible to ask Parliament for an unconstitutional power which the Lord-
Lieutenant of Ireland had been led to disclaim.’ (See Hatherton’s Memoir, p. 13.)
The question was not finally settled till the Cabinet of the 20th of June. Mr.
Littleton had been distinctly informed by Lord Althorp, on the same day that he
saw O’Connell, that the matter was not settled, and that he (Lord Althorp) would
resign rather than allow the disputed clauses to form part of the new Bill.]
[11] [This was so. Lord Althorp positively refused to hold office in the
Melbourne Government, unless Mr. Littleton could be prevailed upon to resume
and retain his office as Irish Secretary. Nothing could be more honourable to
both parties than this conduct of Lord Althorp; but it was due to the fact that he
had himself been a party to the communication made by Mr. Littleton to
O’Connell, and that he knew Mr. Littleton had been exposed to more censure
than he deserved.]

July 20th, 1834
At Court yesterday to swear in Duncannon Secretary of State. He told
me he had made Stanley[12] (the man they call Sir Benjamin Backbite, and
familiarly Ben) his under-secretary, telling him he must speak, for that he
(Duncannon) could not. Auckland and Duncannon will not certainly add
much to the oratorical splendour of the Government. Ellice was there, and
told me about a grand case the Tories have got hold of against him, growing
out of Lord Western’s evidence in Whittle Harvey’s Committee. It there
came out that Western had applied to Ellice, then Secretary of the Treasury
(at the time of the great Reform election), for money to assist at the
Colchester election, and he sent 500ℓ. They want to make out that this was
public money, but they won’t catch him. He says several individuals
subscribed large sums, which were placed at his disposal to be employed to
the best advantage for the cause. He will get out of it. He talked of the
Government, said it was a great error to suppose it was inclined to
movement principles, and that in point of fact there was very little
difference, except on Church matters, between Sir Robert Peel and himself,
that there never was so good a House of Commons for the Government, that

in all this mess—for mess it was—the Tories could not succeed in getting
up a feeling or a prejudice against the Government, and it was clear they
were utterly powerless there, that the House only required to be a little
cajoled, and was easily led; the word Reform was still potent there, and had
only to be uttered on occasions to bring the majority round when they began
to show a refractory disposition.
[12] [Afterwards Lord Stanley of Alderney.]

July 21st, 1834
The Chancellor and the Hollands urged Lord Grey to take the Privy
Seal. This Sefton told me as a great secret yesterday, but the indignation of
the Greys burst through all restraint, and they told it ‘à qui voulait les LORD
MELBOURNE’S ADMINISTRATION. entendre,’ with every expression of rage and
disgust, ‘adding insult to injury.’ Lord Grey was more philosophical, and
rather smiled at the proposition, but he did not repress the pious resentment
of his children. The Grey women would murder the Chancellor if they
could. It certainly was a curious suggestion. The Hollands think of nothing
on earth but how they may best keep the Duchy of Lancaster, and they
fancied Lord Grey’s holding the Privy Seal might be of service to the
Government, and if they could make him commit such a bassesse so much
the better. It is not always easy to discover the Chancellor’s motives, but as
he is as vindictive as he is false and tricking, he perhaps took this
opportunity of revenging himself for the old offer of the Attorney-
Generalship, which he has never forgiven.[13]
[13] [This view of the case is certainly unjust to Lord Brougham, who had
more respect and regard for Lord Grey than for any other statesman of the time,
as his correspondence with the Earl, now recently published in Brougham’s
‘Posthumous Memoirs’ sufficiently proves.]
[The first Administration of Lord Melbourne was thus constituted:
First Lord of the Treasury Viscount Melbourne.
Lord Chancellor Lord Brougham.
Lord President Marquis of Lansdowne.
Home Secretary Viscount Duncannon.
Foreign Secretary Viscount Palmerston.
Colonial Secretary Mr. Spring Rice.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Viscount Althorp.
Admiralty Lord Auckland.
Board of Control Mr. Charles Grant.
Board of Trade Mr. Poulett Thomson.
Duchy of Lancaster Lord Holland.
Paymaster of the Forces Lord John Russell.
Secretary-at-War Mr Edward Ellice.
Lord Privy Seal Earl of Mulgrave.
Postmaster-General Marquis of Conyngham.
Irish Secretary Mr. Littleton.]

CHAPTER XXIV.
Taylor’s ‘Philip van Artevelde’ — Goodwood — Earl Bathurst’s
Death — Death of Mrs. Arbuthnot — Overtures to O’Connell
— Irish Tithe Bill — Theodore Hook’s Improvisation — Lord
Westmeath’s Case in the Privy Council — First Council of Lord
Melbourne’s Government and Prorogation — Brougham’s
Vagaries — Lord Durham’s Exclusion — The Edinburgh Dinner
— Windsor and Meiningen — Spencer Perceval — Lord Grey’s
Retirement — The Westmeath Case again — The Queen’s
Return — Melbourne and Tom Young — Holland House —
Reflections — Conversation on the Poets — Miscellaneous Chat
— Lord Melbourne’s Literary Attainments — Lord Holland’s
Anecdotes of Great Orators — Execution of Charles I. — Lord
Melbourne’s Opinion of Henry VIII. — The ‘Times’ attacks
Lord Brougham — His Tour in Scotland — His Unpopularity —
Cowper’s Secret — Canning on Reform — Lord Melbourne on
Palmerston and Brougham — Canning and Brougham in 1827
— Senior — Lord Melbourne and the Benthamites — His
Theology — Spanish Eloquence — The Harley Papers — The
Turf — Death of Lord Spencer — The Westmeath Case heard
— Law Appointments — Bickersteth — Louis Philippe’s
Position.

July 23rd, 1834
Brougham spoke for four hours on the Poor Law Bill on Monday, and
made a luminous speech; Alvanley, to people’s amusement, spoke, and
against the Bill; he spoke tolerably well—a grave speech and got
compliments.

July 24th, 1834
Read Reeves’ ‘History of English Law,’ finished Henry Taylor’s ‘Van
Artevelde,’ and read 250 lines of Virgil. ‘Philip van Artevelde’ is a poem of
extraordinary merit, and the offspring of a vigorous and independent mind.
The author, who is my particular friend, and for whom I have a sincere
regard and a great admiration, took his work to Murray, who gave it to
Lockhart to read. Lockhart advised Murray not to publish it, at least at his
own risk, but he bestowed great encomiums on the work, and urged Taylor
to publish it himself. He did so, without much DEATH AND CHARACTER OF LORD
BATHURST. expectation that it would be popular, and has been agreeably
surprised to find that in a short space of time a second edition is called for.
With the vivacity of a sanguine disposition, and a confidence in the sterling
merits of his poem, he now believes that edition will follow edition like
wave upon wave, in which I fear he will be disappointed. [When the first
edition was all sold, and a second called for, he made up his account with
his publisher, and the balance was 37ℓ. against him.—November 29th.]

August 5th, 1834
At Goodwood for the races, so read nothing except half of
Jacquemont’s Letters and a little book I picked up, the ‘History of the
Grand Vizier Coprogli;’ called to town on Wednesday last for a Council, to
swear in Mulgrave Privy Seal; went to Petworth on my way for one night.
Stanley was at Goodwood, absorbed in racing, billiards, and what not;
nobody would have guessed that all this rough and rustic gaiety covered
ambition, eloquence, and powers which must make him one of the most
eminent men, though his reputation is not what it was.
While I was there news came of Lord Bathurst’s death. He was a very
amiable man and with a good understanding, though his talents were far
from brilliant, a High Churchman and a High Tory, but a cool politician, a
bad speaker, a good writer, greatly averse to changes, but unwillingly
acquiescing in many. He was nervous and reserved, with a good deal of
humour, and habitually a jester. His conversation was generally a series of
jokes, and he rarely discussed any subject but in a ludicrous vein. His
conduct to Napoleon justly incurred odium, for although he was only one of

many, he was the Minister through whom the orders of Government passed,
and he suffered the principal share of the reproach which was thrown upon
the Cabinet for their rude and barbarous treatment of the Emperor at St.
Helena. He had not a lively imagination, and his feelings were not excited
by the contemplation of such a striking example of fallen greatness. I was
Lord Bathurst’s private secretary for several years, but so far from feeling
any obligation to him, I always consider his mistaken kindness in giving me
that post as the source of all my misfortunes and the cause of my present
condition. He never thought fit to employ me, never associated me with the
interests and the business of his office, and consequently abandoned me at
the age of eighteen to that life of idleness and dissipation from which I
might have been saved had he felt that my future prospects in life, my
character and talents, depended in great measure upon the direction which
was at that moment given to my mind. He would probably have made me a
Tory (which I should hardly have remained), but I should have become a
man of business, and of the antagonist tastes which divided my mind that
for literature and employment would have got the better of that for
amusement and idleness, instead, as unfortunately happened, of the latter
prevailing over the former. Though I knew Lord Bathurst so long, and was
his private secretary for some years, and his family and mine have always
been so intimate, I had no real intimacy with him. From what I have learnt
from others I am disposed to rate his abilities more highly than the world
has done. He was the friend and devoted admirer of Pitt, and a regular Tory
of the old school, who felt that evil days had come upon him in his old age.
When he left office with the Duke of Wellington he resolved upon finally
quitting public life, and let what might happen, never to take office again.
On coming to town yesterday I heard of another death—Mrs. Arbuthnot,
after a short illness. The Duke of Wellington, with whom she had lived in
the most intimate relations for many years, evinced a good deal of feeling,
but he is accused of insensibility because he had the good taste and sense to
smooth his brow and go to the House of Lords with a cheerful aspect. She
was not a clever woman, but she was neither dull nor deficient, and very
prudent and silent.

August 6th, 1834

To my office, then to the House of Lords and heard a discussion on
foreign politics; not very amusing; Melbourne not so good as Grey would
have been. The Duke spoke, but he looked very ill. Walked from the House
with Lord Carnarvon, who is an intelligent man, but a great alarmist and
very desponding; he thinks we are going on IRISH TITHE BILL. step by step to an
utter subversion of all interests and institutions.

August 7th, 1834
Yesterday I met the Duke of Wellington, who talked to me of Mrs.
Arbuthnot; I walked away from my office with Duncannon, who told me
that O’Connell’s amendment in the Tithe Bill met with his concurrence (and
in fact, though he did not exactly say as much, his connivance). He said he
was sure this Bill was the only chance for the Irish Church, which he was
very anxious to save and support; expressed great anxiety to make it up
with O’Connell by giving him a great judicial situation, is convinced he is
sincere (at the moment) in all he says, but that he is so vain and excitable
and ambitious that when he returns to Ireland he forgets all he has promised
or professed; the demon of agitation regains the ascendant, and he bursts
into all those excesses which have made him so odious and formidable; but
there is no chance of any arrangement with him, for the majority of the
Government would not hear of it. I dined at the ‘Travellers;’ walked to a fire
in Edward Street, where I amused myself with the strange figures and
groups, the glare, bustle, and noise. There was Duncannon again, a
Secretary of State jostling and jostled in the mob.

August 12th, 1834
On Saturday to Hillingdon, and back yesterday; passed the night at the
House of Lords, to hear the debate on the Irish Tithe Bill.[1] At a meeting at
Apsley House the Tory Lords came to an unanimous resolution to throw out
the Bill, and at one or two meetings at Lambeth the bishops agreed to do the
same. The debate was heavy; Melbourne very unlike Lord Grey, whose
forte was leading the House of Lords and making speeches on such
occasions. Ellenborough spoke the best, I think. I hardly ever heard such

unbroken fluency, and a good deal of stuff, too, in his speech. Ellice and
Spring Rice both told me that this decision was the most fatal and most
important that had occurred for years; the latter said that no tithe would be
paid, but that there would be no active resistance. Such tithe property as
could be seized would not be sold, because there would be no purchasers
for it. One thing is clear to me, that those Tories who are always bellowing
‘revolution’ and ‘spoliation,’ and who talk of the gradual subversion of
every institution and the imminent peril in which all our establishments are
placed, do not really believe one word of what they say, and, instead of
being oppressed with fear, they are buoyed up with delusive confidence and
courage; for if they did indeed believe that the Church—the Church of
Ireland especially—was in danger, and that its preservation was the one
paramount desideratum, they would gladly avert, as far as they might, that
danger by a compromise involving a very small (if any) sacrifice of
principle, and which would secure to the Irish clergy, as far as human
prudence, legislative sanction, and the authority of law can secure it, a
permanent and a competent provision, free from the danger and the odium
which have for a long time past embittered the existence of every
clergyman in the country. It is a curious speculation to see what the effect
will be of this vote practically in Ireland on the condition of the clergy, and
upon public opinion here.
[1] [The Irish Tithe Bill was thrown out by the House of Lords by 189 to
122.]

It is difficult to understand why the Lords did not alter the Bill in
Committee and restore it to its original state, that which Ellenborough said
he would not have opposed, and which had been already sanctioned by a
great majority of the House of Commons upon the report of a Committee. If
they had done this, either the Bill must have passed in this less obnoxious
shape or the odium of its rejection would have been thrown upon the
Commons, and the Lords would undoubtedly have had an excellent case to
present to the country. But if there is a wall they are sure to run their heads
against it, and if there is none they build one up for the purpose. What
puzzles me most is the opposition of the clergy; they are the parties most
immediately and most deeply interested in this Bill, and yet the great
majority of them appear to be opposed totis viribus to it.

August 13th, 1834
Dined at Roehampton yesterday with Farquhar. Mrs. Norton and Mrs.
Blackwood and Theodore THEODORE HOOK. Hook dined there among others.
After dinner he displayed his extraordinary talent of improvisation, which I
had never heard but once before, and then he happened not to be in the vein.
Last night he was very brilliant. Each lady gave him a subject, such as the
‘Goodwood Cup,’ the ‘Tithe Bill;’ one ‘could not think of anything,’ when
he dashed off and sang stanzas innumerable, very droll, with ingenious
rhymes and excellent hits, ‘his eye begetting occasion for his excellent wit,’
for at every word of interruption or admiration, every look or motion, he
indulged in a digression, always coming back to one of the themes imposed
upon him. It is a tour de force, in which I believe he stands alone, and it is
certainly wonderfully well worth hearing and uncommonly amusing.

August 14th, 1834
Yesterday there was a bother with the Chancellor about Lord
Westmeath’s case pending before the Privy Council.[2] He took it into his
head (probably having been got at by Lady Westmeath or some of her
friends) to have it decided forthwith, and sent to desire a Committee might
be convened. Westmeath’s counsel was out of town; Follett, whom he relies
on, is on the Northern Circuit, but his other counsel is to be had, being at
Chislehurst. Accordingly the Chancellor desired that the case might stand
over from Thursday, the day he first appointed it (giving only two days’
notice), to Monday, and that it should be notified to the parties that if they
did not then appear the case should go on without them. Westmeath came to
me in a frenzy of rage, and said the Chancellor was the greatest of villains,
and so he would tell him in the House of Lords or in the Privy Council. I
begged him to hold his tongue, and I would speak to the Chancellor. So I
went to the House of Lords where he was sitting, and told Lemarchant what
had passed, and that the case ought not to be thus hurried on. He thanked
me very much, and said he would go to Brougham; but he soon returned,
and said that the Chancellor would hear nothing, and would have the case
brought on, and he therefore advised me not to give myself any further
concern in it, and to leave him and Westmeath to settle it as they might. In

the meantime Westmeath went down to the House of Lords, and after
speaking to Wynford, whom the Chancellor had asked to attend (as he
learnt from me), was going to get up in the House of Lords and attack him,
and was only prevented by Wynford dragging him down by the tail of his
coat. I had already spoken to Wynford, and I afterwards spoke to Lord
Lansdowne, telling them that the case ought not to be hurried on in this
peremptory way, and I persuaded Lord Lansdowne to set his face against it.
However, in the meantime Wynford had urged the Chancellor to put it off,
and not exasperate that madman, who would say or do something violent;
and, whether from reason or fear, he prevailed on him. Wynford told me
that Brougham is undoubtedly mad, and so I really believe he is. While I
was in the House of Lords Horne came in from the Commons, and said they
had succeeded in stifling there all discussion on the rejection of the Tithe
Bill by the House of Lords. Grattan was going to introduce the subject, but
was prevailed on to say nothing, and to some questions put by Major
Beauclerck Althorp refused to reply.
[2] [The appellate jurisdiction in causes matrimonial was vested at this time
in the King in Council. The case of Westmeath v. Westmeath, which was a suit
for a separation and a question of alimony, came up on appeal from the Court of
Arches.]

August 16th, 1834
At a Council for the prorogation; the first time I have seen all these
new Ministers in a bunch—a queer set, all things considered, to be in
possession of the Palace. Great change of decoration. Duncannon, Ellice,
Hobhouse, Abercromby, Mulgrave, Auckland. The King, who is fond of
meddling in the Council business instead of repeating like a parrot what is
put in his mouth, made a bother and confusion about a fancy matter, and I
was forced to go to Taylor and beg to explain it to him, which I did after the
House of Lords. The King was quite knocked up and easily satisfied, for he
neither desired nor could have understood any explanations. There were not
much more than half a dozen Peers in the House, but many ladies. The
Chancellor went down, and, in presence of the ladies, LORD BROUGHAM. attired
in his golden robes (and especially before Mrs. P., to whom he makes love),
gave a judgment in some case in which a picture of Nell Gwynne was

concerned, and he was very proud of the delicacy of his judgment. There
never was anything like his exhilaration of spirits and good-humour. I don’t
know what has come to him, except it be that he has scrambled through the
session and got Lord Grey out. He wound up in the House of Lords by the
introduction of his Bill for a Judicial Committee there, which he prefaced
by a speech exhibiting his own judicial acts, and undoubtedly making a
capital case for himself as to diligence and despatch if it be all true (which I
see no reason to doubt), and passing a great eulogium upon the House of
Lords as an institution, and drawing comparisons between that House and
the House of Commons (much to the disadvantage of the latter), expressing
many things which are very true and just and of a highly conservative
tendency. He is a strange being whom, with all his inconsistencies, one
cannot but admire; so varied and prodigious are his powers. Much more are
these lines applicable to him than to his predecessor on the Woolsack:—
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
In a speech the other night, by way of putting his audience on a wrong scent
with regard to his correspondence with Lord Wellesley, he assured them
that that correspondence was on any subject but politics, and in every
language except English; and Lemarchant told somebody that his most
difficult employment was to correct and copy out the Chancellor’s Greek
epigrams to Lord Wellesley, his Greek characters being worse than his
English; while Lord Wellesley sent him very neatly written and prettily
composed epigrams in return. I should think Lemarchant’s occupation very
amusing, and that no study could be more curious than that of the mind and
actions of this strange specimen of humanity.

August 19th, 1834
At Stoke from Saturday, the 16th, till yesterday; had much talk with
old Creevey about the Chancellor. Sefton, his great ally, so resented his
conduct to Lord Grey that he was on the point of quarrelling with him, and
Brougham miscalculated so far as to chuckle to Sefton himself over the
improvement of his own position in the new order of things, telling him that
he could more easily manage Melbourne than he could Lord Grey. They are

a precious set with their squabbles and tracasseries. It appears that they
very well knew what Brougham was from the beginning, especially Grey’s
womankind, who warned their father against him, but they all flattered
themselves they had taken the sting out of him by getting him into the
House of Lords. Creevey says that Brougham is devoured with ambition,
and what he wants is to be Prime Minister, but that it is quite impossible he
should for ever escape detection and not be regularly blown up sooner or
later. He now wants to appear on good terms with Lord Grey, and there is a
dinner at Edinburgh in contemplation (at which Brougham is to preside) to
be given to Lord Grey. His friends want him not to go, but he has a notion
that the Scotch have behaved so well to him that he ought not to refuse the
invitation. The Chancellor had intended to go junketting on the Rhine with
Mrs. P., and this project was only marred by his discovering that he could
not leave the country without putting the Great Seal in commission at a cost
(to himself) of 1,400ℓ. This was a larger price than he was disposed to pay
for his trip, so he went off to Brougham instead.
On Sunday I went all over the private apartments of Windsor Castle,
and walked through what they call the slopes to the Queen’s cottage; all
very splendid and luxurious. In the gallery there is a model of a wretched-
looking dog-hole of a building, with a ruined tower beside it. I asked what
this was, and the housekeeper said, ‘The Château of Meiningen;’ put there, I
suppose, to enhance by comparison the pleasure of all the grandeur which
surrounds the Queen, for it would hardly have been exhibited as a
philosophical or moral memento of her humble origin and the low fortune
from which she has been raised.
As I rode into London yesterday morning I fell in with
SPENCER PERCEVAL.
Spencer Perceval, and got off my horse to walk into town with him. He
talks rationally enough till he gets on religious topics; he asked me what I
thought of the state of affairs, and, after telling him my opinion of the
condition and prospects of the Church, I asked him what he thought of
them. He said he agreed with me as to the status, but his notion was ‘that it
all proceeded from a departure from God,’ that ours was a backsliding
Church, and that God had forsaken it, and that we had only to put our trust
in Him, and rely entirely on Him, and He would work out the salvation of
His own. We parted in the midst of the discussion, and before I had any

time to get from him any explanation of the course he would recommend to
those who govern in furtherance of his own theocratical principles.
There has been what is called ‘a great Protestant meeting’ at Dublin, at
which Winchilsea was introduced to the Irish Orangemen and made one of
them. It was great in one way, for there were a great many fools, who talked
a great deal of nonsense and evinced a disposition to do a great deal of
mischief if they can. Winchilsea’s description of himself was undoubtedly
true, only it is true always and of all of them, ‘that his feelings were so
excited that he was deprived of what little intellect he possessed.’

August 26th, 1834
On Friday to Hillingdon, Saturday to Stoke; Lord John Russell,
Medem, Dedel, Tommy Duncombe, D’Orsay. Lord John and I walked to
Bulstrode on Sunday; talked about the Chancellor and the Government. He
said that Lord Holland was struck with Brougham’s want of tact at hearing
him press Lord Grey to go to a public dinner at Edinburgh because he was
to be in the chair; that Lord Grey did not think Brougham had been engaged
ab initio in a plot to get him out. Lord John talked of the House of Lords,
and how it and the House of Commons were to be re-united. He thinks that
the obstinacy of the House of Lords and its Tory spirit are attributable
solely to the numerous creations of the last thirty or forty years.
Tommy Duncombe is the greatest political comedy going, he is
engaged in a mediation between the master builders and the operatives, who
have quarrelled about the unions, and an express came to him from Cubitt
after dinner.
Sefton told me that Lord Grey, when he was at Windsor, had a long
conversation with the King, in which his Majesty expressed no little
dissatisfaction at what had recently occurred and at the present posture of
his affairs. He told me that Lord Grey certainly would not have continued in
office under any circumstances till Parliament met again, and that, in fact,
his continual propositions to retire and expressions of consciousness of
inability and unfitness had been very embarrassing and annoying both to his
colleagues and the King, and that the latter had evidently been tired out by

them, as was proved by his not making the slightest effort to induce Lord
Grey to remain when he tendered his resignation. Grey acted very
handsomely in giving his proxy to Melbourne, and the reason he stayed
away from the House of Lords during the latter days of the session was that
he was afraid of being compelled to say something indicative of the real
state of his mind and feelings with regard to past occurrences.
When I got to town yesterday, to my great astonishment I found that
the Vice-Chancellor had been at the office with a peremptory mandate from
the Chancellor to bring on the Westmeath case on Friday next, sent up from
Brougham Hall. In my absence the summonses had been issued, but I
desired them all to be recalled, and the Vice-Chancellor soon after
happening to call on me, I told him what had occurred before, and that the
Lord President was opposed to the cause being thus hurried on. He
acquiesced, and wrote to the Chancellor to say he had heard from me that it
could not be; and so it ended, but I dare say the Chancellor will be in a
violent rage, which I rather enjoy than not.[3] It is very clear that he intends
to exercise paramount authority LORD WESTMEATH’S CASE. over the Judicial
Committee, and to consider everything connected with it at his disposal.
When first he had the Privy Council Bill drawn up by one of his devils, he
intended to create a new tribunal, of which he should be the head, and
though he was obliged to give up his original design, he still considers
himself entitled to deal with the Judicial Committee as he pleases. If the
Lord President had more of the spirit that is due to the office over which he
presides, he would not suffer him to interfere, and I am resolved if I can to
get Lord Lansdowne to assert his own authority. The Chancellor has
promised Sefton that when Mr. Blackburn, now a judge at the Mauritius,
comes home, he shall be made a Privy Councillor; that Sir Alexander
Johnston, who now attends the sittings of the Council, shall be dismissed,
and Blackburn invited to attend instead of him, and that he shall have 400ℓ.
a year (which by the Act he may). This, if it takes place, will be one of the
grossest and most barefaced jobs that ever were perpetrated; but I think it
can never be. What makes it worse is that Brougham introduced this clause
for the express purpose of meeting Blackburn’s case; so he told Sefton, but
I suppose it means that he made the stipend receivable by an ex-judge in
any colony, when the pretext for it was the power of obtaining the
assistance of Indian judges.[4]

[3] [In addition to other reasons, which are obvious, against this proceeding,
it would have been an unprecedented thing to call on an important appeal for
hearing at the end of August, in the midst of the long vacation.]
[4] [No colonial judge has ever been appointed to one of the assessorships
of the Judicial Committee, except Sir Alexander Johnston, who had been Chief
Justice of Ceylon; but Sir Alexander refused to accept the stipend (400ℓ. a year)
attached to the office, and never did receive it.]

September 4th, 1834
At Court yesterday. The King came to town to receive the address of
the City on the Queen’s return—the most ridiculous address I ever heard.
The Queen was too ill to appear. Her visit to Germany knocked her up, and
well it might, considering the life she led—always up at six and never in
bed till twelve, continual receptions and ceremonies. Errol told me she
showed them her old bedroom in the palace (as they call it) at Meiningen—
a hole that an English housemaid would think it a hardship to sleep in.
Stanley (not the ex-Secretary, but the Under-Secretary) told me last
night an anecdote of Melbourne which I can very easily believe. When the
King sent for him he told Young ‘he thought it a damned bore, and that he
was in many minds what he should do—be Minister or no.’ Young said,
‘Why, damn it, such a position never was occupied by any Greek or Roman,
and, if it only lasts two months, it is well worth while to have been Prime
Minister of England.’ ‘By God that’s true,’ said Melbourne; ‘I’ll go.’ Young
is his private secretary—a vulgar, familiar, impudent fellow, but of
indefatigable industry and a man who suits Melbourne. His taste is not
delicate enough to be shocked at the coarseness, while his indolence is
accommodated by the industry, of his secretary. Then Young[5] knows many
people, many places, and many things; nobody knows whence he comes or
what is his origin, but he was a purser in the navy, and made himself useful
to the Duke of Devonshire when he went to Russia, who recommended him
to Melbourne. He was a writer and runner for the newspapers, and has
always been an active citizen, struggling and striving to get on in the world,
and probably with no inconsiderable dexterity. I know nothing of his
honesty, for or against it; he seems good-humoured, but vulgar and familiar.
Ben Stanley and I were talking about public men, and agreed that by far the

ablest, and at the same time the most unscrupulous, of them are Brougham
and O’Connell, and that the latter is probably on the whole the most devoid
of principle. Their characters and adventures would be worthy of a Plutarch.
[5] [Tom Young was commonly known as ‘Ubiquity Young,’ because you
saw him in every place you might happen to go to.]

September 5th, 1834
At Holland House yesterday, where I had not been these two years.
Met Lord Holland at Court, who made me go. The last time I was with my
Lady she was so mighty uncivil that I left off my visits, and then we met
again as if there had been no interruption, and as if we had been living
together constantly. Spring Rice and his son, Melbourne, and Palmerston
dined there; Allen was at Dulwich, but came in the evening, and so did
Bobus Smith. There HOLLAND HOUSE. was a great deal of very good talk,
anecdotes, literary criticism, and what not, some of which would be worth
remembering, though hardly sufficiently striking to be put down, unless as
forming a portion of a whole course of conversations of this description. A
vast depression came over my spirits, though I was amused, and I don’t
suppose I uttered a dozen words. It is certainly true that the atmosphere of
Holland House is often oppressive, but that was not it; it was a painful
consciousness of my own deficiencies and of my incapacity to take a fair
share in conversation of this description. I felt as if a language was spoken
before me which I understood, but not enough to talk in it myself. There
was nothing discussed of which I was altogether ignorant, and when the
merits of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Crabbe were brought into
comparison, and Lord Holland cut jokes upon Allen for his enthusiastic
admiration of the ‘De Moribus Germanorum,’ it was not that I had not read
the poets or the historian, but that I felt I had not read them with profit. I
have not that familiarity with either which enables me to discuss their
merits, and a painful sense came over me of the difference between one
who has superficially read and one who has studied, one who has laid a
solid foundation in early youth, gathering knowledge as he advances in
years, all the stores of his mind being so orderly disposed that they are at all
times available, and one who (as I have done) has huddled together a
quantity of loose reading, as vanity, curiosity, and not seldom shame

impelled; reading thus without system, more to cover the deficiencies of
ignorance than to augment the stores of knowledge, loads the mind with an
undigested mass of matter, which proves when wanted to be of small
practical utility—in short, one must pay for the follies of one’s youth. He
who wastes his early years in horse-racing and all sorts of idleness, figuring
away among the dissolute and the foolish, must be content to play an
inferior part among the learned and the wise. Some instances there are of
men who have united both characters, but it will be found that these have
had frequent laborious intervals, that though they may have been vicious,
they have never been indolent, and that their minds have never slumbered
and lost by disuse the power of exertion. Reflections of this sort make me
very uncomfortable, and I am ready to cry with vexation when I think on
my misspent life. If I was insensible to a higher order of merit, and
indifferent to a nobler kind of praise, I should be happier far; but to be
tormented with the sentiment of an honourable ambition and with
aspirations after better things, and at the same time so sunk in sloth and bad
habits as to be incapable of those exertions without which their objects are
unattainable, is of all conditions the worst. I sometimes think that it would
be better for me, as I am not what I might have been (if my education had
been less neglected, and my mind had undergone a better system of moral
discipline), if I was still lower than I am in the scale, and belonged entirely
to a more degraded caste; and then again, when I look forward to that
period which is fast approaching—
When ... a sprightlier age—
Comes tittering on to drive one from the stage—
I am thankful that I have still something in store, that though far below the
wise and the learned, I am still something raised above the ignorant mob,
that though much of my mental substance has been wasted, I have enough
left to appear respectably in the world, and that I have at least preserved that
taste for literary pursuits which I cling to as the greatest of blessings and the
best security against the tedium and vacuity which are the indispensable
concomitants of an idle youth and an ignorant old age.
As a slight but imperfect sketch of the talk of Holland House I will put
down this:—

They talked of Taylor’s new poem, ‘Philip van Artevelde.’ Melbourne
had read and admired it. The preface, he said, was affected and foolish, the
poem very superior to anything in Milman. There was one fine idea in the
‘Fall of Jerusalem’—that of Titus, who felt himself propelled by an
irresistible impulse like that of the Greek dramatists, whose fate is the great
agent always pervading their dramas. They held CONVERSATION AT HOLLAND HOUSE.
Wordsworth cheap, except Spring Rice, who was enthusiastic about him.
Holland thought Crabbe the greatest genius of modern poets. Melbourne
said he degraded every subject. None of them had known Coleridge; his
lectures were very tiresome, but he is a poet of great merit. Then they spoke
of Spencer Perceval and Irving preaching in the streets. Irving had called on
Melbourne, and eloquently remonstrated that ‘they only asked the same
licence that was given to puppet-shows and other sights not to be prevented;
that the command was express, “Go into the highways,” and that they must
obey God rather than man.’ Melbourne said this was all very true and
unanswerable. ‘What did you answer?’ I asked. ‘I said, “You must not
preach there.”’ Then of Cambridge and Goulburn, who is a saint and gave
lectures in his room, by which he has caught several young men. Lord
Holland spoke of George III.’s letters to Lord North; the King liked Lord
North, hated the Duke of Richmond. Amongst the few people he liked were
Lord Loughborough and Lord Thurlow. Thurlow was always ‘endeavouring
to undermine the Minister with whom he was acting, and intriguing
underhand with his enemies.’ Loughborough used to say, ‘Do what you
think right, and never think of what you are to say to excuse it
beforehand’—a good maxim. The Duke of Richmond in 1763 or 1764, after
an audience of the King in his closet, told him that ‘he had said that to him
which if he was a subject he should not scruple to call an untruth.’ The King
never forgave it, and the Duke had had the imprudence to make a young
king his enemy for life. This Duke of Richmond, when Lord-Lieutenant of
Sussex, during the American war, sailed in a yacht through the fleet, when
the King was there, with American colours at his mast-head. He never
forgave Fox for putting the Duke of Portland instead of himself at the head
of the Government in 1782. During the riots in 1780 on account of Admiral
Keppel, Tom Grenville burst open the door of the Admiralty, and assisted at
the pillage and destruction of papers. Lord Grey a little while ago attacked
him about it, and he did not deny it. Such things could not be done now.
During the Windsor election they hired a mob to go down and throw Lord

Mornington (Lord Wellesley) over Windsor Bridge, and Fitzpatrick said it
would be so fine to see St. Patrick’s blue riband floating down the stream.
They first sent to Piper to know if Lord Mornington could swim. The plan
was defeated by his having a still stronger mob. After dinner they discussed
women’s works: few chefs-d’œuvres; Madame de Sévigné the best; the only
three of a high class are Madame de Sévigné, Madame de Stael, and (Bobus
Smith said) Sappho, but of her not above forty lines are extant: these,
however, are unrivalled; Mrs Somerville is very great in the exact sciences.
Lady Holland would not hear of Madame de Stael. They agreed as to Miss
Austen that her novels are excellent. Quintus Curtius is confirmed by
Burnes’ travels in Bokhara, but was reckoned no authority by the greatest
scholars; Lord Melbourne said Mitford had expressed his confidence in
him. Of the early English kings there is no reason to believe that any king
before Edward III. understood the English language; the quarrel between
Beckett and King Henry II. was attributed (by some writers) to the hostile
feeling between Normans and Saxons, and this was the principal motive of
the quarrel and the murder of the Archbishop. Klopstock had a sect of
admirers in Germany; some young students made a pilgrimage from
Gottingen to Hamburg, where Klopstock lived in his old age, to ask him the
meaning of a passage in one of his works which they could not understand.
He looked at it, and then said that he could not then recollect what it was
that he meant when he wrote it, but that he knew it was the finest thing he
ever wrote, and they could not do better than devote their lives to the
discovery of its meaning.

September 7th, 1834
At Holland House again; only Bobus Smith and Melbourne; these two,
with Allen, and Lord Holland agreeable enough. Melbourne’s excellent
scholarship and universal information remarkably display themselves in
society, and he delivers himself with an energy which shows how deeply his
mind is impressed with literary subjects.
After dinner there was much talk
LORD MELBOURNE’S LITERARY CONVERSATION.
of the Church, and Allen spoke of the early reformers, the Catharists, and
how the early Christians persecuted each other; Melbourne quoted

Vigilantius’s letter to Jerome, and then asked Allen about the 11th of Henry
IV., an Act passed by the Commons against the Church, and referred to the
dialogue between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely at
the beginning of Shakespeare’s ‘Henry V.,’ which Lord Holland sent for and
read, Melbourne knowing it all by heart and prompting all the time. Lingard
says of this statute that the Commons proposed to the King to commit an
act of spoliation on the clergy, but that the King sharply rebuked them and
desired to hear no more of the matter. About etymologies Melbourne quoted
Tooke’s ‘Diversions of Purley,’ which he seemed to have at his fingers’
ends. I forget what other topics were discussed, but after Lady Holland and
Melbourne and Allen went to bed, Lord Holland, Bobus, and I sat down,
and Lord Holland told us many anecdotes about the great orators of his
early days. Fox used to say Grey was the most prudent man he knew, and
this perhaps owing to his having got into a scrape early in his Parliamentary
life, by attacking Pitt, who gave him a severe castigation; it was about his
letter to the Prince being sent by a servant during the Regency discussions.
Fox thought his own speech in 1804 on going to war with France the best
he ever made. Lord Holland believed that Pitt (the younger) was not so
eloquent as Chatham. Grattan said, ‘He takes longer flights, does not soar
so high.’ No power was ever equal to Chatham’s over a public assembly,
much greater in the Commons than it was afterwards in the Lords. When Sir
Thomas Robinson had been boring the House on some commercial
question, and introduced the word ‘sugar’ so often that there was at last a
laugh as often as he did so, Chatham, then Mr. Pitt, who had put him up,
grew very angry, and at last his wrath boiled over. When Robinson sat down
Pitt rose, and with a tone and manner of the utmost indignation began, ‘Mr.
Speaker, sir—sugar—I say sugar. Who laughs now?’ and nobody did laugh.
Once in the House of Lords, on a debate during the American war, he said
he hoped the King might be awakened from his slumbers. There was a cry
of ‘Order! order!’ ‘Order, my Lords?’ burst out Chatham, ‘Order? I have not
been disorderly, but I will be disorderly. I repeat again, I hope that his
Majesty may be awakened from his slumbers, but that he may be awakened
by such an awful apparition as that which drew King Priam’s curtains in the
dead of the night and told him of the conflagration of his empire.’ Holland
regretted much that he had never heard Lord North, whom he fancied he
should have liked as much as any of his great opponents; his temper,
shrewdness, humour, and power of argument were very great. Tommy

Townshend, a violent, foolish fellow, who was always talking strong
language, said in some debate, ‘Nothing will satisfy me but to have the
noble Lord’s head; I will have his head.’ Lord North said, ‘The honourable
gentleman says he will have my head. I bear him no malice in return, for
though the honourable gentleman says he will have my head, I can assure
him that I would on no account have his.’

September 13th, 1834
Dined again at Holland House the day before yesterday; Melbourne,
Rice, Lord and Lady Albemarle, and Lord Gosford; rather dull. A
discussion about who was the man in a mask who cut Charles I.’s head off;
Mackintosh believed he knew. What a literary puerility! The man in a mask
was Jack Ketch (whatever his name was); who can doubt it? Where was the
man, Roundhead or Puritan, who as an amateur would have mounted the
scaffold to perform this office? But the executioner, though only
discharging the duties of his office, probably thought in those excited times
that he would not be safe from the vengeance of some enthusiastic cavalier,
and that it was more prudent to conceal the features of the man by whom
the deed was done. Melbourne swore that Henry VIII. was the greatest man
who ever lived, and Allen declared if he had not married Ann Boleyn we
should have continued Catholics to this day, both of which assertions I
ventured to dispute. Allen with all his learning is fond of a paradox, and his
prejudices shine forth LORD BROUGHAM’S ABERRATIONS. in every question in which
Church and religion are implicated. Melbourne loves dashing opinions.

September 18th, 1834
For some weeks past a fierce war has been waged by the ‘Times’
against the Chancellor. It was declared in some menacing articles which
soon swelled into a tone of rebuke, and have since been sharpened into
attacks of a constancy, violence, and vigour quite unexampled; all the
power of writing which the paper can command—argument, abuse, and
ridicule—have been heaped day after day upon him, and when it took a
little breathing time it filled up the interval by quotations from other papers,

which have been abundantly supplied both by the London and the country
press. I do not yet know what are the secret causes which have stirred the
wrath of the ‘Times.’ The ‘Examiner’ has once a week thrown into the
general contribution of rancour an article perhaps wittier and more pungent
than any which have appeared in the ‘Times,’ but between them they have
flagellated him till he is raw, and it is very clear that he feels it quite as
acutely as they can desire. While they have thus been administering
castigation in this unsparing style, he has afforded them the best
opportunities by his extraordinary progress in Scotland, and the astonishing
speeches which he made at Aberdeen and Dundee, making more
mountebank exhibitions than he did in the House of Lords, and exciting the
unquenchable laughter of his enemies and the continual terror of his friends.
Lord Holland told me that he was trembling for the account of the
Edinburgh dinner. That great affair appears, however (by the first half of the
proceedings), to have gone off very well. Lord Grey in his speech confined
himself to general topics, and he and Brougham steered extremely clear of
one another, but Brougham made some allusions which Durham took to
himself, and replied to with considerable asperity of tone, avoiding,
however, any personalities and anything like a direct collision. Everybody
asks, How long will Brougham be permitted to go on playing these ape’s
tricks and scattering his flummery and his lies? and then they say, But you
can’t get rid of him, and the Government (dangerous as he is to them) could
not get on without him. There would probably be no difficulty; experience
has demonstrated to me the extreme fallacy of the notion that anybody
under any circumstances is indispensable. Althorp appeared the most
indispensable man the other day, but that was only because his friends and
the fools in the House of Commons kept bawling out that he was so till they
persuaded him, themselves, and everybody else that it really was the case.
Who would have dared to say that this Government could have gone on
without either Stanley in one House or Lord Grey in the other? But anybody
would have been scouted as mad who had argued that it would go on just as
well when deprived of both of them. The Chancellor’s amazing talents—his
eloquence, sarcasm, and varied powers—can never fail to produce
considerable effect; but in the House of Lords the field is narrow for the
display of these qualities, the audience is cold and unfriendly, and he has
excited such a general feeling of personal animosity against himself, and
has done such irreparable injury to his character—having convinced all the

world that he is desperately ambitious, false, capricious, intriguing, and
governed by no principle, and under the influence of no sentiment of
honour—that his influence is exceedingly diminished. Those who are
charitably disposed express their humane conviction that he is mad, and it
probably is not very remote from the truth.[6]
[6] [It is with pain and reluctance that I print these remarks on Lord
Brougham, and several passages in the preceding pages of these Memoirs which
are equally severe, and in some respects, I think, exaggerated. But I certainly do
not feel myself justified in withholding them. They were all revised and
corrected by the author himself with great care; and nothing but a true and full
account of the sentiments which Lord Brougham’s conduct had excited amongst
his colleagues and contemporaries at that time can account for the catastrophe
which awaited him, and which excluded him for the rest of his life from official
life and employment.]

Henry Taylor brought me a parcel of letters to frank to Southey the
other day; they are from Newton, Cowper’s nephew (I think to W.
Thornton), and they are to supply Southey with materials for Cowper’s
Life, which he is writing. There is one curious fact revealed in these letters,
which CANNING AND LORD HOLLAND. accounts for much of Cowper’s morbid state
of mind and fits of depression, as well as for the circumstance of his
running away from his place in the House of Lords. It relates to some defect
in his physical conformation; some body found out his secret, and probably
threatened its exposure.

September 19th, 1834
Yesterday at Holland House; nobody there but Melbourne. We were
talking of Reform, and Lord Holland said, ‘I don’t know if we were right
about Reform, but this I know, that if we were to propose it at all, we were
right in going the lengths we did, and this was Canning’s opinion.’
Melbourne said, ‘Yes, I know it was, and that was mine, and that was the
reason why I was against Reform.’ Holland then resumed that he had
formerly been one of Canning’s most intimate friends at college; that at that
time—the beginning of the French Revolution—when a general excitement
prevailed, Canning was a great Jacobin, much more so than he was himself;
that Canning had always hated the aristocracy (a hatred which they
certainly returned with interest); that in after life he had been separated

from Canning, and they had seen but little of each other. Just before he was
going to India, however, Holland called on him, and Canning dined at
Holland House. On one of these occasions they had a conversation upon the
subject of Reform, when Canning said that he saw it was inevitable, and he
was not sorry to be away while the measure was accomplished, but that if
he had been here while it was mooted, he could have let those gentlemen
(the Whig aristocracy) know that they should gain nothing by it. After
dinner we had much talk about religion, when Allen got into a fury; he
thundered out his invectives against the charlatanerie of the Apostles and
Fathers and the brutal ignorance of the early Christian converts, when
Holland said, laughing, ‘Well, but you need not abuse them so violently.’
They were in high delight at Holland House at the way the Edinburgh
dinner went off. It was a very ludicrous incident that the Scotchmen could
not be kept from falling to before Lord Grey and the grandees arrived, and
when they did come most of the dinner was already eaten up. The
Chancellor is said to have made an admirable speech at the meeting of
savans, full of dignity, propriety, and eloquence, and the savans spoke one
more absurdly than another.

September 23rd, 1834
On Saturday at Stoke; came up yesterday with Melbourne. We had a
great deal of talk. As soon as we got into the carriage he asked me if I
thought it was true that Talleyrand had taken such offence at Palmerston
that he would not return here on that account, and if I knew what it was that
had affronted him, whether any deficiency in diplomatic punctilio or
general offensiveness of manner. I told him I had no doubt it was true, and
that the complaints against Palmerston were so general that there must be
some cause for them, and though Madame de Lieven might be prejudiced
against him, all the foreign Ambassadors could not be so. He said it was
very extraordinary if it was so, tried to argue that it might not be the case,
and put it in all sorts of different ways; he said that Palmerston exhibited no
signs of temper or arrogance with his colleagues, but quite the reverse; he
owned, however, he was very obstinate. We then talked over the Stratford
Canning business; he admitted that it was unfortunate and might lead to
serious consequences, both as to our relations with the Emperor and to the

question of diplomatic expenses here. I expressed my astonishment that
Palmerston’s obstinacy should have been permitted to have its own way in
the matter, and I should guess, from his own strong opinion on the subject,
that an Ambassador would be sent before long. He told me—what I did not
know before—that the King of Prussia had desired to have Lord
Clanwilliam recalled from Berlin.
He then talked of Brougham, and I found that he knows him
thoroughly, and is more on his guard than I thought he was with regard to
him. I told him of the change in Sefton’s feelings towards him on Lord
Grey’s account, and also of Brougham’s strange want of discrimination and
his imprudence in congratulating himself to Sefton on the recent changes,
and of his expectations of profiting by Melbourne’s advancement to power.
I touched lightly on the latter part, PALMERSTON AND BROUGHAM. because it is
never prudent to dwell upon topics which are injurious to a person’s vanity,
and a word dropped upon so tender a part produces as much effect as the
strongest argument. He seemed not a little struck by it, and when I said that
I thought there was a taint of insanity in the Chancellor, he said that he
thought a great change in him was manifest in the course of the last year,
and admitted that he did not think him of sound mind certainly. This he
rather implied than expressed, however. He talked of his conduct in
Parliament, and observed upon the strange forbearance of the Tories
towards him; he thought he had never given stronger evidence of talent than
in some of his speeches during the last session. I asked him if the King and
Brougham were well together. He shook his head: ‘not at all, and the King
can’t bear these exhibitions in Scotland.’ He said the King liked Palmerston,
Auckland, Spring Rice, and Mulgrave; had no fancy for any of the rest. (I
suspect he likes him (Melbourne), because he appears to talk openly to him,
and to express his feelings about the others, and I dare say Melbourne puts
him at his ease.) He can’t bear John Russell, respects Althorp (and
particularly Lord Spencer), but hates Althorp’s politics; treats Lord Holland
with the familiarity of a connexion,[7] but doesn’t like his politics either; he
is tenacious about having everything laid before him, often gives his
opinion, but is easily satisfied; liked Lord Grey, but was never quite at his
ease with him (this accounts for his taking Lord Grey’s resignation as
quietly as he did); has a very John-Bullish aversion to the French, and the

junction of the English and French fleets two years ago was a bitter pill for
him to swallow.
[7] [Colonel Fox, Lord Holland’s eldest son, having married Lady Mary, the
King’s eldest daughter, both however born out of wedlock.]

We afterwards talked of Canning and the Duke of Wellington, and the
breaking up of the Tory Government. I told him that I believed the Duke
and the Tories were aware of Canning’s communications with Brougham.
Brougham wrote to Canning and made him an unqualified offer of support.
When the King asked Canning how he was to obtain support enough to
carry on the Government, he pulled this letter out of his pocket, gave it to
him, and said, ‘Sir, your father broke the domination of the Whigs; I hope
your Majesty will not endure that of the Tories.’ ‘No,’ said the King; ‘I’ll be
damned if I do;’ and he made him Minister. This Canning told Melbourne
himself.

September 25th, 1834
Dined yesterday at Holland House; only Melbourne and Pahlen, and in
the evening Senior came. He is a very able man—a conveyancer, great
political economist, and author of various works on that subject. He was
employed by Government to draw up the Poor Law Bill, and might have
been one of the Poor Law Commissioners if he would have accepted the
office; his profits in his profession are too great to be given up for this
occupation. By a discussion which arose about Bickersteth’s merits it was
clear that there is a question of his being Solicitor-General. Melbourne said
‘he was a Benthamite, and they were all fools.’ (He said a doctrinaire was a
fool, but an honest man.) I said ‘the Austins were not fools.’ ‘Austin? Oh, a
damned fool. Did you ever read his book on “Jurisprudence”?’ I said I had
read a great part of it, and that it did not appear to be the work of a fool. He
said he had read it all, and that it was the dullest book he ever read, and full
of truisms elaborately set forth. Melbourne is very fond of being slashing
and paradoxical. It is astonishing how much he reads even now that he is
Prime Minister. He is greatly addicted to theology, and loves conversing on
the subject of religion. ——, who wanted him to marry her (which he won’t
do, though he likes to talk to her), is the depositary of his thoughts and

notions on these subjects, and the other day she told me he sent her a book
(I forget what) on the Revelation stuffed with marginal notes of his own. It
was not long ago that he studied Lardner’s book on the ‘Credibility of the
Christian Religion,’ and compared it with the Bible as he went along. She
fancies that all this reading and reflection have turned him into the right
way. I can see no symptom of it at Holland House.
After dinner we talked of languages, and Lord Holland REFLECTIONS ON
THE TURF. insisted that Spanish was the finest of all and the best adapted to
eloquence. They said that George Villiers wrote word that nothing could be
better than the speaking in the Cortes—great readiness and acuteness in
reply—and that a more dexterous and skilful debater than Martinez de la
Rosa could not be found in any assembly. ‘That speaking so well is the
worst thing about them,’ said Melbourne. ‘Ah, that is one of your
paradoxes,’ Lord Holland replied.
Allen talked to me about the Harley papers, which were left in a box
not to be opened for sixty years; the box was only opened a few years ago
at my cousin Titchfield’s (the first) desire, and the papers submitted to
Mackintosh, with permission to publish them in his ‘History of England.’
Mackintosh’s death put an end to this, and Allen wants me to ask my uncle
the Duke of Portland to put them in my hands and let me publish them. I
never did so. Macaulay had all Mackintosh’s papers, and amongst them his
notes from these MSS.

London, November 13th, 1834
For two months nearly that I have been in this country I have not
written a line, having had nothing worth recording to put down. It is not
worth my while to write, nor anybody else’s to read (should anybody ever
read these memoranda), the details of racing and all that thereunto
appertains, and though several disagreeable occurrences have ruffled the
stream of my life, I have no pleasure in recording these; for if their
consequences pass away, and I can forget them, it is better not at any future
time to awaken ‘the scorpion sting of griefs subdued.’ Of public events I
have known nothing but what everybody else knows, and it would have
been mere waste of time to copy from the newspapers accounts of the

conflagration of the Houses of Parliament or the Durham dinner at
Glasgow. My campaign on the turf has been a successful one. Still all this
success has not prevented frequent disgusts, and I derive anything but
unmixed pleasure from this pursuit even when I win by it. Besides the
continual disappointments and difficulties incident to it, which harass the
mind, the life it compels me to lead, the intimacies arising out of it, the
associates and the war against villany and trickery, being haunted by
continual suspicions, discovering the trust-unworthiness of one’s most
intimate friends, the necessity of insincerity and concealment sometimes
where one feels that one ought and would desire to be most open; then the
degrading nature of the occupation, mixing with the lowest of mankind, and
absorbed in the business for the sole purpose of getting money, the
consciousness of a sort of degradation of intellect, the conviction of the
deteriorating effects upon both the feelings and the understanding which are
produced, the sort of dram-drinking excitement of it—all these things and
these thoughts torment me, and often turn my pleasure to pain. On arriving
in town I went to Crockford’s, where I found all the usual set of people, and
soon after Sefton came in. Lord Spencer’s death had taken place the day
before; he knew nothing of the probable arrangements, but he told me that
he supposed Althorp would go to the Admiralty and Auckland to India. But
what he was fullest of was that Mrs. Lane Fox’s house was become the
great rendezvous of a considerable part of the Cabinet. The Chancellor,
Melbourne, Duncannon, and Mulgrave are there every day and all day; they
all dine with her, or meet her (the only woman) at each other’s houses, as
often as they can. It certainly is a droll connexion. The squabbles between
Brougham and Durham seem to have resolved themselves into a mere
personal coldness, and there is no question now of any hostilities between
them. I never thought there would be, though some people apparently did;
but they both would much rather rail than fight.

November 14th, 1834
Went down to the Council Office yesterday, and found them in the
middle of Lord Westmeath’s case—Lord Lansdowne, the Vice-Chancellor,
Parke, Erskine, and Vaughan. Lushington was for Lady Westmeath, and
Follett (with a civilian) for him. After the argument there was a discussion,

and well did Westmeath do, for they reduced the alimony from 700 ℓ . to
315 ℓ . a year, and the arrears in the same proportion. Thus Westmeath
succeeded in great measure in his appeal, which he would not have done
RECENT LAW APPOINTMENTS. if the Chancellor had contrived to lug on the case as
he wished; for Erskine was all for giving her more, the others did not seem
averse, and but for Parke, who hit off the right principle, as well as what
best accorded with the justice of the case, she would certainly have got a
much larger award.
The Vice-Chancellor afterwards told me the history of the recent legal
appointments. There never was any difference of opinion between
Brougham and Melbourne on the subject of either. Campbell accepted the
Attorney-Generalship on the express condition that he should not expect to
succeed as a matter of right to any vacancy in the Courts, but on Leach’s
death he did instantly urge his claims. Brougham wrote to Melbourne, and
speedily followed his letter to London, and they both agreed not to listen to
this claim, and to promote Pepys. I don’t know how they disposed of
Horne’s claim. Bickersteth[8] refused to be Solicitor-General on account of
his health, and not choosing to face the House of Commons and its work.
Shadwell told me that he wrote to Brougham and suggested Rolfe when the
vacancy occurred, that he had not been in great practice, but was a good
lawyer and excellent speaker, and that the Chancellor and Melbourne had
likewise concurred in this appointment. Nothing is settled about the new
arrangements rendered necessary by Lord Spencer’s death, but Melbourne
went to Brighton yesterday. Rice has worked hard to master the Colonial
business, and probably will not like to be translated to the Exchequer;
besides, it is supposed that his seat at Cambridge would be in great peril.
People talk of their not going on; how can any others go on better?
[8] [Mr. Bickersteth refused to be Solicitor-General because the offer was
made to him by the Lord Chancellor, and not by the Prime Minister. At that time
he was personally unacquainted with Lord Melbourne, but he consented to call
on him at Lord Melbourne’s request, and the offer was repeated, but not
accepted. The real reason of his refusal was his profound distrust of Lord
Brougham, which amounted to aversion, and he thought it unworthy of himself
to accept the office of a law officer of the Crown under a Chancellor with whom
he could not conscientiously act. I have read a MS. narrative of the whole
transaction by Lord Langdale himself, in which these sentiments are very
strongly expressed.]

Lord Lansdowne has just returned from Paris, where, he told me, he
had frequent conversations with the King. The new Ministry is a wretched
patched-up affair; but the Government of France is centred in the King, and
it is his great power and influence in the Chambers, and not the ability of
his Ministers (be they who they may), that keeps the thing going. This
influence appears to be immense, and without enjoying any popularity,
there is an universal opinion that Louis Philippe is indispensable to France.
He told Lord Lansdowne that he had always been against the appointment
of Marshal Gérard as President of the Council, although he had a high
opinion of him, but that he was aware he had not tact and judgment
sufficient for that post, and he had told his Ministers that he would consent
to the appointment if they insisted on it, but that he warned them that it
would break up the Government. Whatever may be the instability of this or
any other Administration, it is said that nothing can be more firm and secure
than the King’s tenure of his crown. He appears, in fact, to be the very man
that France requires, and as he is in the vigour of life and has a reasonable
prospect of a long reign, he will probably consolidate the interest of his
family and extinguish whatever lingering chance there might be of the
restoration of the old effete dynasty.

CHAPTER XXV.
Fall of Lord Melbourne’s Government — History and Causes of
this Event — An Intrigue — Effect of the Coup at Holland
House — The Change of Government — The two Camps —
The King’s Address to the New Ministers — The Duke’s
Account of the Transaction — And Lord Lyndhurst’s —
Difficult Position of the Tories — Their Policy — The Duke in
all the Offices — Negotiation with Mr. Barnes — Power of the
‘Times’ — Another Address of the King — Brougham offers to
be Lord Chief Baron — Mr. Barnes dines with Lord Lyndhurst
— Whig View of the Recent Change — Liberal Views of the
Tory Ministers — The King resolved to support them —
Another Account of the Interview between the King and Lord
Melbourne — Lord Stanley’s Position — Sydney Smith’s
Preaching at St. Paul’s — Lord Duncannon and Lord Melbourne
— Relations of the four Seceders to Peel — Young Disraeli —
Lord Melbourne’s Speeches at Derby — Lord John Russell’s
Speech at Totness — The Duke of Wellington’s Inconsistencies
and Conduct.

November 16th, 1834
Yesterday morning the town was electrified by the news that
Melbourne’s Government was at an end. Nobody had the slightest suspicion
of such an impending catastrophe; the Ministers themselves reposed in
perfect security. I never saw astonishment so great on every side; nobody
pretended to have prophesied or expected such an event. Thus it befell:—
On Thursday Melbourne went to Brighton to make the arrangements
necessary on Lord Spencer’s death. He had previously received a letter
from the King, which contained nothing indicative of the fate that awaited

him. He had his audience on Thursday afternoon, and offered his Majesty
the choice of Spring Rice, Lord John Russell, or Abercromby to lead the
House of Commons and fill the vacant office. The King made some
objections, and said he must take time to consider it. Nothing more passed
that night, and the next day, when Melbourne saw the King, his Majesty
placed in his hands a letter containing his determination. It was couched in
terms personally complimentary to Melbourne, but he said that, having lost
the services of Lord Althorp as leader of the House of Commons, he could
feel no confidence in the stability of his Government when led by any other
member of it; that they were already in a minority in the House of Peers,
and he had every reason to believe the removal of Lord Althorp would
speedily put them in the same situation in the other House; that under such
circumstances he felt other arrangements to be necessary, and that it was his
intention to send for the Duke of Wellington. Nothing could be more
peremptory and decisive, and not a loophole was left for explanation or
arrangements, or endeavour to patch the thing up. The King wrote to the
Duke, and, what is rather droll, the letter was despatched by Melbourne’s
carriage, which returned to town. It is very evident that the King has long
determined to seize the first plausible pretext he could find for getting rid of
these people, whom he dislikes and fears, and that he thinks (justly or not
remains to be proved) the translation of Althorp affords him a good
opportunity, and such a one perhaps as may not speedily occur again. It is
long since a Government has been so summarily dismissed—regularly
kicked out, in the simplest sense of that phrase. Melbourne’s colleagues
expected his return without a shadow of apprehension, or doubt. He got
back late, and wrote to none of them. The Chancellor, who had dined at
Holland House, called on him and heard the news; the others (except
Duncannon, who went to him, and I believe Palmerston) remained in happy
ignorance till yesterday morning, when they were saluted at their rising
with the astounding intelligence. All the Ministers (except Brougham) read
the account of their dismissal in the ‘Times’ the next morning, and this was
the first they heard of it. Melbourne resolved to say nothing that night, but
summoned an early Cabinet, when he meant to impart it. Brougham called
on him on his way from Holland House. Melbourne told him, but made him
promise not to say a word of it to anybody. He promised, and the moment
he quitted the A STRANGE INTRIGUE. house sent to the ‘Times’ office and told

them what had occurred, with the well-known addition that ‘the Queen had
done it all.’
They attribute their fall to the influence of the Queen, and fancy that it
is the result of a preconcerted scheme and intrigue with the Tories, neither
of which do I believe to be true. With regard to the latter notion, the absence
of Sir Robert Peel, who is travelling in Italy, is a conclusive proof of its
falseness. He never would have been absent if he had foreseen the remotest
possibility of a crisis, and the death of Lord Spencer has been imminent and
expected for some time past. I am convinced that it is the execution of a
project which the King has long nourished of delivering himself from the
Whigs whenever he could. His original dislike has been exasperated to a
great pitch by the mountebank exhibitions of Brougham, and he is so
alarmed and disgusted at the Radical propensities which the Durham dinner
has manifested, that he is resolved to try whether the Government cannot be
conducted upon principles which are called Conservative, but which shall
really be bonâ fide opposed to the ultra doctrines and wild schemes which
he knows are not distasteful to at least one-half of his late Cabinet.
His resentment against these people has been considerably increased
by the discovery (which he believes he has made) of his having been
grossly deceived at the period of Lord Grey’s retirement and the formation
of Melbourne’s Administration. The circumstances of this part of the
business I know only imperfectly, so much so as to leave a good deal that
requires explanation in order to make it intelligible; but I was told on good
authority yesterday that at that time Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of
Wellington were quite prepared to undertake the formation of a Government
if it had been proposed to them, and that he had every reason to believe they
had been betrayed by ‘that scoundrel H——,’ who had been employed by
some of the other party to find out what their intentions and dispositions
were upon that point; that H—— had gone to them and asked them the
question, and having at that time entire confidence in him, they had told
him if it was offered to them they certainly would undertake it; that he had
never told them or given them any reason to believe that he was
commissioned to find out their resolution, and they think he returned to his
employer and told him that they must take care how such an offer was made
to the Tories, as they would certainly accept it if it was offered. Melbourne
was no party to this transaction, but the consequence of it was that the King

was given to understand that it would be useless to propose to them to form
a Government, for they were not prepared to do so, and he was advised to
make the proposal of a coalition, which was made, and which they of
course rejected. The King, it appears, subsequently discovered what their
disposition had been at the time, and that he had been misled and deceived,
and this made him very indignant.
I should like to know this story more in detail, for it would be curious
to learn who were the agents in the intrigue, and, above all, what could
induce H—— to sacrifice the interests of the Duke of Wellington (with
whom he had great influence and to whom he had great obligations) and of
the party from which alone he could expect any solid advantages to those of
the Whigs, from whom he could derive no benefit sufficient to compensate
him for the danger as well as treachery of the transaction. I never liked this
fellow, and always thought him a low blackguard, and, however shrewd and
active, a bad confidant and ‘fidus Achates’ for the Duke to have taken up;
but the folly and shortsightedness of this proceeding seem so obvious (to
say nothing of its villany) that I cannot without strong proofs yield my
belief to the story, though Peel is not a man to harbour such strong
suspicions on slight grounds.
This morning Lord Lansdowne wrote me word that the Duke had
accepted, but it is probable that nothing can be done till Peel returns from
Italy. He will accept no post but that of Prime Minister, though the King
would prefer to put the Duke there if he would take it.

November 17th, 1834
EFFECT OF THE COUP AT HOLLAND HOUSE. It is only bit by bit that one ascertains
the truth in affairs like these. It is true that the King imparted his resolution
to Melbourne in a letter, but not true in the sense in which that fact is
intended to be taken. I went to Holland House yesterday, but my Lord and
my Lady were gone to town. I met the heavy chariot slowly moving back
through Kensington, and stopped to talk to them. They seemed in tolerably
good spirits, all things considered; like the rest, they had not a suspicion of
what was going to happen. Melbourne was to have dined there on Friday,
but did not arrive. At eleven o’clock everybody went away, without any

tidings having come of Melbourne; the next morning Lord Holland read in
the ‘Times’ that the Government was at an end. Allen swore that it must be
a hoax, and it was only upon receiving a summons to the Cabinet at twelve
instead of two that Holland began to think there was something in it. He
told me that the King had two long conversations with Melbourne, in which
he explained his opinions, motives, and intentions, and finally gave him the
letter, that he might show it to his colleagues. It would now appear that no
definite arrangements were proposed to him at all; nothing, in fact, could be
settled till it was ascertained what Althorp would do—whether he would
continue in office, and what office he would take—but they intended that
Lord John Russell should be the leader in the House of Commons, or what
they call ‘try it.’ This must have been peculiarly distasteful to the King, who
dislikes Lord John, and thinks him a dangerous little Radical, and
Melbourne is well aware of this antipathy. On the Friday night Melbourne,
with a party of his colleagues—Mulgrave, Ben Stanley, Poulett Thompson,
and one or two more—were at the play just opposite to me; the piece was
the ‘Regent,’ and it was full of jokes about dismissing Ministers and other
things very applicable, at which Melbourne at least (who does not care a
button about office, whatever he may do about power) was heartily amused.
To-day the King came to town to receive the resignations, for he is resolved
to finish off the whole affair at once and make maison nette; they have been
ordered therefore to attend at St. James’s and give up their seals.
Five o’clock.—Just returned from St. James’s. In the outer room I
found assembled the Duke of Wellington, Lyndhurst, Rosslyn, Goulburn,
Hardinge, the Speaker, Jersey, Maryborough, Cowley, whom the Duke had
collected in order to form a Privy Council; in the Throne Room the ex-
Cabinet congregated, and it was amusing to watch them as they passed
through the camp of their enemies, and to see their different greetings and
bows; all interchanged some slight civility except Brougham, who stalked
through looking as black as thunder and took no notice of anybody. The
first question that arose was, What was to be done about the prorogation?
The Duke thought they might as well finish that business to-day, and I went
on an embassy into the other room to propose it; but they declined to have
anything to say to it and evinced great anxiety to take no part in any
proceedings of this day. Accordingly Lord Lansdowne explained to the
King that the presence of a Lord President was not necessary, and that there

was a sufficiency of Tory Lords to form a Council, so his Majesty
consented to the late Ministers going away. As I thought the company of
those who were coming in would be more cheerful and agreeable than that
of those who were going out, I passed my time in the outer room, and had a
good deal of conversation with the Duke and Lyndhurst, from whom I
gathered everything that I did not know before. After the Whigs had made
their exit we went into the Throne Room, and the King sent for Lyndhurst,
who only stayed with him a few minutes, and then the Duke and all the
Privy Councillors were summoned. After greeting them all, and desiring
them to sit down, he began a speech nearly as follows:—‘Having thought
proper to make a change in my Government, at the present moment I have
directed a new commission to be issued for executing the office of Lord
High Treasurer, at the head of which I have placed the Duke of Wellington,
and his Grace has kissed hands accordingly upon that appointment. As by
the Constitution THE TORIES IN OFFICE. of this country the King can do no wrong,
but those persons are responsible for his acts in whom he places his
confidence—as I do in the Lords now present—it is necessary to place the
seals of the Secretary of State for the Home Department in those hands in
which I can best confide, and I have therefore thought proper to confer that
office likewise on his Grace, who will be sworn in accordingly.’ Here the
Duke came round, and, after much fumbling for his spectacles, took the
oath of Secretary of State. The King then resumed, ‘It is likewise necessary
for me to dispose of the seals of the other two Secretaries of State, and I
therefore place them likewise for the present in the same hands, as he is
already First Lord of the Treasury and Secretary of State for the Home
Office.’ Then, turning to me, he asked if there was any business, and being
told there was none, desired me to retire. When I was gone he began
another harangue, to the effect that he had endeavoured, since he had been
upon the throne, to do for the best, and that he could not fill up any of the
other offices at present.
Now for what I learned from the Duke and Lyndhurst. The former told
me that he was just going out hunting when the messenger arrived; that the
letter merely said that the King wished to see him, to consult with him as to
the steps he should take with regard to the formation of another
Government. He went off directly, and at once told the King that the best
thing he could do was to send for Sir Robert Peel, and that until he arrived

he would undertake to carry on the Government by a provisional
arrangement, and would do nothing more until Peel’s return. So the matter
accordingly stands, and no other appointment will be made except that the
Great Seal will be transferred to Lyndhurst, without, however (at present),
his becoming Chancellor. He talked a great deal about the state of the late
Government, and what passed between Melbourne and the King, but I heard
this still more in detail from Lyndhurst afterwards.
I asked the Duke if he had seen the ‘Times’ this morning. He said
‘No,’ and I told him there appeared in it a considerable disposition to
support the new Government, and I thought it would be very advisable to
obtain that support if it could be done. He said he was aware that he had
formerly too much neglected the press, but he did not think the ‘Times’
could be influenced. I urged him to avail himself of any opportunity to try,
and he seemed very well disposed to do so. Lyndhurst, whom I afterwards
talked to for a long time, went into the whole business. He said that it was
very desirable that the public should know the truth of what had taken place
between the King and Melbourne, both in conversation and by letter,
because it would be seen that the former was in no way to blame. [This
case, such as Lyndhurst described it to me, was afterwards put
hypothetically in the ‘Times,’ to which it was furnished probably by
Scarlett, but the Whigs emphatically declare that it is not correct, and that it
will be found, when Melbourne states the truth (as he will require the
King’s permission to do), that his Majesty had no case at all. In the midst of
these conflicting assertions time must show.—November 26th.] Melbourne
told him that, as he had only undertaken to carry on the Government in
consideration of having the assistance of Althorp in the House of
Commons, his removal made it necessary to adopt a new organisation
altogether, that some considerable concessions to the principle of Reform
were judged to be necessary, and the appointment of a successor to Althorp,
who should carry them into effect; that he was of opinion that without these
the Government could not go on, and at the same time it was necessary to
state that there were members of the Cabinet who did not coincide with
these views, and who would retire when Parliament met if they were
adopted. These were Lord Lansdowne and Spring Rice; Lord John Russell
was to lead in the House of Commons, but the loss of Rice would be a
severe blow to them. The concessions related principally to Church reform.

The disunion of the Cabinet being thus exhibited, it was clear the
Government could not go on without some material alteration in its
composition. The King urged this and asked Melbourne from what quarter
the necessary accession of strength was to be procured, and whether he
could hope for it from the POLICY OF LORD LYNDHURST. Conservative interest. He
owned that nothing was to be expected from that quarter. It remained, then,
that it was only from the more extreme party that their ranks could be
recruited. To this the King would not consent, and he therefore imparted to
him his resolution of placing the Government in other hands.[1]
[1] [This account of the transaction is confirmed in almost every particular
by the statement drawn up by King William himself (or by his directions) for the
information of Sir Robert Peel, and first published in Baron Stockmar’s
‘Memoirs’ in 1872.]

Lyndhurst then went off upon the difficulties of their position. I told
him that the Duke had said to me, ‘If the King had been a very clever man,
he would probably have played a more adroit game, by letting them go on
till Parliament met, and then taking the opportunity which would soon
present itself of breaking them up;’ that I disagreed with the Duke, and
thought it infinitely more convenient that this change should take place
while Parliament was not sitting, to which Lyndhurst fully agreed. He said
that they must dissolve as soon as Peel came home, that they had no
alternative; that it would not do to try this Parliament, to run the chance of a
failure and dissolve after having experienced it, that this would be too great
a risk. He said that they had several seats quite safe in consequence of their
superior management about the registration, such as Leeds and Ripon,
where they were sure of both members. He then talked of the tactics to be
used, and said they must direct their hostility against the Whigs rather than
the Radicals, and make it their principal object to diminish the number of
the former. I said I thought this a very perilous game to play, and that if it
was avowed and acted upon, it would infallibly produce a reunion between
the Whigs and Radicals, who would coalesce to crush their Government;
that the Radicals were now very angry with the Whigs, who they thought
had deserted the principles they professed, and it should rather be their care
to keep Whigs and Radicals asunder than provoke a fresh alliance between
them. He said the Whigs were certain to join the Radicals. I asked him if he
had seen the ‘Times,’ said what had passed between the Duke and me, and
told him he would do well to endeavour to obtain its support. He said he

desired nothing so much, but in his situation he did not like personally to
interfere, nor to place himself in their power. I told him I had some
acquaintance with Barnes, the editor of the paper, and would find out what
he was disposed to do, and would let him know, which he entreated I
would. The Duke had said, laughing, ‘I hear they call me a Reformer.’ I
said, ‘They think you will make as good a Reformer as the present men, if,
as Brougham said in Scotland, they would have done less this session than
they did the last.’ I asked Lyndhurst if he had seen or heard of the Duke’s
letter to the Oxford people, and told him that it was very desirable that
credit should be given them for intending to carry on their government upon
principles as liberal as that letter evinced, that I hoped there would be no
foolish declarations fulminated against Reform, and that they would all be
convinced now that matters had been brought to such a state (no matter how
and by whom) that the old principle of hostility to all reforms must be
abandoned. He said that Peel would, he trusted, be flexible, that if such
declarations were made, and such principles announced, they must be upset,
but the Tories would be difficult to manage, and discontented if there was
not a sufficient infusion of their party; and, on the other hand, the
agricultural interest had assembled a force under Lord Chandos, a sort of
confederation of several counties, and that Chandos had told him that he
and the representatives of their counties would not support any Ministry
that would not pledge itself to repeal the malt tax; that they would agree to
re-enact the beer tax, but the malt tax must cease.
Brougham had written to Lyndhurst saying he should be ready to
resign the Great Seal in a few days, and only wished first to give some
judgments, that he was rejoiced at retiring from office and at the prospect of
being able to do what was his great delight—devote himself to State affairs
without being trammelled and having to fear the imputation of imprudence
and indiscretion. ‘He will be,’ Lyndhurst said, ‘the LYNDHURST ON BROUGHAM.
most troublesome fellow that ever existed, and do all the mischief he can.’ I
said, ‘What can he do? he was emasculated when he left the House of
Commons.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘he knows that, but he will come down night
after night and produce plans of Reform upon any subject; he will make
speeches two or three hours long to very thin Houses, which will be printed
in all the newspapers or published by himself and circulated—in fact, a
series of pamphlets.’ I said that he had damaged himself so much that I did

not think he could do a great deal of harm, with all his speeches and
pamphlets. He said he had damaged himself in more ways than one. He
then went off upon his admirable social qualities and his generous conduct
to his family, both of which may most justly be praised, and said what a
melancholy thing it was to see a man with such fine talents mar their effect
by his enormous errors in judgment.
Lord Holland, who came out last of all his colleagues, upon his
crutches, stopped in great good-humour and said to the Duke, ‘you can’t get
me out, I can tell you, without going into Lancashire, for my seal is there.’
The Duke told me that he did not mean to make the slightest alteration
in the transaction of the current business in the different offices, which
would go on as usual through the under-secretaries, whom he should
request to continue at their posts for the purpose. As, however, a disposition
was evinced on the part of the late Cabinet not to afford him any facilities,
he began to think that this might not impossibly extend to the subordinates,
and he said that at all events he would have two people ready to put into the
Treasury to transact the business there. I told him if he was in any difficulty
he might make any use he pleased of me. There can hardly be any difficulty,
however, when there are permanent under-secretaries in all the offices.
Thus ended this eventful day; just four years ago I witnessed the
reverse of the picture. I think the Whigs upon this occasion were much
more angry and dejected than the Tories were upon that. They had perhaps
some reason, for their case is one of rare occurrence—unceremoniously
kicked out, not resignations following ineffectual negotiations or baffled
attempts at arrangement, but in the plenitude of their fancied strength, and
utterly unconscious of danger, they were discarded in the most positive,
summary, and peremptory manner. Great, therefore, is their indignation,
mortification, and chagrin, and bitter will no doubt be their opposition.
They think that the new Government have no chance of getting a House of
Commons that will support them, and certainly if they do not, and if the
Tories are compelled after a fruitless struggle to resign, miserable will be
the condition of the King and the House of Lords, and not very enviable
that of any Government that may succeed them.

To speculate upon probabilities is impossible; the new Government at
present consists of the Duke, Lyndhurst, and Peel, and till it shall be seen of
what materials the complete structure is composed, and what principles they
enunciate, it is idle to discuss the matter. Lyndhurst and I agreed cordially
that all the evils of the last four years—the breaking up of their
Government, and the Reform Bill that was the consequence of that
catastrophe—were attributable to the High Tories. Whatever may be their
wishes now, they can hardly play the same game over again; they must
support this Government, even though it shall not act upon the highflying
principles which they so fondly and obstinately cherish. Their salvation and
that of all the institutions to which they cling require that they should
support the Duke and Peel in carrying on the government upon those
principles on which, from the circumstances of the times and the events
which have occurred, an Administration must act in order to have a shadow
of a chance of being tolerated by the House of Commons and the country.
Lyndhurst is sensible of this; I wish Peel may be so likewise. If they both
are I have little fear for the Duke.

November 19th, 1834
Laid up these two days with the gout in my knee, so could not go out
to hear what is going on. The Duke, I find, after the Council on Monday
(losing no time), repaired to the Home Office and ordered the Irish DUKE OF
WELLINGTON IN OFFICE. papers to be brought to him, then to the Foreign Office,
where he asked for the last despatches from Spain and Portugal, and so on
to the Colonial Office, where he required information as to the state of their
department. I have no doubt he liked this, to play the part of Richelieu for a
brief period, to exercise all the functions of administration. They complain,
however, and not without reason, of the unceremonious and somewhat
uncourteous mode in which without previous notice he entered into the
vacant offices, taking actual possession, without any of the usual
preliminary civilities to the old occupants. Duncannon, who had been in the
Home Office up to the time of the Council on Monday, and whose papers
were unremoved, if he had returned after it, would have found the Duke
seated in his still warm chair, issuing directions to Phillips, the under-
secretary, while Macdonald, Duncannon’s private secretary, was still at his

vocation in the adjoining room. Pretty much the same thing he did in the
other three offices. He has fixed his head-quarters at the Home Office, and
occasionally roves over the rest. All this is unavoidable under existing
circumstances, but it is enough to excite merriment, or censure, or
suspicion, according to different tastes and tempers. The King offered to
make Melbourne an earl and to give him the Garter, but he declined, and
begged it might be given to the Duke of Grafton.
In consequence of what passed between Lyndhurst and me concerning
the ‘Times’ (at St. James’s) I made Henry de Ros send for Barnes (who had
already at his suggestion adopted a conciliatory and amicable tone towards
the embryo Government), who came and put on paper the terms on which
he would support the Duke. These were: no mutilation of the Reform Bill,
and the adoption of those measures of reform which had been already
sanctioned by votes of the House of Commons last session with regard to
Church and corporations, and no change in our foreign policy. I have sent
his note to Lyndhurst, and begged him to call here to talk the matter over.
Powell, a Tory solicitor and âme damnée of the Speaker’s, has just
been here; he declares that the Tories will be 420 strong in the new
Parliament, which I mention for the purpose of recording their expectations
and being able to compare them hereafter with the event. They have already
put themselves in motion, despatched messengers to Lord Hertford and
Lowther, and probably if ever these men could be induced to open their
purse strings, and make sacrifices and exertions, they will do it now.
Six o’clock.—Lyndhurst has just been here; he had seen the Duke, who
had already opened a negotiation with Barnes through Scarlett. I offered to
get any statement inserted of the causes of the late break-up, and he will
again see the Duke and consider the propriety of inserting one. He said,
‘Why Barnes is the most powerful man in the country.’ The ‘Standard’ has
sent to offer its support; the Duke said he should be very happy, but they
must understand that the Government was not yet formed.

November 21st, 1834

To-day there was a Council at St. James’s, at which Lyndhurst was
sworn in Chancellor. Brougham took leave of the Bar this morning, and I
hear did it well. The King speechified as usual, and gave them a couple of
harangues; he said it was just four years since he had very unwillingly taken
the Seal from Lord Lyndhurst, and he now had great pleasure in restoring it
to him. He was all King to-day—talked of having ‘commanded the ex-
Ministers to retire;’ ‘desired Lord Brougham to give up the Seal,’ which is
true, for the Duke wrote to him for it, and instead of surrendering it in
person Brougham sent it to Sir Henry Taylor. The King compared this crisis
with that which befell his father in 1784, when he had placed the
government in the hands of the Marquis of Rockingham; he said that the
present was only a provisional arrangement, but that there was this
difference, that the country was now in a state of excitement and disquiet,
which it was free from then, but that he had full reliance on the great
firmness of the Duke (here the Duke bowed); that the Administration which
was then formed had lasted seventeen years (of course he meant that of Pitt,
which succeeded the coalition), and BROUGHAM ASKS FOR THE CHIEF BARONSHIP. he
hoped that this which was about to be formed would last as long, although
at his time of life if it did he could not expect to see the end of it.

November 22nd, 1834
I read Brougham’s speech on quitting the Court of Chancery this
morning, and admirable it is—not a syllable about himself, but with
reference to the appointment of Pepys, brief, dignified, and appropriate. Si
sic omnia, what a man he would be.

November 23rd, 1834
This morning I received a note from Henry de Ros enclosing one from
Barnes, who was evidently much nettled at not having received any specific
answer to his note stating the terms on which he would support the Duke.
Henry was disconcerted also, and entreated me to have an explanation with
Lyndhurst. I accordingly went to the Court of Exchequer, where he was
sitting, and waited till he came out, when I gave him these notes to read. He

took me away with him, and stopped at the Home Office to see the Duke
and talk to him on the subject, for he was evidently a little alarmed, so great
and dangerous a potentate is the wielder of the thunders of the press. After a
long conference he came out and gave me a note the Duke had written,
saying he could not pledge himself nor Sir Robert Peel (who was to be the
Minister) before he arrived, and eventually I agreed to draw up a paper
explanatory of the position of the Duke, and his expectations and views
with regard to the ‘Times’ and its support. This I sent to him, and he is to
return it to me with such corrections as he may think it requires, and it is to
be shown to Barnes to-morrow.
On the way Lyndhurst told me an incredible thing—that Brougham
had written to him proposing that he should be made Chief Baron, which
would be a great saving to the country, as he was content to take it with no
higher salary than his retiring pension and some provision for the expense
of the circuit. He said he would show me the letter, but that he had left it
with the Duke, so could not then. He knows well enough that, whatever
may be the fate of this Government, he has no chance of recovering the
Great Seal, but I own I do not comprehend what object he can have in
taking this appointment, or what there is of importance enough to induce
him to apply for it to his political opponents, and incur all the odium that
would be heaped upon him if the fact were generally known. He would not
consider himself tongue-tied in the House of Lords any more than
Lyndhurst was, for though the former took the situation under a sort of
condition, either positive or implied, that he was to observe something like
a neutrality, he considered himself entirely emancipated from the
engagement when the great Reform battle began, and the consequence was
that the secret article in the treaty was also cancelled, and Denman got the
Chief Justiceship instead of him. I imagine that the King would not agree to
Brougham’s being Chief Baron even though the Duke and Lyndhurst should
be disposed to place him on the bench. There might be some convenience in
it. He must cut fewer capers in ermine than in plaid trousers. [As might
have been expected, this intended stroke of Brougham’s was a total failure.
Friends and foes condemn him; Duncannon tried to dissuade him; the rest
of his colleagues only knew of it after it was done. Duncannon told me he
neither desired nor expected that his offer would be accepted.—November
30th.]

November 24th, 1834
I sent Lyndhurst a paper to be read to Barnes, which he returned to me
with another he had written instead, which certainly was much better. The
Duke’s note and this paper were read to him, and he expressed himself quite
satisfied, was much gratified by an offer Lyndhurst made to see him, and
proposed a meeting; so, then, I leave the affair. I took a copy of Lyndhurst’s
paper, and then returned it and the note to him.
At night I went to Holland House, where I found Brougham, Lord
John Russell, and Lord Lansdowne. Lady Holland told me that she had
been the channel of communication by which the arrangement of giving the
Chief Baronship to Lyndhurst had been carried on, and she declared that
there was no secret article in it. I believe, however, that there was one
concluded between Brougham and Lyndhurst, THE WHIGS ON THE RECENT CHANGE.
when they met to settle it in Burlington street. Leach brought the original
message from Alexander, who offered to resign in favour of Lyndhurst. I
hear of nothing but the indignation of the ex-Ministers at the
uncourteousness of the Duke’s conduct towards them; but though there is
too much truth, there is also some exaggeration in the complaints. It is
necessary to be on one’s guard against what one hears, as I verified
yesterday in a particular case.

November 26th, 1834
Barnes is to dine with Lord Lyndhurst, and a gastronomic ratification
will wind up the treaty between these high contracting parties. I walked
home with Duncannon last night; he declared to me that though he could
not tell me what did pass between the King and Melbourne, what is stated
to have passed is not the truth. I heard elsewhere that the Whigs insist upon
it there was no disunion in the Cabinet, and that Lord Lansdowne and Rice
had seen the Irish Tithe Bill (the Irish Chancellor being the supposed
subject of disunion), and that they both agreed to its provisions. Duncannon
said that if the King had insisted upon the dismissal of Brougham, and had
consented to go on with the rest, he would have put them in a grand
dilemma, for that such a requisition would have met the concurrence of
many of their friends and of the public. He thinks Brougham would not

have resigned even then, and that it would have been very dangerous to turn
him out. All this speculation matters little now. He is thoroughly convinced
that the present appearances of indifference and tranquillity in the country
are delusive, and that the elections will rouse a dormant spirit, and that the
minor differences of Reformers and Liberals of all denominations will be
sunk in a determined hostility to the Government of Peel and the Duke. He
says that the Irish Church must bring the question between the two parties
to an immediate and decisive test; that if the new Government are beaten
upon it, as he thinks inevitable, out they must go; that the return of the
Government just broken up will be out of the question, and the King must
submit to receive one of still stronger measures. Duncannon does not
conceal the ultra-Liberal nature of his opinions, and he would not regret the
accomplishment of his predictions. It cannot be concealed that there is
nothing very improbable in them, although I am far from regarding the
event as so certain as he does; still less can I partake of the blind confidence
and sanguine hopes of the Tories. One thing is, however, very clear, that the
Whigs and the Radicals will join (as Lyndhurst said they were sure to do),
and that they will both declare war to the knife against the Tory
Government. The best hope and chance is that a number of really
independent men, unpledged, may be returned, who will hold something
like a balance between the extreme parties, resist all violent propositions,
protect the King from insult and peremptory dictation, and afford the new
Government a fair trial, and on the other hand declare at once and without
reserve their determination to continue without interruption the course of
rational and effectual reform, making a virtual abandonment of High Tory
maxims and acquiescence in the desires of the country with respect to the
correction of abuses the indispensable conditions of the present
Government’s retention of office.

November 27th, 1834
Yesterday Lord Wharncliffe came to me. He had just been with the
Duke, who received him very cordially, and showed him the
correspondence and minutes of conversations between the King and
Melbourne. He says that it is evident that Melbourne despaired of being
able to carry on the Government, and that the gist of the King’s objection

was the nomination of Lord John Russell to lead the Government in the
House of Commons, which His Majesty said he could not agree to, because
he had already declared his sentiments with regard to the Church and his
resolution of supporting it to the bishops and on other occasions, and that
Lord John Russell had signalised himself in the House of Commons by his
destructive opinions with regard to the Establishment. I should be glad to
see this correspondence and judge for myself, but I can’t go to the Duke on
purpose. Wharncliffe says that he is quite satisfied from his conversation
that the Duke is thoroughly convinced of the necessity of adopting a line of
conduct in conformity with the POLICY OF THE PEEL GOVERNMENT. state of public
opinion and determination in the country, and that he is prepared to abandon
(as far as he is concerned) the old Tory maxims. So far so good; but there is
no concealing that, however this may (if Peel concurs) facilitate the
formation and secure the duration of the new Government, there is a
revolting inconsistency in it all, involving considerable loss of character. He
gave no indication of such a disposition during the last session; it is all
reserved for the period when he is possessed of power. It is, however, at
present all very vague, and we shall see what his notion is of a Liberal
course of policy. I fear that he and Peel are both too deeply committed on
the Irish Church question to suffer them to propose any compromise likely
to be satisfactory with regard to it, and then the difficulties of the question
are so enormous that it seems next to impossible to compose them. The
respective parties drive at different objects; one wants to appropriate the
surplus revenue, the other wants to secure to the parsons their tithes, and
while they are quarrelling with unmitigable fierceness upon these points,
the Irish settle the question by refusing to pay any tithe, and by evading
every attempt that is made to procure the payment in some other shape or
under some other denomination.
The Duke told Wharncliffe that both he and the King were fully aware
of the importance of the step that his Majesty had taken—that this is, in
fact, the Conservatives’ last cast—and that he (the King) is resolved neither
to flinch nor falter, but having embarked with them, to nail his flag to the
mast and put forth all the constitutional authority of the Crown in support of
the Government he is about to form. I am strongly inclined to think that this
determination, when properly ascertained, will have considerable influence,
and that, provided a respectable and presentable Cabinet be formed and

Liberal measures adopted, they will succeed. Though the Crown is not so
powerful as it was, there probably still remains a great deal of attachment
and respect to it, and if the King can show a fair case to the country, there
will be found both in Parliament and out of it a vast number of persons who
will reflect deeply upon the consequences of coming to a serious collision
with the Throne, and consider whether the exigency is such as to justify
such extremities. It may be very desirable to purify the Irish Church, to
remodel corporations, and to relieve the Dissenters in various ways, and
nobody can entertain a shadow of doubt that all these things must and will
be done; but the several cases are not of great and pressing urgency. The
fate of the nation does not depend upon their being all accomplished and
arranged off-hand, and if the Government which the King may form
exhibits no spirit uncongenial to the public feeling generally, and wars not
with the genius of Reform, which is dear to the people, it is my belief that a
great majority of the nation will shrink from the mere possibility of a direct
breach with the King, and from offering him an insult in the shape of
dictation and peremptory demand, which he would consider himself bound
in honour and in conscience to resist.
I walked home with Duncannon at night, and I told him this; he
seemed struck by it, but still maintained that Parliament would, in his
opinion, not accept the new Ministry on any terms. If Peel makes a High
Tory Government, and holds High Tory language, I think so too, and I can
scarcely hope that it should be otherwise. My mind, I own, misgives me
about Peel; I hope everything from his capacity and dread everything from
his character.

November 28th, 1834
This morning I got a letter from my uncle the Duke of Portland,
complaining of the Weights and Measures Bill, and begging that, if
possible, an Order in Council might be passed suspending the operation of
the Act. I availed myself of this opportunity to see the Duke of Wellington,
and went to the Home Office to consult him on the contents of this letter.
After settling this business I began about the recent negotiation between
Lyndhurst and Barnes, and this led to a discussion of the circumstances and

situation of affairs, in the course of which he told me everything that had
occurred. I asked him if he had sent the ‘Statement’ which appeared in the
‘Times.’ He said no, and that he was utterly at a loss to guess how they had
got THE DUKE’S ACCOUNT OF THE CRISIS. it, but that by whatever means it was as
near as possible to the truth. I said that this was utterly and peremptorily
denied by the other side, on which he called Algy,[2] and desired him to
bring a letter which he had written to certain Peers of his party—a circular
—which he read to me. In this he explained in general terms (without going
into particulars) the causes of the break-up of the late Government and the
advice he had given the King, and he told me that he had got papers and
letters in confirmation of every word that he had written (Melbourne’s
correspondence with the King and the minute of the conversation), all
which he said he would show me then, but that it would take up too much
time. However, as we proceeded to talk it over he told me all that these
papers contained, or at least all that was material. The substance as I
gathered it and as I remember it was this:—Lord Melbourne had written to
the King and descanted on the great difficulty in which the Government was
placed in consequence of Lord Spencer’s death, and had intimated that the
measures which he should find it necessary to propose to him would
produce a difference of opinion in the Cabinet—in point of fact that it was,
to say the least, probable that Rice and Lansdowne would retire. When he
went down to Brighton, and they talked it over, Lord Melbourne put it to his
Majesty whether under existing circumstances he would go on, placing
himself in their hands, or whether he would dispense with their services,
only recommending that if he resolved not to endeavour to go on with this
Government (with such modifications as circumstances demanded) he
would declare such resolution as speedily as possible.[3] The Duke says he
did not actually tender his or their resignations, did not throw up the
Government, but very near it. The King suggested the difficulty of his
situation, and Melbourne told him ‘he had better send for the Duke of
Wellington, and depend upon it he would get him out of it.’ ‘In fact,’ said
the Duke, ‘Melbourne told him I should do just what I did.’ Accordingly the
King did send for the Duke, and it is true that Melbourne offered to be the
bearer of his Majesty’s letter. When some question was asked about the
messenger, Melbourne said, ‘No messenger will go so quick as I shall; you
had better give it to me.’ The Duke said that no man could have acted more
like a gentleman and a man of honour than Melbourne did, and that his

opinion of him was greatly raised. I told him that I thought Melbourne
could not have given his colleagues an exact and correct account of what
had passed, for that they could not conceive themselves to have been so ill-
treated if it was so, and that if he had told them all they would probably
have thought he had abandoned their interests. He said that it was evident
Melbourne was very happy to disengage himself from the concern. (As all
this case will probably be discussed in Parliament, we shall see that the
debate will turn principally upon the fact of disunion, and I have little doubt
that Rice and Lansdowne will declare that they had no intention of quitting.
So much depends upon verbal niceties, and the bounds between truth and
falsehood are so narrow, the partition so thin, that they will, I expect, try to
back up their party without any absolute breach of veracity.) When the King
was reading the papers to him (the Duke), and telling him all that had
passed, he was in a great fright lest the Duke should think he had acted
imprudently, and should decline to accept the Government. Then the Duke
said, ‘Sir, I see at once how it all is. Your Majesty has not been left by your
Ministers, but something very like it;’ and His Majesty was rejoiced when
the Duke at once acquiesced in taking office.
[2] [Mr. Algernon Greville, brother of Mr. Charles Greville, was private
secretary to the Duke of Wellington both in and out of office.]
[3] [This statement has certainly not been confirmed by the subsequent
publication of papers or by the narrative of the King himself. It is very
extraordinary that the Duke of Wellington should have been led to believe it; but
this is only another proof of the extreme difficulty of arriving at an exact
knowledge of what passes in conversation between two persons, even when both
of them are acting in perfect good faith.]

The Duke said he had received very satisfactory letters from all (or
many) of the Peers to whom he had written—from the Duke of Newcastle
and Lord Mansfield, the most violent of the Tories. I said, ‘Are they ready
to place themselves in your hands, and agree to whatever you may think it
LORD STANLEY’S POSITION. necessary to do?’ He said, ‘I think they are; I think
they will do anything.’ He told me that affairs were left in a wretched state
in the Treasury, that the late Ministers were no men of business, and
minutes had been proposed to him finding fault with various things; but he
had refused to do any such thing, and he would repair any error he could
without casting any blame on others. On the whole he thought everything

looked well, and that he should, when Peel arrived, put the concern into his
hands in a satisfactory state.
It is perfectly clear, in the midst of assertion on one side and
contradiction on the other, that in the first instance there was neither plot
nor plan on the part of the King or anybody else. The death of Lord Spencer
really did create an enormous embarrassment, which Melbourne felt much
more than any of his colleagues; and though he told the King ‘that he was
ready to go on with the Government if such was his pleasure,’ he felt no
desire to be taken at his word, and no confidence or expectation that the
arrangements he proposed would be palatable to the King or of a permanent
nature. He seems to have been candid and straightforward in all that he said,
and to have contemplated his dismissal as a very probable result of his
correspondence and conversations with his Majesty. The Irish Church has
evidently caused the split; the intended reforms in it and the elevation of
Lord John Russell to the post of leader were more than the King could
digest. I wish I had seen the papers, for the sake of knowing what it is they
proposed to the King, and how far he was disposed to go.

November 29th, 1834
I told the Duke yesterday what I had learnt from George Bentinck (and
he from the Duke of Richmond) of Lord Stanley’s[4] disposition. He is not
at all desirous to be mixed up in the new concern, but has no objection to
take office under Peel, and he is ready to listen to any proposition that may
be made to him; but he is very much afraid of being accused of dereliction
of principle by his old colleagues and friends. It is clear, therefore, that he
would reject any overture unless it included an agreement that the
Government should be conducted upon Liberal principles, and unless his
friends were invited to join the Government with him. The Duke took very
little notice of this.
[4] [Edward, 12th Earl of Derby, died on October 21, 1834, from which date
his grandson, afterwards 14th Earl of Derby, assumed the courtesy title of Lord
Stanley.]

December 1st, 1834
Went to St. Paul’s yesterday evening, to hear Sydney Smith preach. He
is very good; manner impressive, voice sonorous and agreeable, rather
familiar, but not offensively so, language simple and unadorned, sermon
clever and illustrative. The service is exceedingly grand, performed with all
the pomp of a cathedral and chanted with beautiful voices; the lamps
scattered few and far between throughout the vast space under the dome,
making darkness visible, and dimly revealing the immensity of the building,
were exceedingly striking. The Cathedral service thus chanted and
performed is my beau idéal of religious worship—simple, intelligible, and
grand, appealing at the same time to the reason and the imagination. I prefer
it infinitely to the Catholic service, for though I am fond of the bursts of
music and the clouds of incense, I can’t endure the undistinguishable
sounds with which the priest mumbles over the prayers.
I heard yesterday that there has been a breeze between Duncannon and
Melbourne, arising out of his speech at Derby. This was in answer to an
address they voted him, and it was exceedingly temperate and reserved. In
the course of it he said that ‘he had no personal cause of complaint.’ A
warfare has been raging between the ‘Standard’ and the ‘Chronicle’ about
what passed, and the articles in the latter have been supplied by Duncannon
or some of them; these are at variance with Melbourne’s avowal, and they
are very angry with him for what he said, and want him to make some
statement (or to authorise one) of a different kind and more corresponding
with their own declarations and complaints. This he refuses to do, and they
have been squabbling about it with some vivacity. All this induces me the
more to think that Melbourne has never told his colleagues how very easily
and contentedly he gave up the reins of Government, not intending to
deceive them, but LORD LYNDHURST’S DINNER TO MR. BARNES. from a desire to avoid
exasperating people whom he found so much disturbed and so bitter.

December 2nd, 1834
Dined with Lord Lyndhurst yesterday; the dinner for Mr. Barnes. He
had collected a miscellaneous party, droll enough—Mrs. Fox, Baron
Bolland, Follett, Hardinge, &c. The Duke and Lord Chandos were to have

been there. Barnes told Hardinge there was a great cry getting up in the
country against the Duke. After dinner I had a long conversation with
Hardinge, on the whole satisfactory. He said that he had been instrumental
in bringing the Duke and Peel together again, after a considerable coldness
and estrangement had existed between them; that after the failure in May
1832, when Peel refused to have anything to do with the concern, he had
called upon him and insisted upon taking him to Apsley House and
spontaneously consulting with the Duke how he should withdraw from the
business; that with great difficulty he had persuaded him, and together they
went, from which time the Duke and he have again become friends. He is
convinced that Peel will at once make a fair and cordial overture to Stanley,
and thinks it of the greatest importance that Stanley’s disposition and
probable demands should be ascertained before Peel arrives. I told him
what I had before told the Duke, and what I had reason to believe were
Stanley’s sentiments. He asked whether Stanley would insist upon
Richmond and Ripon coming in with him; he said that for the former he
(Hardinge) was sure Peel would never admit him without the Duke’s full
and especial consent, which, however, he has no doubt the Duke would give
without hesitation, and overlook any personal cause of offence, to facilitate
a desirable arrangement; that there was some dispute among his friends
whether it would be better that Stanley should join now or only support (if
he would) at first and join afterwards. I said, ‘Unquestionably it is better he
should join at once,’ to which Hardinge assented, though he added that
many thought otherwise, that if Stanley made difficulties and declined the
junction, he was persuaded Peel would keep nothing open, and would not
make provisional arrangements to admit him and his party when they
should think it more safe and convenient to unite their future to his. What
they would like evidently is to take Stanley and Graham and wash their
hands of Ripon and Richmond, but I think they will be forced to admit them
all, for Lyndhurst owned to me that he did not think they could stand
without Stanley; and the King is so anxious for it that if Stanley insists on
terms which are not very unreasonable (under the circumstances) they will
not be refused. Hardinge said that four seats in the Cabinet would be a large
share, but that the best men among them were prepared to make every
sacrifice of their own just expectations or claims to render any arrangement
feasible that circumstances might require, that ‘all was right with the

Speaker,’ and as for the High Tories, the sooner they cut the connection
with them the better, but that they (the High Tories) were now at their feet.
He then went into the details of the King’s case with his late Ministers
—much to the same effect as I had before heard from the Duke and
Lyndhurst, but perhaps rather more clearly. He said that Melbourne had
stated to the King that questions must soon be brought under the
consideration of the Cabinet relating to the Irish Church on which a
considerable difference of opinion prevailed, and that if the opinion of the
majority of the Cabinet should be acquiesced in by his Majesty, the
secession of two or more members of it would in all probability follow; that
if the desire of his Majesty to compromise these differences of opinion and
prevent any separation should have the effect of preventing such
discussions in the Cabinet as should lead to any disunion for the time, it was
only fair and right to own to him that it would be in the power of any
member of the House of Commons who should become acquainted with the
difference of opinion which prevailed to bring the question to an issue; and
if such a thing should occur, the resignations, he apprehended, would only
be retarded. The King, under these circumstances, asked how he proposed
to fill up the vacancies that would thus occur, whether from any but what is
called SIR H. HARDINGE ON THE LATE CRISIS. the extreme party, and whether he
(Melbourne), with a knowledge of the King’s sentiments, could advise him
to have recourse to Lord Durham and others of the same opinions.
Melbourne acknowledged that he could look nowhere else, and that he
certainly could not give the King such advice, upon which he said that as
the breach sooner or latter appeared inevitable, he thought it better that the
dissolution of the Government should take place at once, and he preferred
making the change during the recess, when he should have time to form
other arrangements, rather than have it forced upon him during all the
excitement of the session of Parliament. This, I think, was the pith of the
thing, and in my opinion it forms a good case. Hardinge said that if the
King had been a clever man he would have postponed his decision and spun
out the correspondence, in the course of which he would have acquired
pretexts sufficient. This, however, explains what the other side means by
insisting that there was no difference of opinion in the Cabinet; there was
none actual, but it was on the prospective disunion so clearly announced to
the King, and impending at such an indefinite and probably inconvenient

time, that he took his resolution. Melbourne appears to have been bullied
into a sort of exculpatory letter on account of his speech at Derby, saying
that he spoke of having no personal cause of complaint because the King
was very civil to him.

December 5th, 1834
The dinner that Lyndhurst gave to Barnes has made a great uproar, as I
thought it would. I never could understand the Chancellor’s making such a
display of this connexion, but whatever he may be as a lawyer, and how
great soever in his wig, I suspect that he is deficient in knowledge of the
world and those nice calculations of public taste and opinion which are only
to be acquired by intuitive sagacity exercised in the daily communion of
social life.
Melbourne has had to make another speech, which smells of the recent
reproaches of his colleagues; without exactly recanting what he had said, he
has amplified, modified, and explained, so as to chime in to a certain degree
with their assertions.
Brougham has been made to recall his letter offering to be Chief
Baron. It matters not what he does for the present; his star is totally
eclipsed, but not, I think, for ever quenched; his vast abilities must find
scope and produce effect. It is true he can never thoroughly inspire
confidence, but if adversity teaches him wisdom, and cools the
effervescence of his temper and imagination, nothing can prevent his
political resurrection, thought not in ‘all his original brightness.’

December 6th, 1834
The Chancellor called on me yesterday about getting young Disraeli
into Parliament (through the means of George Bentinck)[5] for Lynn. I had
told him George wanted a good man to assist in turning out William
Lennox, and he suggested the above-named gentleman, whom he called a
friend of Chandos. His political principles must, however, be in abeyance,

for he said that Durham was doing all he could to get him by the offer of a
seat, and so forth; if, therefore, he is undecided and wavering between
Chandos and Durham, he must be a mighty impartial personage. I don’t
think such a man will do, though just such as Lyndhurst would be
connected with.

[5] [Lord George Bentinck was member for Lynn Regis. It is curious that
this, the first mention of Mr. Disraeli in political life, should have originated with
the man who afterwards became his most powerful coadjutor and ally.]

Melbourne’s two speeches at Derby, and the history connected with
them, exhibit him in a very discreditable and lamentable point of view—
compelled by the menaces and reproaches of Duncannon and the rest to eat
his words; and all this transacted by a sort of negotiation and through the
mediation of his vulgar secretary, Tom Young, and Mrs. Lane Fox. Such a
thing it is to be without firmness and decision of character. Melbourne is a
gentleman, liberal and straightforward, with no meanness, and incapable of
selfish trickery and intrigue, but he is habitually careless and insouciant,
loves ease, and hates contests and squabbles, and though he would never
tell a lie, he has probably not that LORD JOHN RUSSELL’S SPEECH AT TOTNESS. stern and
rigid regard for truth which would make him run any risk rather than that of
concealing anything or suffering a false impression to be formed or
conveyed with respect to any matter he might be concerned in.
Lyndhurst told me that Peel’s letter was short and cautious, but
satisfactory. He (Lyndhurst) is doing all he can to draw closer the connexion
between the ‘Times’ and the Government, and communicates constantly
with Barnes. He said they must make a liberal and comprehensive
Government, and sketched an outline of such a Cabinet as he would like—
four Stanleys, six of their own people, and two High Tories, Chandos
certainly, and Knatchbull probably; but even if Stanley’s other scruples can
be got over, how he is to be induced to unite with Chandos and Knatchbull
or any such men I guess not. However, the time is drawing very near.

December 7th, 1834
In a letter from the Duke of Portland to George Bentinck yesterday he
says that the Duke of Newcastle had been there the day before, had talked
politics, and declared that in his opinion the leaders of his party ought not to
give way upon any one point. This is so different from what the Duke of
Wellington understood from his letter to him that I sent the letter to the
Duke, and afterwards I met him. He said he thought the Duke of Portland
must be mistaken, for the Duke of Newcastle’s letter to him was quite in

another sense. This is one of the silliest of the High Tories, but there will yet
be some trouble with the tribe. John Russell, in a speech somewhere, has
made assertions still more positive and unqualified than Melbourne’s,
which, if correct, throw over the King and his case. There is a fearful lie
somewhere, which I suppose will come out in time. It is impossible to make
up one’s mind in the midst of statements so different and yet so positive.
George Bentinck sent to Sturges Bourne to know if he would come in for
Lynn, but he declined. Disraeli he won’t hear of.

December 8th, 1834
I read John Russell’s speech at Totness last night; it was a very
masterly performance, suitable to the occasion, and effective. He
endeavoured to establish these points: first, that the Duke of Wellington had
continually opposed all Reform measures and been the enemy of all Reform
principles; secondly, that they (the late Government) had done a great deal,
without doing too much; and thirdly, that there really had occurred no
circumstances in the Cabinet, or with the King, sufficient to account for
their summary dismissal. There is no denying that his first position is
incontrovertible, that he makes out a very fair case for his second, and his
argument on the third throws great doubt upon the matter in my mind,
having previously had no doubt that the King had a good case to show to
the world. It is not so much the Duke’s opposition to this or that particular
measure, but the whole tenor of his conduct and opinions, which it puts one
in despair to look at. There would be no gross inconsistency in his
maintaining our foreign relations in their present state, notwithstanding his
repeated attacks upon Palmerston’s policy. He need not refuse to suffer any
legislative interference with the Church, English or Irish, merely because he
opposed the Tithe Bill last year (great, by the way, as I always thought that
blunder was, and as events will prove it to have been), but in his opposition
to the one or the other we look in vain for some saving declaration to prove
that it is to the specific measure he is hostile, and not to the principles from
which it emanates. If he now comes into office with a resolution to carry on
the investigations that have been set on foot, and to propose various
measures of reform in consequence of them, however wisely he may act in
bending to circumstances, there is no escaping from the fact that his

conduct in opposition and in office is as different as light from darkness,
and that he adopts when in office those principles in the gross which he
utterly repudiates and opposes with all his might when he is out. I should
like much to have a conversation with the Duke, and (if it were possible to
speak so freely to him) to set before him all the apparent inconsistencies of
his conduct, to trace his political career step by step, and tell him concisely
all that he may have read scattered through a hundred newspapers, and then
hear what he would say, what his notions are of political honour and
consistency, and how he INCONSISTENCIES OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON. reconciles his
general conduct with these maxims. I am persuaded that he deludes himself
by some process of extraordinary false reasoning, and that the habits of
intense volition, jumbled up with party prejudices, old associations, and
exposure to never-ceasing flattery, have produced the remarkable result we
see in his conduct; notwithstanding the enormous blunders he has
committed, and his numerous and flagrant inconsistencies, he has never lost
his confidence in himself, and what is more curious, has contrived to retain
that of a host of followers. In each particular act, and on every fresh
occasion, there appear in him a decision, singleness of purpose, and
straightforwardness which are inseparable from a conviction of being in the
right, and he never seems to apprehend for a moment that he can be liable
to the imputation of any selfish or dishonourable motive. And strange and
paradoxical as it may appear, I do not think he is justly liable to it except
when he is under the influence of some strong personal feeling. Such was
his jealousy and dislike of Canning, and this led him into perhaps the most
enormous of all his political misdeeds, the overthrow of the Corn Bill of
1827. Upon other occasions I attribute his conduct to the circumstance of
his being governed by one leading idea, and to his incapability of taking
enlarged and comprehensive views of political affairs, such as embrace not
only the complex relations of the present, but the ostensible probabilities of
the future. His judgment, instead of being determined by profound habits of
reflection, an extensive knowledge of history, and accurate acquaintance
with human nature, seems to be wholly influenced by his own wishes and
his own conception of what the exigencies of the moment require. It would
not be difficult, I think, and perhaps I may hereafter attempt to apply this
delineation of his disposition to the events of his life, and to show how the
leading idea in his mind has been the constant guide which he has followed,

sometimes to the detriment of the best interests of the country and
sometimes to that of his own reputation.

CHAPTER XXVI.
Sir R. Peel arrives — The First Council — The King’s Address
— Lord Stanley and Sir J. Graham decline to join the
Government — Lord Wharncliffe and Sir E. Knatchbull join —
The Ministers sworn in — Peel’s Address to his Constituents —
Dinner at the Mansion House — Offer to Lord Roden —
Prospects of the Election — Stanley’s Want of Influence —
Pozzo di Borgo’s Views — Russia and England — Nomination
of Lord Londonderry to St. Petersburg — Parliament dissolved
— State of the Constituencies — A Governor-General for India
— Sebastiani and St. Aulaire — Anecdote of Princess
Metternich — The City Elections — Lord Lyndhurst’s View of
the Government — Violence of the Opposition — Close Contest
at Rochester — Sidney Herbert — Sir John Hobhouse’s Views
— Anecdotes — County Elections — The Queen supposed to be
with Child — Church Reform — Dinner of Ministers — Story
of La Roncière — The King’s Crotchets.

December 10th, 1834
Sir Robert arrived yesterday morning at eight o’clock. Great was the
bustle among his clan; there were the Ross’s, the Plantas, and all of them
pacing before his door while he was still closeted with the Duke. Sefton
came up to town last night, and declares that Lord Stanley has announced
his intention of supporting Wood for Lancashire and opposing Francis
Egerton, which, if true, is ominous against a junction with Peel.

December 11th, 1834

A Council yesterday. The King insisted upon giving Peel the seal of
the Exchequer in Council, though it was not necessary. His object was to
make a speech. The Chief Justice, who was trying a cause at Westminster,
kept us waiting, and at last a carriage was sent to fetch him. Peel made his
first appearance full of spirits and cordiality to the numerous greetings
which hailed him. He told me that he had seen the letter which I had written
to his brother Jonathan, that he agreed to every word of it, and that he had
written to Stanley in exact conformity to LORD STANLEY DECLINES TO JOIN SIR R. PEEL.
what I had said. This was a letter I had written to Jonathan Peel, giving him
an account of the state of things here, and expressing at some length my
own view of Peel’s situation and of what he ought to do. When Sir Robert
got to Paris he gave it to him, and as he approves of it I am certain that his
Government will be liberal enough; but then the Irish Church! Stanley’s
answer may come to-day, but they expect him in town at all events. When
Denman arrived at St. James’s he had an audience and gave up the seal. The
Council was assembled, and the King, who had got his speech all ready,
first asking the Duke of Wellington if he should go on, to which the Duke
assented, delivered himself ‘in apt and gracious terms.’ It really was
(however superfluous) not at all ill done, recapitulating what everybody
knows, declaring that Sir Robert Peel was now Minister of this country, and
thanking the Duke of Wellington in his own name and in that of the country
for the part he had taken and for the manner in which he had conducted the
public business during the interval; he said that he should request him to
hold the seals of the three offices for a few days longer. He was not
ridiculous to-day. With regard to Lynn, I have handed George Bentinck over
to William Peel and Granville Somerset, and so washed my hands of it.

December 13th, 1834
Stanley has declined; I know not in what terms, but it is said courteous.
Now, then, nothing remains but a Tory Government; the Whigs are
triumphant that Stanley will have nothing to do with it. Lord Grey, who was
moderate, has been lashed into fury by their putting up Liddell for
Northumberland. Charles Grey at Holland House the other night threw them
all into dismay by the language he held—‘that if the Duke and Peel

followed his father’s steps, and adopted Liberal measures, he should
support them.’ Lady Holland was almost in fits, and Allen in convulsions.

December 14th, 1834
Lord Wharncliffe, to his great joy, was sent for by Peel yesterday, and
very civilly invited to join the new Cabinet. He thought it necessary to
enquire if he meant to be liberal, and on receiving an assurance to that
effect he at once consented. Graham was with Peel, having come up to town
on getting his letter, but he declined joining. Wharncliffe told me that the
correspondence between Peel and Stanley was extremely civil. The Cabinet
is now pretty nearly completed; they all dined together at Peel’s yesterday. I
asked Wharncliffe how Sir Edward Knatchbull was to be converted into a
Liberal, and he said, ‘Oh, there will be no difficulty; he is very reasonable.’
It would be (to me) a bitter pill to swallow to take Knatchbull; he is the man
who led that section of High Tories which threw out the Duke’s
Government in 1830. The Whigs are sorry that Graham does not join, for
they hate him and want to be rid of him. They are also discomposed at a
letter of Stanley’s in reply to an address to the King from Glasgow that has
been forwarded to him to present, in which his sentiments appear to be
alarmingly Conservative.
Stanley and Graham will support the Government, and it now appears
that the Duke of Wellington is the real obstacle to their joining. To Peel
Stanley has no objection; he has spoken of him in the highest terms; but
after the speech which the Duke made when Lord Grey went out, in which
he attacked him and his Government with a virulence which gave great
disgust at the time, Stanley feels that he could not with any regard to his
own honour, and compatibly with his respect and attachment for Lord Grey,
form a part of this Government. So there is another evil resulting from one
of those imprudences which the Duke blurts out without reflection, thinking
only of the present time and acting upon his impulse at the moment. Spring
Rice, whom I met yesterday, said that their great object (in which they
hoped to succeed) was to keep the whole of their party together—their party
in the House of Commons, of course. Whether he included Stanley in this
or not I don’t know, but if he did he reckons probably without his host.

December 15th, 1834
Met the Duke of Richmond yesterday, who came to town for the cattle
show, and had a long talk with him; he said they had discussed the whole
matter (Stanley, Graham, and himself) at Knowsley, and decided not to DUKE
OF RICHMOND AND SIR E. KNATCHBULL. join; that the Duke of Wellington’s violent
speech against all the members of the late Government and their policy
made it quite impossible, but that they were determined to support Peel if
they possibly could; and he seems not apprehensive there would be any
difficulty; he thinks Stanley’s support out of office will be more valuable
than if he had joined them, and perhaps under the above circumstances (for
I had forgotten the Duke’s speech) it may be. Nothing can be more
satisfactory than the state of feeling between them all; and certainly all
those who would have followed Stanley, had he taken office, may find as
strong motives for supporting Government now as they could have done
then. I told Richmond I thought Knatchbull was so High a Tory that I did
not see how they could make him a Liberal. He said he was not at all
strongly anti-Liberal, and that he had had the option of being a member of
Lord Grey’s Government, he having been himself commissioned to offer
him the Secretaryship at War. This, however, it is very clear, was offered as
a reward for the service he had done in giving the mortal thrust to the Duke,
and as he is an honest man, and wanted at that time the Duke’s life rather
than his purse, he was probably satisfied with his exploit, and never would
have done on any terms (what Richmond and others did) so inconsistent a
thing as to join a Reform Ministry. It is, however, remarkable that this
should have occurred. See what it was. Knatchbull, a High Tory, turns out
the Duke and a Tory Government, and lets in the Whigs; he is offered office
by the Whig Minister to whose triumph he has been instrumental, refuses it;
and afterwards, on the exclusion of the same Whig Ministry, is offered
office by the returning Tory Government, which he had four years ago
destroyed, and takes it.

December 16th, 1834
A great field-day at Court yesterday; all the new Ministers sworn in,
except the Colonial Secretary, who is not yet appointed, and some

subordinate officers. The King addressed each of them on his kissing hands,
and to Scarlett he made a very pretty speech about the administration of the
law. Lord Rosslyn was substituted for Lord Aberdeen (only in the morning)
as President of the Council; why did not appear, but I had learnt from
Hardinge (in a conversation I had with him) that the arrangements would in
some respects be only temporary, and made with a view to the subsequent
admission of Stanley and his party; the nature of their communications has
been such as to afford a very fair prospect of that junction. Peel is much
elated at having got Sugden to go to Ireland as Chancellor. Lord de Grey
has been asked to be Lord-Lieutenant. I find Stanley in his letter to Peel
said that the Duke of Wellington’s speech was an obstacle to his joining the
Government. These scruples they think unreasonable; and they allege his
own thimblerig speech, which was more violent against the Whig
Government and more insulting than anything the Duke said; but they
should comprehend that this speech forms one of the ingredients of the
difficulty, as it in fact hampers his political conduct by putting him on
uncomfortable personal terms with his old friends.

December 20th, 1834
Peel’s letter to his constituents has appeared as his manifesto to the
country; a very well written and ingenious document, and well calculated to
answer the purpose, if it can be answered at all. The letter was submitted to
the Cabinet at a dinner at Lyndhurst’s on Wednesday last, and they sat till
twelve o’clock upon it, after which it was copied out, a messenger
despatched to the three great newspapers (‘Times,’ ‘Herald,’ and ‘Post’) to
announce its arrival, and at three in the morning it was inserted. The Whigs
affect to hold it very cheap, and to treat it as an artful but shallow and
inefficient production. It is rather too Liberal for the bigoted Tories, but all
the moderate people are well satisfied with it. Of course it has made a
prodigious sensation, and nobody talks of anything else.

December 24th, 1834

Dined yesterday at the Mansion House; never having before seen a
civic feast, I thought this a good opportunity. The Egyptian Hall is fine
enough; the other rooms miserable. A great company, and all Tories almost.
The Lord Mayor boasted of his impartiality, and how he had PROSPECTS OF THE
MINISTRY. invited all parties alike, but none of the Whigs would go. Peel
spoke tolerably, but not so well as I expected; manly enough and in good
tone. In the speeches of the others there was nothing remarkable. Ward
made a violent speech, attacking Grote and Lushington, though not by
name. The loyal party in the City are making great exertions, and they
expect to bring in three out of the four members, which I doubt, not because
I know anything of the matter, but because they are generally out in their
calculations. In the meantime the vacant places have been gradually filled
up, and generally with Tories of a bad description—e.g. Roden[1] as Lord
Steward, which, though no political situation, would do harm merely from
his name appearing in the list. It never will be believed that such men as he
—bigoted and obstinate, and virtuous moreover—will consent to join Peel
if he has resolved to act upon principles diametrically the reverse of those
they have ever sustained, and they persist (the Whigs) in asserting that
every fresh appointment of this kind is a new pledge that he means to
govern on Tory principles.
[1] Roden refused on account of his health.—January 4th.

A few days ago I fell in with Hobhouse, and he walked with me to my
office. He told me that he and his fellow Committee men at Ellice’s,
astonished at the confident expectations of the Carltonians as to the result of
a dissolution, went over the list scrupulously and jealously, and resolved to
know the worst; that after making every allowance they could, and
excluding all doubtful places and all Stanleyites, they found themselves
with a majority of 195 votes, and deducting from that 50 men who might be
Waverers, and on whom it might not be safe to count, they still found 145,
which they saw no possibility of disputing. On the other hand the
Conservatives, without going to actual numbers, retain their confidence,
though I confess I do not think on any sufficient grounds as far as present
appearances go. As far as I can judge by the slight indications which reach
me, the managers of the late Government are acting with great dexterity,
and I begin to think that Rice’s expectation of being able to hold together
the whole of those who are not with the new Government is not so

chimerical as I at first imagined. Although there is a little feeling for the ex-
Ministry and no excitement in the country, there is a calm which is quite as
alarming to the hopes of one party as it is represented to be expressive with
regard to the power of the other, for unless some enthusiasm can be created,
some loyal motion to disturb the inertia of the mass, it must be considered
as standing much in the same situation as before, and that certainly is not
one favourable to the desires and pretensions of the Conservative
Government. Then within this day or two there appear indications of a
disposition to hold off on the part of Stanley and Graham, if not to join with
their old friends, which might well alarm any watchful and anxious mind.
Stanley’s speech at Glasgow contained not a syllable expressive of regard
for the royal prerogative, or of respect for Peel, or of a disposition to try the
new Government, but extravagant compliments to Lord Grey, and Whig
language generally. I asked Hardinge last night what he thought of it, and he
said it struck him as ‘too Whiggish.’ I then told him that I was struck in like
manner, and that I had seen a letter from Graham in the morning, the tone of
which I did not at all like. It was to George Bentinck about the Lynn
election, for which he was to endeavour to find a man, and failed. He said
that Stanley’s speech was very good; blamed the composition of the New
Government, which would not give satisfaction, though it must always be
remembered that Peel had made use of the old materials because he could
not procure new ones; said that people were now beginning to discover that
the Whigs need not be reduced to the alternative of joining with the
Radicals or the Tories, and that when a standard was set up (Stanley’s of
course) on Conservatively Liberal principles he thought plenty would be
found to join it. It is, therefore, very questionable what course Stanley will
pursue, even though a party may range itself under him, which I doubt, and
no position can be much worse than this PROSPECTS OF THE ELECTION.
Government would be in if they were to hold office at his discretion, and
only while he should be pleased to throw his weight into their scale. As far
as one can judge his weight will be small, for it is very remarkable that
while for some weeks George Bentinck has been endeavouring to find a
Stanleyite candidate for Lynn, who would be brought in without trouble or
expense, though he has ransacked the Bar and applied to Richmond, Ripon,
Graham, and Stanley himself, no such man can be found. There are Whigs
and Tories in abundance, but not one man who will come into Parliament as

a follower of Stanley and owing his seat to the patronage of the Duke of
Richmond.
It is the fashion to consider Peel’s speech at the Mansion House less
Liberal in tone and indicative of less confidence than his letter to
Tamworth. I don’t perceive much difference. Lord Roden has refused to be
Lord Steward, but the invitation has done the mischief. Lord Haddington
goes to Ireland, after making many difficulties, but finishing by liking the
appointment. Both parties remain equally confident as to the result of the
elections; the Whigs, as it appears to me, with greater reason, and as the
resolution of the allies (the Whigs and Radicals) is to throw out the
Government as speedily as possible, and without caring for consequences, I
don’t see how they ever can stand. The other night at Holland House,
Mulgrave, who is one of the leading men of the electioneering committee,
admitted that he did not see what was to follow the overthrow of the
Government, but that the difficulty was one of their own creating; others of
them assert that Melbourne or Spencer will return, and another Whig
Government be formed, but they leave out of calculation that the Radicals
with whom they have joined will not suffer themselves to be brushed off
when done with, nor will the Tories come down to assist them if they
endeavour again to make head against the Radicals. The Tories have shown
themselves a reckless and desperate party, and I see no reason for supposing
that their conduct will belie their character; they overthrow their friends
from revenge, and will hardly save their enemies from charity; their
interest, their real interest, they seem destined ever to be blind to. There
may be a hope that, having put themselves under the orders of Peel, they
will act in a body as he shall direct them, and if so they may be a powerful
and useful Opposition, and I really believe that he will not turn his eyes
from the true interests of the country, or cease to regard all those
contingencies which may, under dexterous management, be eventually
turned to account. It is, however, impossible not to feel greatly disquieted at
the aspect of affairs—at the mixture of bad spirit and apathy that prevails,
for I consider the apathy an evil and not a good sign. Those who express
most loudly their alarm and abhorrence of ultra doctrines make little
exertion, personal or pecuniary, to stem their torrent. There have been some
great examples of liberality. I heard only the other day that the Duke of
Buccleuch subscribed 20,000ℓ. for the election of 1831; Lord Harrowby (a

poor man) has given l,000ℓ. for this. The fact is, it is in politics to a certain
degree as in religion. Men fear in the one case in the same manner as they
believe in the other; they have some doubts in both cases, but no
convictions. Their conduct belies their assertions, and when compared with
that which they observe on occasions where there is no room for doubt, it
will be seen that their want of energy or decision, their various
inconsistencies, proceed from self-deceit, which is just strong enough to
permit them to try and deceive others with actual falsehood and hypocrisy.

December 28th, 1834
My brother Henry came from Paris a day or two ago to take the place
of précis writer in the Foreign Office. Just before he started old Pozzo gave
him a whole string of messages to the Duke of Wellington, adding that he
would give the world for an hour’s conversation with him. These
communications were evidently made upon a supposition that their opinions
were generally congenial. He said that the affairs of Belgium required
particular attention; that the Belgians were grown insolent, and meant, by
deferring a final settlement, to avoid paying their portion of the debt and to
keep the disputed Duchies, and that unfortunately STATE OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS. the
conduct of the King of Holland had not been such as to entitle him to
assistance; that in Germany the spirit was good and tranquillity prevailed; in
Spain nothing could be worse, and he told the Duke to be on his guard
against what Alava should say to him, ‘qui n’avait pas le sens commun,
mais qui était dévoué au Duc,’ and that he might endoctriner him a little.
Henry took a memorandum of this and gave it to the Duke; but however
disposed he may be to enter into Pozzo’s views, he will probably soon be
obliged to take a tone very unpleasant to Russia, for I find that the affairs of
Turkey are in such a state that they are to be brought under the immediate
consideration of the Cabinet. The great object of the late Government was
(and that of this Government must be the same) to get the Porte out of the
clutches of Russia. The Sultan is a mere slave of the Emperor, but
throughout his dominions, and the Principalities likewise, a bitter feeling of
hatred against Russia prevails. Our policy has been to induce the Sultan to
throw off the yoke—by promises of assistance on one hand, and menaces
on the other of supporting Mehemet Ali against him. Hitherto, however, the

Sultan has never been induced to bestir himself. It is evident that if this
matter is taken up seriously, and with a resolution to curb the power of
Russia in the East, the greatest diplomatic judgment and firmness will be
requisite in our Ambassador at St. Petersburg; and how under these
circumstances the Duke can send Londonderry, and how Peel can have
consented to his nomination, I am at a loss to conceive. It appears just
worse than what Palmerston did, which was to send nobody at all. In all this
complication of interests in the East, France is ready to act with us if we
will let her, and Austria lies like a great log, favouring Russia and opposing
her inert mass to anything like mouvement, no matter with what object or in
what quarter.

1835.

January 1st, 1835
Parliament dissolved at last, and all speculation about the elections will
soon be settled in certainty. It is remarkable what confidence is expressed
by both sides. Three Tories stand for the City; but Ward told me they rather
expected to run their opponents hard than to come in, but that such an
exhibition of strength would be important, as it will. The Duke of
Wellington is so well aware of the obstacle that he is to Stanley’s joining the
Government that he wanted not to belong to it originally, and he is now
meditating his retreat, in order to open the way for Stanley. It cannot be
denied that he has acted very nobly throughout this business, and upon
nothing but a sense of duty, without regard for himself. Some doubts have
occurred to me of the vast utility of Stanley, and his being so entirely
without a party proves that he is not held in very high estimation, and
though I should be glad to see a better set of names in the various offices
(which are for the most part miserably filled) I should not altogether like to
see the Duke of Wellington retire out of deference to such men as the four
who would succeed him, and those who would have to retire with him. I
heard a ridiculous anecdote of the King the other day. He wrote to the Duke
about something—no matter what, but I believe some appointment—and
added á propos de bottes, ‘His Majesty begs to call the attention of the
Duke to the theoretical state of Persia.’ The Duke replied that he was aware
of the importance of Persia, but submitted that it was a matter which did not
press for the moment.
Yesterday I dined with Robarts, and after dinner he gave me an
account of the state of his borough (Maidstone), and as it is a tolerably fair
sample probably of the real condition of the generality of boroughs, and of
the principles and disposition of their constituencies, I will put it down.
There are 1,200 voters; the Dissenters are very numerous and of every
imaginable sect and persuasion. He has been member seventeen years; the

place very corrupt. Formerly (before the Reform Bill), when the
constituency was less numerous, the matter was easily and simply
conducted; the price of votes was as regularly fixed as the price of bread—
so much for a single vote and so much for a plumper, and this he had to pay.
After the Reform Bill he resolved to pay no STATE OF THE CONSTITUENCIES. more
money, as corruption was to cease. The consequence was that during his
canvass none of the people who had formerly voted for him would promise
him their votes. They all sulked and hesitated, and, in short, waited to see
what would be offered them. I asked him what were the new constituencies.
‘If possible worse than the old.’ The people are generally alive to public
affairs—look into the votes and speeches of members, give their opinions—
but are universally corrupt. They have a sour feeling against what are
nicknamed abuses, rail against sinnicures, as they call them, and descant
upon the enormity of such things while they are forced to work all day long
and their families have not enough to eat. But the one prevailing object
among the whole community is to make money of their votes, and though
he says there are some exceptions, they are very few indeed. Robarts too is
a Reformer, and supports all Whig and reforming Governments; but he does
so (like many others) from fear. What he most dreads is collision, and most
desires is quiet, and he thinks non-resistance the best way. There is no
reason to believe that other constituencies materially differ from this; what
therefore is the result? Power has been transferred to a low class of persons;
so low as to be dissatisfied and malignant, high enough to be half-
instructed; so poor that money is an object to them, and without any
principle which should deter them from getting it in any way they can: they
may, on the whole, be considered as disaffected towards existing
institutions, for when they contrast their own life of labour and privation
with the wealth and splendour which they see around them, there is little
difficulty in persuading them that they are grievously wronged, and that the
wrong is in the nature of the institutions themselves. These general
considerations make them therefore lean towards those who promise better
things, and strive to introduce changes; but as their immediate wants are
always uppermost, their votes are generally at the disposal of the highest
bidder, whatever his politics may be.

January 3rd, 1835
They can find nobody to go to India. Lord Ellenborough (by Peel’s
desire) wrote to the Duke and asked his advice, at the same time suggesting
Sir James Graham. The Duke replied that he thought it better not to have
anything to do with that party at present; that the best man he knew would
be Lord Heytesbury, if he would go, or such a man as Lord Fitzroy
Somerset, whom he mentioned, not because he had been long known to
him, and had served under himself, but because he was a very able man,
and the best man of business he was acquainted with. Kemp refused it;
Ellenborough said that the more he looked into Indian affairs, the more
clearly he saw the urgency of sending a Governor-General. Whether by this
he means to imply that Lord William Bentinck has done ill, I know not; but
he is always said to have done admirably well. In a letter which the Duke
wrote to the King, not long ago, he told him that it was desirable to make as
few changes in the foreign policy of the Government as possible.
Notwithstanding the confidence of his underlings, and of the crowd of fools
and females who follow the camp, it is clear that the Duke and Peel are both
sensible of the danger of their situation.

January 4th, 1835
There is every prospect of a miserable defeat of the Conservatives in
the City, which will be doubly disastrous, first as to the election, which is an
important one, and secondly because it will go far to neutralise the effect of
the famous address they got up. This is owing to mismanagement. The
Committee has been bad and negligent; then they did a very foolish thing in
ousting Pattison from Harwich to make room for Bonham; if they had left
Pattison alone (which Harris had, I believe, pledged himself should be
done), Lyall would have come in for the City, and perhaps Ward too; but
when the electioneering affairs are left to William Peel, Ross, and Granville
Somerset, no wonder there is not much dexterity and finesse displayed. I
have published a pamphlet to help them; but as I never put my name to my
pamphlets, of course nobody reads them.

January 5th, 1835
Sebastiani is coming here as Ambassador—that is, unless he changes
his mind and pleads ill-health. The French Government notified to us his
appointment ST. AULAIRE AND PRINCESS METTERNICH. without asking our consent,
and when the Duke stated it to the Cabinet, objections were made; he
accordingly wrote the same day to Bacourt, stating that the Cabinet thought
the appointment objectionable, and that there would be difficulties in
transacting business with him. The French Government expressed surprise,
and rather insist upon their appointment, and as ours does not think it worth
while to have a dispute about it, he is to come; but we think they have
behaved very ill, for the Duke never proposed the Paris Embassy to Lord
Cowley till he had communicated with France, and ascertained that the
nomination would be agreeable to the King. It was expected that St. Aulaire
or Latour-Maubourg would have come here. It is of Madame de St. Aulaire
that Talleyrand said, ‘Elle cherche l’esprit que son mari trouve.’ (This
anecdote I suspect not to be true, or not true of Madame de St. Aulaire, who
is a very intelligent, agreeable woman, more lively and with more finesse
d’esprit than her husband.)
St. Aulaire is Ambassador at Vienna, and, however clever, he either
wants presence of mind or is touchy, as the following anecdote shows.
Madame de Metternich is a fine handsome woman, ill brought up,
impertinent, insouciante, and assez bourrue—au reste, quick and amusing.
She went to a ball at St. Aulaire’s with a fine coronet of diamonds on, and
when he came to receive her he said, ‘Mon dieu, madame, quelle belle
couronne vous avez sur la tête!’ ‘Au moins,’ said she, ‘ce n’est par une
couronne que j’ai volée.’ Instead of turning it into a joke, he made a serious
affair of it, and went the next day to Metternich with a formal complaint;
but Metternich said, ‘Mais mon cher, que voulez-vous? Vous voyez que j’ai
épousé une femme sans éducation; je ne puis pas l’empêcher de dire de
pareilles sottises, mais vous sentez bien que ce serait fort inconvénant pour
moi de m’en mêler. Allons! il n’y faut plus penser,’ and so turned it off, and
turned him out, by insisting on making a joke of the affair, as St. Aulaire
had better have done at first.

January 7th, 1835
Just as might have been expected, the Conservative candidates in the
City are defeated by an enormous majority. Pattison, the Governor of the
Bank, the Liberal candidate who came in second on the poll, having been
proposed by Jones Loyd,[2] the richest banker in the City, and perhaps the
richest man in Europe.[3] Such outward demonstrations as these
unquestionably afford a very plausible answer to the opposite cry, and the
victory on the Radical side is great and important. Ward told me they should
at least run them hard, so that the disappointment must be grievous; still it is
asserted that the greatest part of the wealth of the City will be found in the
columns of the address—but then the votes are in the other scale. The
elections, as far as they have gone, are rather against the Government, but
not showing any material difference in numbers—sufficient, however, to
prove that, in point of fact, Peel’s declarations have produced little or no
effect, and that the various considerations that have been urged on the
country and the appeals to its reason have been all alike thrown away.
[2] [Mr. Jones Loyd, afterwards created Lord Overstone.]
[3] [The four City members were: Matthew Wood, James Pattison, William
Crawford, and George Grote.]

I saw a letter which Barnes wrote to Henry de Ros yesterday, in which
he speaks with horror and alarm of the prevailing spirit. He says the people
are deaf with passion, and in the abrupt dissolution of the late Government
and the bad composition of this they will see a conspiracy against their
liberties, and mad and preposterous as the idea is, there is no eradicating it
from their brains. I am afraid this is too true, and though no alarmist
generally, and rather sluggish of fear, I do begin to tremble; and while I cast
my eyes about in all directions to see what resource is in store for us, I can
find none that is anything like satisfactory; the violence of party-spirit
seems to blind everybody concerned in politics to all contingent
possibilities, and every feeling of decency and propriety is forgotten.
Last night I was at Lady Holland’s; there were Lord and Lady Holland,
Mulgrave, Seaford, Allen and Burdett. I asked them if they had read Whittle
Harvey’s speech at VIOLENCE OF PARTY SPIRIT. Southwark, which was a tissue of
the grossest and most outrageous abuse and ridicule of the King and Queen.
They said ‘No,’ so I read to them some of the most offensive passages. Not

the slightest disgust did they express. Holland merely said to one allegation,
‘That is not true,’ and Mulgrave laughed, and said, ‘Whittle is an eccentric
politician.’

January 8th, 1835
On the whole the returns yesterday presented a gain to Government of
about 10 votes, many elections turning out contrary to expectation both
ways, and some very severe contests. The City was a great defeat: the
lowest Whig beat the highest Tory by above 1,400. It is remarkable that
many who signed the address to the King voted for the Radical candidates.
At dinner yesterday at Lord Chesterfield’s I met the Chancellor, whom
I have not seen for some time. After dinner we talked about the state of
affairs. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘will it do? what do you think?’ I said, ‘I don’t know
what to think, but on the whole I am disposed to think it will not do. I don’t
see how you are to get on.’ ‘What do you think of Peel?’ said he; ‘is he a fit
man for the purpose?’ ‘He is a very able man, and prudent.’ ‘Aye, but is he
enough of a man of the world? does he know enough of what is going on in
the world?’ To which I said, ‘You have just hit upon the point that I have
been lamenting. He has not lived in the world, and he has not about him
those who do, and who can give him that particular sort of information and
advice of which he stands in need; and I think he has, in great measure
owing to this, committed a great blunder in forming such a Government as
he has done; he has not been able to throw off the old prejudices of keeping
to his party, and thought it necessary to depend upon them, when he ought
to have seen that the case was one out of ordinary rules, that the support of
the Tories alone could not maintain him, and that, if they would not give it
him for their own interest, and in furtherance of their own principles,
without insisting upon being in office, though he might not be able to get on
without it, he would still less be able to get on with their support alone. In
his place I should have told them I could not take them in, that if they
would confide in me, and let me help the country out of its difficulties in
my own way, I would do the best I could for it and for them.’ Lyndhurst
said that ‘he was not much consulted;’ that if he had had the formation of
the Government he should have gone to work very differently; that he

would have had a small Cabinet, eight or ten at most, composed of new
men, leaving out Aberdeen, Goulburn, Herries, and the rest of that
description, employing them if possible abroad, or if not, telling them that it
was necessary to lay them on the shelf for a time, and that he would do
what he could for them at a future period; that Ellenborough had told Peel
he had much better not take him into the Government; that he was aware he
was not popular, and though he might be of some use with regard to details
of business, his support out of office would (he thought), on the whole, be
more serviceable than his being in the Cabinet. Peel said that his
willingness to sacrifice himself only made it more incumbent on him not to
permit him to do so, and insisted upon having him. Lyndhurst said he had
hoped that Sandon would have been taken, and he had suggested Lord
Carnarvon, to which Peel replied that he was still so young that he thought
he might be passed over for the present I said, ‘Why it is the present for
which it is necessary to provide, and it is now that he might have been made
available.’ (Carnarvon would not join on account of ill-health.) We then
talked over what sort of a Cabinet might have been got together, of new
names, moderate men, few in number. He admitted that a great mistake had
been committed, and that, as it was irreparable, so it would very probably
be fatal. He praised the Duke of Wellington. I said I would not have taken
him in, or have got him to go to Ireland, for he was ready to do anything to
advance the cause. He liked this idea very much. I reminded him that the
first day we had talked over the matter he had admitted that it would never
do to bolster up the old concern again, and that Hardinge had told me the
Tories were all ready to THE MOVEMENT AT HOLLAND HOUSE. make any sacrifices or
postpone their claims, so that such a course as we suggested need not have
been difficult. I told him of Barnes’s letter, and of his fears, and what he
said of the effect produced by the composition of the Government. He said
the ‘Times’ had behaved admirably to them, and the Government were
under great obligations to me for what I had done in that matter. I told him I
was glad to hear they were on such good terms, as having been instrumental
to the connection, which I had no doubt had entailed an immediate loss on
the proprietors of the paper.
He asked me if I thought the Opposition meant to refuse the Supplies. I
said I had no doubt they did. ‘Then we must go.’ But he still expects they
will have 300 votes in the House of Commons, and with that he calculates

that they may struggle on with one-half of the House of Commons, the
House of Lords, the King, and a large proportion of the wealth and
respectability of the country. It would be difficult, but he thought they might
get on; but that the fact was, there was no going on after the transfer of
power to another class, which the Reform Bill had effected. I said there was
no doubt of that, and that the Reform Bill had produced virtually a complete
revolution in this country. ‘Aye,’ said he, ‘much more than that of ’88.’

January 9th, 1835
Dined at Holland House; they are satisfied with the elections.
Mulgrave said that, out of the present return, they had to add thirty to their
list and to deduct thirteen of their original calculations, giving them
seventeen more than they expected. There is a small gain to the Tories, but
nothing like enough. It cannot do; all the moderate Whigs (for it is not a
question of Tories) are beaten in the metropolitan districts. Spankie’s
admirable addresses have ensured his defeat. Duncombe, immediately after
an exposure of the most disgraceful kind, will be returned by a majority
doubling that of any of the other candidates; and it is not a little remarkable
that Duncombe is supported by all the Dissenters, even the Quakers, with
whom austerity of morals and a decent behaviour are supposed to have
weight—but the rabid spirit of disaffection to government and rule bears
down every other consideration, and these ‘enlightened electors’ (as their
flatterers always call them) are frantic with passion against everything
belonging to what they call ‘the aristocracy’ of the country. But who can
wonder at these people, when we see the great Whig Lords smiling
complacently at their brutal violence and senseless rage? At Holland House
they talk in the same strain; not that they utter any indecent language, but
they are passionate for the success of the movement. One single object have
they—to eject Peel and the Tory Government; they own they don’t know
what is to follow; they do not deny that the movement must be accelerated,
but they don’t care; they say the Duke is responsible, for he ought not to
have accepted the King’s commission, and then Melbourne must have been
sent for again the next day. Now they must take the consequences—that is,
the King and the Tories. They said last night that by the old Government the
movement might have been checked; by any that can be formed on the

downfall of the new it cannot—or at least that it must go farther than it
would have done. I asked, ‘Then is there anything you think worse than
advancing the movement?’ ‘Yes,’ cried out Lord Holland, ‘making the
movement stand still.’ ‘And do you mean that you believe there is any
danger of that, and that the movement (the progress of improvement) ever
can stand still?’ ‘Yes, I do believe it,’ &c.... Such a miserable apology for
their insane violence puts argument and reasoning out of the question; they
are resolved to fight for power, ‘to let slip the dogs of war,’ ignorant whither
they will go, and careless what shall be their prey.

January 10th, 1835
Nothing is more remarkable in these elections than the confidence of
both parties in the result, and the difference of their statements as to actual
numbers, Bonham, who is now, faute de mieux, the man-of-all-work of the
Tories, told me last night that they had an actual majority on the returns of
about twenty, whereas I went through the list, and after detecting some
errors, made out that there is a majority of about thirty the other way. The
Whig language CONTEST AT ROCHESTER. is still the same always, and everywhere
—that they do not see what is to happen when this Government is out; that
no daylight appears, but still that out it shall go. They own that they must (if
they return to power) do a great deal more than they would otherwise have
done, but that while they obey that necessity, they make it easy to their
consciences, because it is the other party which has imposed it upon them.

January 11th, 1835
The Government people still declare their satisfaction at the result of
the elections, and make out that the numbers are tolerably even. The
contests are curious from their closeness. Charles Wellesley lost at
Rochester by one, Lushington by four. There is a great number of similar
cases; in that of Rochester it is more remarkable from the accident by which
the election was lost. There were two ships in quarantine, one of which had
one voter on board and the other two; they had both sailed the same day
from the port they left, but one had been longer on the voyage. The ship

with one voter had a right to be released on the 9th, the last day of the
election, the other not till three days later. As the circumstances were the
same. Sir J. Marshall, the Superintendent, suggested that both might be
released together, but I did not dare relax the severity of the restriction.[4]
Rosslyn was rather for doing it, but I persuaded him it would be dangerous,
as, if the election should turn upon it, we should never hear the last of it,
especially the Duke, to whose charge it would be laid; and the election
actually turned on those two votes. The best chance that I see is, that when
the hour of struggle arrives there may be more moderate men than the Whig
leaders are aware of—more who, without supporting, still less joining, the
new Government, will abstain from taking a violent part against them. This
is my only hope, for as to a majority, I have not the slightest expectation of
any such thing, and am at a loss to conceive on what they count.
[4] [The administration of the Quarantine Regulations is vested in the Privy
Council, and exercised by the Clerk of the Council]

January 12th, 1835
Up to the latest returns the Tories make out that they have a majority,
or at least an equality; the Whigs, that they have a majority of about
seventy. The latter calculation is nearer to the truth, and it only remains to
be seen how many of their people will refuse to support extreme measures.
Last night at Holland House Mulgrave was perfectly furious with Charles
Fox for saying he would not oppose Manners Sutton being put in the chair.
It has been asserted all along by some of the opposite party that Peel’s
measures have been influenced (especially in the composition of his
Government) by a desire to keep the Tories together, and prepare a strong
Opposition. I suspect there is some truth in this, for I can account in no
other way for the strange appointments he makes, and the undiluted
Toryism of his Government. He goes on the old aristocratic principle of
taking high birth and connection as substitutes for other qualifications, and
he never seems to consider the former avowed sentiments of any man in
weighing his fitness for office. He has just made Sydney Herbert Secretary
to the Board of Control, an office of great labour and involving
considerable business in the House of Commons.[5] He is about twenty-two
or twenty three years old, unpractised in business, and never spoke but once

in the House of Commons, when he made one of those pretty first speeches
which prove little or nothing, and that was in opposition to the Dissenters.
He may be very fit for this place, but it remains to be proved, and I am
surprised he did not make him begin with a Lordship of the Treasury or
some such thing, and put Gladstone, who is a very clever man, in that post.
Praed is First Secretary to the Board of Control, and will do the business.
[5] [The injustice of this remark has since become very obvious, for no man
was better qualified to enter upon official life, or to run a great career in it, than
Sydney Herbert. It must also be said of Sir Robert Peel that he was ever on the
watch for the young and rising statesmen who, he said, were hereafter to govern
the country; and a very large proportion of the men who have since played a
most conspicuous and useful part were introduced by Sir Robert Peel to public
life—Sydney Herbert, the Duke of Newcastle, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Cardwell,
and others.]

I very much incline to believe that, although Peel says SIR JOHN
HOBHOUSE’S VIEW OF AFFAIRS. he is satisfied with the returns, he does not expect
the thing will last, and that upon this conviction he is determined to secure a
retreat with such a force as shall make him formidable hereafter. Such as
the appointments are at home, so are they abroad: Londonderry to St.
Petersburg, Stuart to Vienna, and in all probability Strangford to
Constantinople—the three men who are considered the great upholders of
the Anti-Liberal system. (Stuart told everybody he had the offer, but it was
not true.)
The Duke of Leuchtenberg arrived last night. The picture of the young
Queen of Portugal (which is probably flattered) does not make her very
tempting.

January 15th, 1835
The day before yesterday I fell in with Hobhouse, and we walked
together for some time. He said he could not understand what the
Government people meant by claiming a majority, as he heard they did; that
on the Borough returns the Opposition had a majority of 100 more or less,
but that the difference could only be accounted for by one party including
all those who call themselves Whigs, and who supported the late
Government, and by the other party counting those who, though not

supporters, would be disposed to give them a trial. He wondered at and
blamed the constitution of the Government, ridiculed the idea of Stanley
succeeding Peel, acknowledged that he saw no possibility of any other
Government being formed on the dissolution of this, and had no conception
what would happen—that another dissolution would be indispensable. I
said that I did not see any more than he did what they were to do when they
had got Peel out; that their junction with the Radicals must end there, unless
(which I could not believe) they meant to come into office on the principle
of supporting and carrying all the measures they had opposed last year. He
said, ‘I for one will go no farther than I did then; no, that is out of the
question.’ He said the restoration of Melbourne’s Government was
impossible after what had passed; they could not look the King in the face
again, nor he them, after such a clear intimation on his part that he disliked
them, and dreaded their principles. Soon after, however, he said that any
other Government must be formed on a more popular principle, and
especially must make the arrangement of the House of Lords a condition,
for it was impossible to go on as things were, between the two houses; that
it might have been discovered when the Reform Bill was proposed that this
would be the inevitable consequence of passing that measure, but that all
this he did not expect to be accomplished without a violent collision, which
would very likely lead to a republic; that he should be sorry for the
disturbance, but was prepared for it, and if a sacrifice was to be made, he
could not hesitate in choosing the object of it.
Yesterday morning I met Duncannon, and talked it all over. I asked
him if he saw any chance of forming a Government, and if he figured to
himself what the King would do. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘he will send for Stanley.’
‘What next?’ ‘He may send for Lord Grey.’ ‘Will Lord Grey propose such
measures as you think indispensable?’ ‘If he will not return, or won’t go the
length, he may send for Melbourne again; but it is clear he—the King—
must be prepared for a more Radical Government.’ I said, ‘I don’t think he
will ever consent to take such a one, or to agree to the measures they will
propose to him.’ ‘Oh, but he must, he can’t help himself.’ ‘Well, but my
belief is that, happen what may, he will not.’ ‘Why, you don’t think he will
abdicate?’ ‘Yes, I do, rather than agree to certain things.’ ‘Well, but then he
must abdicate.’ Such is the language of the leaders of the other party, and so
calmly do they contemplate the possibility of such a consummation. The

point on which all this turns is evidently the destruction of the House of
Lords. The Whigs find it necessary to finish the work they began, and to
destroy the last bulwark of Conservative power. Stanley’s speech at his
election, which was very able and eloquent, has evidently disappointed
them. They had cherished a hope that he would unite with them at last,
which they now find he will not do. There has been a great debate in their
camp whether they shall attack the Speaker or not, but it seems fixed that
THE COUNTY ELECTIONS. they shall, and probably they will be beaten. I am glad
they do this.
Theodore Hook, whom I met at dinner the other day, and who is an
âme damnée of the Speaker’s, said that he was ready to give up the chair if
it was thought imprudent to fight for it; he also said (which I don’t believe)
that the Home Office had been offered him, and that he had declined it
because he could not quit the chair without a peerage, and that he should be
of more use in it than in the House of Lords.
Theodore Hook improvised in a wonderful way that evening; he sang a
song, the burthen of which was ‘Good Night,’ inimitably good, and which
might have been written down. I heard two good things at dinner yesterday,
one of Spankie’s. In his canvass he met with a refusal from some
tradesman, who told him he should vote for Duncombe and Wakley.
Spankie said, ‘Well, my friend, I am sorry you won’t vote for me, and I can
only say that I hope you may have Tom Duncombe for your customer, and
Wakley for your tenant.’[6] The other is attributed to Alvanley. Some
reformer was clamouring for the expulsion of the Bishops from the House
of Lords, but said he would not have them all go; he would leave two: ‘To
keep up the breed, I suppose,’ said the other.
[6] [The one was celebrated for non-payment of his bills, and the other was
suspected of setting fire to his house. Wakley’s house was burnt, and he brought
an action against the Insurance Office, which declined to pay his policy. I forget
what was the result of the trial, but that of the evidence was a conviction of his
own instrumentality.]

January 17th, 1835

The Middlesex election terminated in the return of Hume by about 400
votes—Wood got a majority of about 250 at first, but could not sustain it. It
would have been a capital thing to turn out Hume, but I never expected it.

January 20th, 1835
Sir George Murray is beaten at Perth; James Wortley at Forfar—blows
to the Government. On the other hand, Palmerston is beaten in Hants, at
which everybody rejoices, for he is marvellously unpopular; they would
have liked to illuminate the Foreign Office. Lord Harrowby called on me
yesterday; he told me my pamphlet had been attributed to Croker in some
company where he had been. Jonathan Peel told me yesterday morning that
Lady Alice Kennedy had sent word to his wife that the Queen is with child;
if it be true, and a queer thing if it is, it will hardly come to anything at her
age, and with her health; but what a difference it would make!

January 23rd, 1834
Within the last few days the county elections have given a considerable
turn to the state of affairs. The Conservatives have been everywhere
triumphant. Norfolk, Derbyshire, Hants, Lancashire—two Whigs turned out
and two Conservatives returned; Ingilby in Lincolnshire; one in Surrey, one
in Kent: and if these affairs had not been infamously managed, they would
have returned two in Surrey, two in Kent, and (if they had put up a better
man) one in the other division of Norfolk. The great and most important
victory, however, is Francis Egerton in Lancashire, who is nearly 1,000
above his opponents, and has been received with astonishing enthusiasm,
and was the popular candidate, even at Manchester and with the mob. These
elections have damped the spirits of the Radicals, and proportionally raised
those of the Government. The ‘Morning Chronicle’ was yesterday quite
silent on the subject, and at Holland House, where I dined, they were
evidently in no small disgust. I told Lord Holland that I considered the
Lancashire election as the most important event that had occurred, and one
calculated to have a great moral effect in favour of the Government, which

he owned was true, and they did not deny that the Government had cause
for elation.
In the morning we had a meeting at the Council Office to consider of
the removal of assizes, when Lyndhurst in his off-hand way said to me,
‘Well, I think we are safe now; I have no fears.’ ‘Haven’t you,’ I said, ‘but I
have.’ ‘Oh no, we are on a rock—adamant.’ I don’t think they are yet in a
condition to begin triumphing, but I certainly see daylight, which I did not
before. Nobody can possibly deny that there is a great reaction in the
country; and though the CHURCH REFORM BILL. weight of the towns, and the
power of the ten-pounders thrown into the other scale, make it
preponderate, there is a strong counteracting force which will enable the
better cause to maintain a respectable fight. I expect that Francis Egerton’s
election will produce indirectly very important consequences, and will be
the means of proving to moderate, doubting, timorous politicians that they
need not shrink from avowing whatever Conservative sentiments they really
do entertain. Much remains to be done, many difficulties to be surmounted,
before anything like security can be felt, but undoubtedly the political
horizon looks much brighter than it did.

January 25th, 1835
A ridiculous thing happened the other day. The Speaker came to the
Council Office in a great stew about the attacks on him, and wanted to look
at the register of the names of those who had attended at the different
Councils. Though I think he is a pauvre sire, he has a very tolerable case
here, and I wrote a letter to the ‘Times’ in his defence, and signed it
‘Onslow,’ happening to think of Speaker Onslow. The next day appeared a
letter from Lord Onslow, declaring that he was not the author of a letter
which had appeared in his name. The ‘Times’ published it, adding they
thought he could hardly be serious. Munster told me the day before
yesterday that he was told of the Queen’s being with child on the day of the
Lord Mayor’s dinner; that she is now between two and three months gone.
Of course there will be plenty of scandal. Alvanley proposes that the psalm
‘Lord, how wonderful are thy works’ should be sung. It so happens,
however, that Howe has not been with the Court for a considerable time.

January 27th, 1835
There is a Committee sitting at my office to arrange the Church Bill—
Rosslyn, Wharncliffe, Ellenborough, and Herries. It is generally believed
they mean to bring forward some very extensive measures. Allen says, ‘The
honest Whigs cannot oppose it with honour, nor the Tories support it
without infamy,’ that all the honest Whigs would support it, the honest
Tories oppose it, the dishonest Tories would support, and the dishonest
Whigs oppose it. He told me an anecdote at the same time which shows
what the supineness and sense of security of the Church were twenty years
ago. An architect built a chapel on Lord Holland’s land, near Holland
House, and wished it to be appropriated to the service of the Church of
England, and served by a curate. The rector objected and refused his
consent. There was no remedy against him, and all that could be done was
to make it a Methodist meeting-house, or a Roman Catholic chapel, either
of which by taking out a licence, the builder could do. However, he got
Lord Holland to speak to the Archbishop of Canterbury (Sutton), to tell him
the difficulty, and request his interference with the rector to suffer this
chapel to be opened to an Orthodox congregation. After some delay the
Archbishop told Holland that he had better advise his friend to take out a
licence, and make it a Catholic or Dissenting chapel, as he thought best. The
builder could not afford to lose the capital he had expended, and acted upon
the advice of the Primate. The chapel is a meeting-house to this day. I shall
be very glad if this reform of the Church is well done and gives satisfaction,
and I do not know that any of the present Ministers are pledged against a
measure which improves the discipline without diminishing the revenues of
the Church, but certainly reforms, and especially ecclesiastical reforms, do
come with a bad grace from them. It is ludicrous to see the ‘Standard’
writing Church reform articles; and the other day I looked back at
Knatchbull’s speech at the Kentish meeting, a week after the dissolution of
the late Government, in which he expressed an earnest hope that he might
leave this country ‘without any change in Church or State.’ He has been
Anti-everything during his whole life, and now he is come into office to
carry into effect ‘safe and necessary reforms,’ which he never could
perceive the slightest occasion for while he was out. All these things are
disgusting; they disgust one with political life, they lower the characters of
public men. One strains one’s eyes in vain to catch a sight of sincerity,

straightforwardness, disinterestedness, consistency; each party we have
constantly acting with a view to its own INSECURITY OF THE TORIES. interests as a
party, and always disregarding consequences with miserable
shortsightedness.

February 2nd, 1835
The elections are over, and still each side claims a majority. It will turn
out probably that the Government have about 270 thick and thin men. Since
the Lancashire election, the Whigs have certainly not been so elated, though
they still expect to succeed. They begin with the Speakership, and put up
Abercromby, who is probably the best candidate they could select; he is a
dull, grave man, sensible and hard-headed I fancy, but it has always been
matter of astonishment to me that they should make so much of him as they
do. The Duke of Wellington is constantly regretting that he did not abstain
from taking office, as he wished to do, and I hear that Peel now thinks it
would have been better: but he thinks so because he fancies that Stanley
would have joined if the Duke had not been there, which is after all very
doubtful. Stanley has preserved the strictest neutrality through the late
contest, and been very guarded and cautious in his language—so much so,
that the Whigs think he will vote for Abercromby against Manners Sutton,
which I don’t believe. The Church Reform is in active preparation; I know
nothing of its details.
Pozzo di Borgo is coming here, and the Emperor sends him partly to
save time and, Madame de Lieven writes me word, ‘to prove his goodwill,
by sending his ablest and most confidential diplomatist.’ Old Talleyrand
would very likely have been glad enough to come back too (while the Duke
is in office), but he is gone to Richecote. A great mystery is still made about
the Queen’s grossesse; the medical men believe it, though they think it no
certainty.

February 8th, 1834

On Monday last we had the Sheriffs’ dinner at Lord Rosslyn’s,[7]
where I met for the first time all the new men. Murray did not come, for
since his defeat in Perthshire he no longer considers himself of the Cabinet.
Before dinner Peel told me he had offered the vacant Lordship of the
Treasury to Charles Canning,[8] in a letter to Lady Canning, saying it would
give him great pleasure to introduce her son into public life, and that he
should be glad to treat him with confidence, and do all that lay in him to
promote his success. Lady Canning wrote a very gracious answer, saying
that she preferred his being in Parliament some time before he took office,
but neither he nor she was indisposed to support him and his Government.
At this dinner the Duke talked to me about Spain, and said that the affair at
the Post Office at Madrid, in which Canterac was killed, was the most
lamentable thing that had happened, and the most discreditable to the
Government; that if the Carlists did not rise upon it all over Spain, it was
clear there were none; that it was a most extraordinary war, in which the
Carlists had the superiority in the field, but possessed no fortified and even
no open town; and that, notwithstanding all the plunder and devastation
incidental to such a state of things, all the farmers in the disturbed provinces
regularly paid their rents.
[7] [The Lord President’s annual dinner to the Cabinet, at which the Sheriffs
for the ensuing year are selected, to be appointed by the King at the next
Council.]
[8] [Afterwards Viscount Canning and Governor-General of India in 1856.]

Sandon is to move the address in the House of Commons, Lord
Carnarvon refused to move it in the House of Lords. I think the Church
Reform Commission, which was gazetted a few days ago, has done good,
especially as it is backed up by Peel’s refusing to fill up the vacant
Prebendary of Westminster, and placing it at the disposal of the
Commissioners.
I went to Oatlands on Wednesday for two nights, and met the Duchess,
Countess, the Granvilles, and Pahlen. It was agreeable enough. Lord
Granville told us a curious story of an atrocity very recently committed in
France. The governor of a military academy had objected to one of the
officers, a professor, bringing a woman who lived with him into the
establishment. The man persisted, and he finally ordered her to be ejected.
Resolving to be revenged, the officer took these means; he bribed a servant

of the governor’s, who let him into the house at night; when he got into the
bedroom of his daughter, ravished her, and THE KING’S WHIMS. then wounded
her severely with some sharp instrument, but not mortally. The girl is still
alive, but in a state of frenzy; the case is coming before the French
tribunals. [This was the famous case of La Roncière, very inaccurately
stated above. There is now little doubt that La Roncière was innocent, and
that the story was got up by the girl to revenge herself on him for some
slight.]
My brothers tell me that the Duke is bored to death with the King, who
thinks it necessary to be giving advice and opinions upon different matters,
always to the last degree ridiculous and absurd. He is just now mightily
indignant at Lord Napier’s affair at Canton, and wants to go to war with
China. He writes in this strain to the Duke, who is obliged to write long
answers, very respectfully telling him what an old fool he is. Another
crotchet of his is to buy the Island of St. Bartholomew (which belongs to
Denmark, and which the Danes want to sell) for fear the Russians should
buy it, as he is very jealous of Russia. The Duke told him that it would cost
70,000ℓ. or 80,000ℓ., for which they must go to Parliament; and he did not
think any House of Commons we were likely to have would vote such a
sum for such a purpose. Then he does not at all like Pozzo di Borgo’s
coming here, and wrote to say that since he was to come, it was well that he
would have the vigilant eye of the Duke to watch him, for he never could
look upon him in any other light than as the servile tool of advancing the
ambitious objects of an aggrandising and unprincipled Power, or words to
that effect. He thinks his present Ministers do not treat him well, inasmuch
as they do not tell him enough. The last, it seems, constantly fed him with
scraps of information which he twaddled over, and probably talked
nonsense about; but it is difficult to imagine anything more irksome for a
Government beset with difficulties like this than to have to discuss the
various details of their measures with a silly bustling old fellow, who can by
no possibility comprehend the scope and bearing of anything.

CHAPTER XXVII.
The Speakership — Temporary Houses of Parliament — Church
Reform — Dissenters’ Marriage Bill — Peel’s False Position —
Burke — Palmerston’s Talents as a Man of Business and
Unpopularity — Sympathy of Continental Courts with the
Tories — Abercromby elected Speaker — Defeat of the
Government — Tactics of the Opposition — The Speaker does
not dine with Peel — Meeting of Stanley’s Friends — Debate on
the Address — Lord John Russell leads the Opposition — The
Stanley Party — Second Defeat of the Government — Peel’s
Ability — The Lichfield House Meeting — Debate on Lord
Londonderry’s Appointment — His Speech in the Lords and
Resignation — Sir E. Sugden resigns the Great Seal of Ireland
— Lady Canterbury — Brougham in the House of Lords —
Peel’s Readiness and Courage — Lord Canterbury and Stratford
Canning proposed for Canada — Approaching Fall of the Peel
Government — Meetings of the Opposition — Further Defeat
— Sir Robert Peel’s own View of the State of Affairs — He
resigns.

February 14th, 1835
There has been a wonderful lull for some time past, and though we are
said to be, and I believe we in fact are, on the eve of a crisis of great
importance, perfect tranquillity prevails universally (except, of course, in
Ireland), and men go about their daily occupations without any signs of
apprehension. The state of this country is a curious political paradox;
however, speculation will soon be lost in certainty, so it is of no use
thinking more of the matter. The newspapers have been filled usque ad
nauseam with the debates about the Speakership, and both parties are

equally confident, but the bets are in favour of Sutton. The argument on his
side has been triumphant, and the Abercrombians have not urged the best
that they might. Tom Duncombe, who at first said he would vote for Sutton,
and now votes the other way, puts it on the true ground, ‘that it is a good
factious vote.’ I have little doubt that Peel will come down OPENING OF THE
SESSION. in Parliament with a fair and reasonable case, but I have no hope that
he will propose or agree to anything satisfactorily about the Irish Church;
and if anything overturns his Government, it will be that unhappy question
of appropriation. From George Dawson’s language, whom I fell in with the
other morning, I see they are resolved to stand like rocks in defending ‘the
Church,’ as they call it. All this week and the last I have been at my office
the whole day with our Judicial Committee, which works very well. We
have Shadwell, Parke, Bosanquet and Erskine continually; and Vaughan,
Nicholl and Jenner occasionally. Alava talked to me about the Duke of
Wellington, of whom he said everybody was afraid, even his nearest
relations, and that he found him, ‘très changé pour lui.’

February 15th, 1835
Dined at Miss Berry’s, and Lord John Russell came after; told me he
had 320 people to vote with him on the Speakership (of whom perhaps 20
will not come), so his party make sure of it. Nobody talks of anything else,
and what has been written on the subject in pamphlets and newspapers
would fill volumes. Though it is become inconceivably tiresome, I cannot
help writing and talking about it myself, so impossible is it to avoid the
contagion. I went yesterday to see the two Houses of Parliament;[1] the old
House of Lords (now House of Commons) is very spacious and convenient;
but the present House of Lords is a wretched dog-hole. The Lords will be
very sulky in such a place, and in a great hurry to get back to their own
House, or to have another. For the first time there is a gallery in the House
of Commons reserved for reporters, which is quite inconsistent with their
standing orders, and the prohibition which still in form exists against
publishing the debates. It is a sort of public and avowed homage to opinion,
and a recognition of the right of the people to know through the medium of
the press all that passes within those walls.

[1] [The old Houses of Parliament were burnt down on October 16, 1834,
during Mr. Greville’s absence from town in the autumn. The Houses here spoken
of were the temporary buildings used during the erection of the new Houses.]

Lord John said to me, ‘Do you remember last year, when we were
talking, I told you I thought the House of Lords would throw out some
measure or other—that there would be a change of Government, a
dissolution; and then we should have a Parliament returned with which
nobody could govern the country? You see we have reached that point.’
According to their several calculations, both the opposite parties continue to
claim a majority, or rather on the Tory side an equality; and as these are
made by men experienced in the composition of the House, and as almost
everybody is pledged and committed in some way or other, it is a perfect
enigma to me how one or the other can be so deceived. The Whigs, having
discovered that Abercromby must be proposed ‘upon a great principle’
(which is great as omne ignotum is magnificum—for they have never given
a hint of what the principle is), have now found out that the English Church
Reform which is in agitation is a very bad move on the part of the
Government, as the people do not care about Church Reform here—do not
want any such thing. This is, very possibly, in great measure true; for the
people, who are urged and excited by the Radical leaders, will be sure to
grow indifferent about such reforms as they can obtain by legitimate means,
and with the concurrence of legitimate authority, and be invited to agitate
for those which may be more difficult or slow of accomplishment. Sydney
Smith said last night that he hears from those who know that it will be very
sweeping; but he thinks it will not touch the great livings, nor meddle with
advowsons. He concludes that at the same time the Dissenters will be
relieved from Church rates, that tithes will be extinguished, and the
question of Dissenters’ marriages settled. This has been an enormous
scandal, and its continuance has been owing to the pride, obstinacy, and
avarice of the Church; they would not give up the fees they received from
this source, and they were satisfied to celebrate these rites in church while
the parties were from the beginning to the end of the service protesting
against all and every part of it, often making a most indecent noise and
interruption. All these grievous abuses must be done away CHURCH REFORM.
with; and deeply responsible are those who never would hear of their being
done away with before. These guilty parties are the clergy and the Tories,
both of whom, now that it is almost too late, have consented to drop their

arrogant pretensions, and to submit to those necessary and reasonable
reforms against which they have so bitterly inveighed, and so resolutely
fought. We are disgusted and shocked at reading Croly’s account of the
scandalous conduct of the Catholic clergy in Ireland, with regard to the
emoluments they extort from their miserable flocks, and at the systematic
desecration of holy things which they countenance and practise; but when
the difference is considered between their spiritual condition and their
moral composition as a class, the conduct of the clergy here appears just as
revolting. The Irish clergy are generally sprung from the lowest class, and
have received a bad education at Maynooth; they depend for subsistence
upon the voluntary liberality or devotion of their people, they have few
motives or principles of restraint, and every incentive to follow the
shameful course which they do; but the English clergy are generally
respectably born, well educated, and amply endowed, and yet they are
content to be the ministers of a scandalous system, which, if it were not a
source of profit to themselves, they would not tolerate for an instant.
Instead of compelling the Dissenters to be married in church, if they had
been really penetrated with any devotional feelings, or by any
considerations of delicacy and charity, they would long ago have
complained of this necessity as a grievance, and besieged the Legislature
with entreaties to relieve the Church from the scandal, and themselves from
so painful and odious a duty. But it was a badge of inferiority and
dependence forced upon the Dissenters, and a source of profit to
themselves; and therefore they defended and maintained it, and this is what
they call defending the Church; and when the Dissenters themselves pray to
be relieved from the tax and the humiliation, and liberal men support their
prayer, a cry is got up that the Church is in danger. When the Dissenters,
having prayed in vain, grow louder and bolder in their demands, and the
cries of the Churchmen gradually sink into a whine, which is at last silenced
in submission, the Church really is in danger; and then, when it no longer
can be refused, it becomes perilous to grant the boon which justice and
wisdom have so long required. So it is, and has been with all obstinate and
senseless denials, followed by reluctant and tardy concessions—with
Catholic emancipation, the Test and Corporation Acts, Parliamentary
Reform, and with everything else; and thus, one of the great difficulties
which beset Peel and his Government is, that they stand in an utterly false
position. As a statesman, it must be mortifying to him to reflect that all the

great measures which his political life has been spent in opposing have been
carried in spite of him, and that whatever danger may have resulted from
this cause is in great measure owing to the opposition he was enabled, by
his great talents and his influence, or rather the influence of the party which
he led, to give to those measures. He contrived totally to fail in preventing
the success of the measures themselves, but so to mar and delay them as to
obviate the good that might have been produced by timely and voluntary
concessions; and now, coming forward as he says, ‘to resist the pressure
from without,’ he finds himself compelled to yield to that pressure; for
what, after all, is the language which he now holds, what are his addresses,
his speeches, his promises, his Church Commission, but a surrender to the
spirit and the principle of Reform, and to the demands of the people—the
people, as contra-distinguished from those great interests on whose support
he has depended, and whose wishes or prejudices he has consulted? For
assuredly, neither the King, nor the Church, nor the aristocracy, seriously
and sincerely desire these or any other reforms, and only agree to them
from necessity. Peel is, I think, right; he has no other alternative. Such is the
force and power of public opinion, that no Government can resist it; and if
Peel can succeed in restraining and directing it, if he can convert it from a
destructive into a conservative element, he will render such a great service
as will cancel all the former mischief he has done; but he FALSE POSITION OF SIR
R. PEEL. enters with disadvantage upon a course which implies at the outset
the surrender of much of the governing principle of his political life, and in
which neither friend nor foe can doubt that the conduct he adopts, however
justifiable, necessary, indispensable, is compulsory and unpalatable. A man
who is called to the head of affairs must undoubtedly act, not according to
any impracticable obstinate theories of his own, but according to the state in
which he finds affairs, no matter how produced or by whom; but it is a very
different thing to adopt a system reluctantly and under necessity, because
somebody else by his incapacity or his misfortune has rendered it
indispensable, and to do so after you yourself have brought about this state
of things: and such is the false position of Peel with all his Tory associates.
This, however, is begging the question in dispute between the two great
antagonistic parties. Peel would say that the imprudent concessions and
reckless changes of the Whigs have made the difficulty; the Whigs would
say that the resistance of the Tories to all moderate and gradual reforms

produced the sweeping measure of ’31, and the excitement that was partly
its cause and partly its consequence.

February 17th, 1835
Yesterday I read Burke’s appeal from the new to the old Whigs, which
contains astonishing coincidences with the present times. His definition of
the people is somewhat tumid and obscure, and involved in a splendid
confusion of generalities and abstruse doctrine; but it is a wonderful
monument of his genius, and exhibits that extent of knowledge and
accuracy of insight into the nature of parties and the workings of political
ambition which make him an authority for all times, and show him to be in
the political what Shakespeare was in the moral world. But his writings,
however as objects of study they may influence the opinions or form the
judgment of young men, would have no more power than a piece of musty
parchment to arrest the tide of present violence, and superinduce reflection
and calmness. A speech of Tom Duncombe’s would produce far greater
effect than the perusal of a discourse of Burke’s. Wisdom never operates
directly on masses; it may work upon them through secondary and by
indirect means, but it cannot face the noise of actual contest, where passion
and not reason is always uppermost. Nobody but Burke could have
described so well the Dukes of Devonshire and Bedford of the present day,
who appear to have lost their senses, and to be ready to peril all their great
possessions to gratify the passions of the moment. He says:—‘But riches do
not in all cases secure even an inert and passive resistance; there are always
in that description men whose fortunes, when their minds are once vitiated
by passion or evil principle, are by no means a security from their actually
taking their part against the public tranquillity. We see to what low and
despicable passion of all kinds many men in that class are ready to sacrifice
the patrimonial estates which might be perpetuated in their families with
splendour, and with the fame of hereditary benefactors to mankind, from
generation to generation. Do we not see how lightly people treat their
fortunes when they are under the passion of gaming? The game of
resentment or ambition will be played by many of the great and rich as
desperately and with as much blindness to the consequences as any other
game. Passion blinds them to the consequences as far as they concern

themselves, and as to the consequences with regard to others, they are no
part of their consideration.’
The other night I met some clerks in the Foreign Office to whom the
very name of Palmerston is hateful, but I was surprised to hear them
(Mellish particularly, who can judge both from capacity and opportunity),
give ample testimony to his abilities. They said that he wrote admirably, and
could express himself perfectly in French, very sufficiently in Italian, and
understood German; that his diligence and attention were unwearied—he
read everything and wrote an immense quantity; that the foreign Ministers
(who detest him) did him justice as an excellent man of business. His great
fault is want of punctuality, and never caring for an engagement if it did not
suit him, keeping everybody waiting for hours on his pleasure or caprice.
This testimony is beyond suspicion, and it is confirmed by the opinions of
his LORD PALMERSTON AS A MAN OF BUSINESS. colleagues; but it is certain that he cut a
very poor figure in Parliament all the time he was in office before.
At the Travellers’ yesterday I fell in with Bülow, who is just come back
from Berlin to resume his mission. He told me that he was on such terms
with Palmerston that it was impossible for him to stay here, and that for
some time past he had given up communicating with him except upon the
most indispensable matters and in the most formal way. He then gave me an
account of the reception of the news of the change of our Government at
Berlin, where the Emperor of Russia happened to be at the time. The
Empress had come there on a visit to her father, and the Emperor (who is
supposed to have preserved his conjugal fidelity immaculate) had rushed
from Moscow without any notice to see her, and was still there when news
of this great event arrived. There is something very characteristic in the first
impression which the intelligence produced, at once manifesting the secret
wishes of the party and their ignorance and apparent incapacity of
comprehending the nature of our Constitution, and the limited extent of the
power of the King of England. The Emperor immediately conceived that the
whole system of the late Government would be reversed at home and
abroad, that Leopold would be driven from Belgium, the Dutch dominion
restored, and the Quadruple Alliance dissolved. Bülow, who has been in
England long enough to know better the real state of things, endeavoured to
undeceive him, and succeeded, though not without great difficulty; but
when he proceeded to explain to him that the new Government would very

likely not be able to keep their places, and that at any rate they would be
compelled to conduct the Government upon the principle of Reform which
the late Government had established, the Emperor could not by any means
comprehend it, nor why or how there could be any difficulty in keeping
their places if the King was resolved to support them, and had appointed
them at his own pleasure. It would seem as if they had never read the last
two or three years of our history, or, having read it, as if the habits of
unbounded power in which they are born, educated, and expect to die, had
rendered their understandings utterly impervious to the apparent paradox of
a crowned head destitute of power to choose his own Ministers. The Duke
of Cumberland, who was likewise there, began by talking the same
nonsense, and was full of the destruction of the Reform Bill; but Billy
Holmes, who, whatever else he may be, is a very sharp fellow, succeeded in
muzzling him. This account which Bülow gave me is, however, more than
amusing; it is instructive, because it shows which way the real wishes of the
absolute sovereigns point, and makes it highly probable that they look upon
the present settlement of Europe as one only ad interim, and to be
remodelled whenever an opportunity shall present itself. They are satisfied
at present with damming and dyking out the waters of Liberalism, but they
hope to drain the lands in which they are collected, and to place themselves
for ever out of the danger of an inundation. The war of opinions is in fact
declared; it may languish, there may be truces, but there will be no peace in
our time.

February 19th, 1835
The important day is arrived, and it dawns in sunshine and south wind.
In a few hours the question of the Speakership will be decided, and there
will at least be the gain (wherever the loss may fall) of getting rid of a
subject which has become intolerably tiresome. For the last three weeks
every newspaper has been literally filled with the controversy, every club
engaged in betting on the event; in every room, at the corner of every street,
nobody talked of anything else. It was the first enquiry of every man you
met, ‘Well, what do you hear to-day? they say Sutton will win by 30.’ The
next man (a Whig) would say, ‘It is safe; Abercromby will have 317 votes
sure’—each party unboundedly confident, and both securing a retreat by

declaring that defeat will not signify. Half the Opposition think it a false
move to try it, and the more sober of the Government are conscious that a
defeat will be very injurious.
We had a Council yesterday, and a levee more than usually brilliant; all
the new Ministers and all the old, the ELECTION OF SPEAKER ABERCROMBY. whole
Corps Diplomatique, with a host of others, mixed up in the first entrée
room, and all very civil and good-humoured. The King received the ex-
Ministers very graciously, and talked to them all, at least to all I saw pass
by. Brougham alone was absent, and Lord Spencer, who was hardly to be
considered as one of them, and is not in town, though, by-the-bye, I think I
am wrong in this, because there were others whom I did not see—
Duncannon, Spring Rice, and Hobhouse.

February 20th, 1835
The great battle is over and the Government defeated, 316 to 306.
Such a division never was known before in the House of Commons, and the
accuracy of the calculations is really surprising. Mulgrave told me three
days ago they had 317 people, which with the Teller makes the exact
number. Holmes went over the other list, and made it 307—also correct. In
the House so justly had they reckoned, that when the numbers first counted
(306) were told to Duncannon in the lobby he said, ‘Then we shall win by
10.’ Burdett and Cobbett went away, which with Tellers makes a total of
626 members in the House. All the Irish members voted but 4, all the
Scotch but 3, all the English but 25. The Irish and Scotch, in fact, made the
majority.
The elation on one side and the depression on the other were naturally
considerable, and there was not time last night to adjust scattered thoughts.
Much money was won and lost; everybody betted. I won 55ℓ., for on the
whole I thought (though quite a toss-up) that the chances were rather in
favour of Abercromby. I had a better opinion of the cleverness of the
managers on his side, and their amazing confidence staggered me, so that
after at first believing Sutton to be sure, I finished by leaning the other way.
The debate seems to have been dull—Sutton was dull, Peel was dull;
Stanley clever, strong against the Opposition, but thought to have been

indiscreet. A Tory told me it was a second edition of the thimblerig speech,
which, if so, will not do him good. He carried apparently very few people
with him, but made one convert—Angerstein—who changed his vote
because Stanley made out that Abercromby was for the Ballot. This seems
an excellent reason why he should be opposed as a Minister or a candidate,
but none why he should not sit in the chair of the House. Lord John Russell
is said to have spoken remarkably well, which is important to them as a
party, being his first appearance as their leader. Peel and the Duke dined at
Lord Salisbury’s, and all the Tories were invited there in the evening, with
the intention probably of celebrating their anticipated victory; and, if so,
their merry meeting must have been changed to dismal alarms, for there is
no denying or concealing that it is a very serious disaster. The moral effect
of beginning with a defeat is bad; it discourages the wavering and timid,
who might have felt half disposed to support the Government and the
constitution. The trial of strength leads to very uncomfortable reflections,
for every man of these 317 is prepared to go all lengths; and though there
are probably none among the majority who will support Government, there
are some among the minority who will oppose them—Dudley Stuart,
Angerstein, and Burdett, who went away.
The majority of the world naturally look at this event with the eye of
party, and as a triumph one way and a mortification the other; but I, who
have no party prejudices and predilections, and care nothing who is in the
chair, and not much who is in office, provided ‘the thing,’ as Cobbett calls
it, is kept going, look at this division with sorrow and alarm, as affording
undoubted evidence that no prospect appears of the possibility of this or any
other Government being able to accomplish the purposes for which a
Government is intended. We seem to be arrived at what is vulgarly termed a
dead lock. Nothing can be more clear than that the present Ministers are in a
minority, and that all the other parties in the House united can beat them
when they will. It is equally clear that they can beat any section of their
opponents whenever these are disunited. The political attraction which
binds together the mass cannot last long, and there are too many elements
of repulsion in esse or in posse not to insure the speedy disjunction of the
several PARTIES BALANCED. atoms; but in the meantime, if they can be held
together, what is to happen? Peel will take a beating or two, but he may be
so beaten as to be compelled to resign or again dissolve. Suppose he

dissolves. The Tories think the reaction is on the increase, and that the
Conservative interest would gain largely by another dissolution; still there is
scarcely a hope of their gaining enough to enable Peel to carry on the
Government with such constant and dependible majorities as can alone
render it efficacious and secure. On the other hand, if Peel resigns, the
Opposition, should they return to power, must dissolve; for what can they
do against 300 Tories? and what Ministry can by possibility be formed that
can have a certain majority of its own out of the heterogeneous mixture of
Whigs, Radicals, Repealers, and men of every shade and gradation of
opinion? Their situation, notwithstanding their victory, seems worse than
that of their antagonists with reference to their power as a party; and if they
do storm Downing Street and St. James’s, and go again to the country, as far
as appearances go, what chance have they of materially bettering their
condition, and getting another House of Commons more manageable and
better adapted to their purpose than this? This victory, therefore, will not
enable the old Government to triumph over the new, or materially affect the
positions of the two parties, and, as somebody said last night, they will be
very much puzzled what to do with their majority now they have got it.
The first impression of great events is generally one of alarm, which
upon this occasion subsequent reflection has diminished as far as relates to
the immediate peril of the present Government. Speculation already began
last night as to the Address, on which some pretend no amendment will be
moved, others that one will, which as certainly will be carried. No question
can, however, be more embarrassing to the Whig leaders, for they would be
disposed in prudence to abstain from any very violent measure, but will find
great difficulty in dealing with their associates. If they resolve upon pushing
their victory and amending the Address, they run the risk of exciting terror
by their violence; if they avoid this, probably some of the Radicals will do
it, and then they must support Government on the Address against a Radical
section of the House, or join with the Radicals in one of two ways, either by
supporting their amendment or persuading them to withdraw it; in either
case drawing closer the bonds of that connexion which they are ashamed
and afraid to avow, and which will, I strongly incline to believe, be in the
end fatal to the Whig party. The only thing that can truly be predicted is,
that all is confusion, uncertainty, embarrassment, a state of things full of
difficulty and peril, but not totally without hope.

February 21st, 1835
The Government were grievously annoyed at the event of Thursday,
and the Duke rejected all the commonplaces of consolation, ‘that it would
turn out a good thing.’ At Lord Salisbury’s dinner (to which Peel did not go)
they were all very dejected, and the Duke said at once it was as bad as could
be; and the thing appeared the worse because they had been led to feel so
very secure. He desired his private secretary to have everything ready to
quit the Foreign Office at a moment’s notice. However, at dinner yesterday
at Peel’s (a great dinner to all the Ambassadors and twenty-six people) he
said to me, ‘It is very bad, but I consider the country on its legs again.’ ‘Do
you ?’ I said, ‘I am glad you think so.’ ‘Oh, yes, I think that, however this
may end; I think the country is on its legs again.’
The Whigs are resolved to push their victory with all their energies,
and they appear to have no doubt of ousting the Government, and as they
are determined to proceed by any and every means in their career, and the
others are equally resolved to fight the battle while any means of resistance
remain, the strife must be deadly, and such as to extinguish any hope of a
coalition between moderate men of both sides for the simple reason that
moderation has ascended to Heaven, and such men will no longer be found.

February 23rd, 1835
The Opposition mean to move an amendment to the Address, which
they expect to carry by a larger FIERCE OPPOSITION TO GOVERNMENT. majority than
the last. Their tactics are completely arranged, and their understanding with
O’Connell and all the Radicals so good that they think there is no danger of
any indiscreet ebullition in any quarter. Discarding every prospective
consideration, and prepared to encounter all consequences, they concentrate
all their energies upon the single object of turning out the Government, in
which they have no doubt of succeeding. It is the first time (as far as I
know) that any great party ever proceeded upon, and avowed, such a
principle as that which binds these people together and puts them in action;
namely, to destroy the King’s Ministry, without any reference to the
measures that Ministry may propose, and without waiting to see how they
may intend to carry on the Government. Not only do they throw out of their

consideration the conduct of the Administration, but they are resolved to
accomplish its destruction, without being prepared to substitute any
stronger Government in its room, and with a perfect knowledge that its
dissolution must necessarily produce a state of extraordinary
embarrassment, from which they do not pretend to have the power of
extricating the country. All that they ever condescend to say, in answer to
any such remonstrances, is this: ‘The King exercised his prerogative in a
most extraordinary and unjustifiable manner. We have the same right to
reject his Government, that he had to turn out ours; if there is
embarrassment, it is none of our creating, the King and the Tories must be
responsible for it. We care not what are the principles now avowed by them.
If they are not Reformers, they cannot govern this country, and are not to be
tolerated at the head of affairs. If they are, it is not to be endured that they
should usurp our places, and then in defiance of all their principles, and in
opposition to all their previous conduct, carry into effect the measures
which we should, with perfect consistency, have brought forward. We will
listen therefore to nothing. Out they shall go, and till we have got them out,
we will never rest, nor desist from our attacks.’ ‘Quid sit futurum cras, fuge
quærere,’ such is the manner of their reasoning. Their intention seems to be
to avoid doing anything very desperate, but to keep beating the
Government, constantly exhibiting their own power and the helpless state of
their adversaries to the world. Some of them affect to deny their union with
O’Connell, but they say whatever suits their present purpose. In the case of
Manners Sutton, they took care to have the charges against him
disseminated through the country, and did their best to have them believed.
The constituencies believed them, and instructed their representatives
accordingly; and when, by these means, they had secured a majority, they
came down at the last moment to the House of Commons and owned that
there was not one word of truth in the allegations against him. John Russell
had written a letter (perhaps more than one) in which he urged opposition to
Sutton, on the ground of his having advised the dissolution of the last
Parliament. Goulburn got possession of this letter, which was handed to him
during the debate, he does not know by whom. (Goulburn told me this
himself.) He gave it to Peel while he was speaking, or just before. Peel
asked John Russell if he had ever said so, and John Russell denied it. Peel
did not produce the letter as he might have done, but the story was told in
the ‘Times’ the next day. So in the case of the Bishop of Exeter, and Lord

John’s controversy with him. He told an untruth, undoubtedly without
knowing it, but he might have known it; the lie did its business—
In public spoke, it fell with greater force,
And, heard by hundreds, was believed, of course;
and though he afterwards made a very handsome apology, half the people
who were influenced by the original statement never heard of the
contradiction, or cared for it, if they did; and to show the candour of the
Liberal press, the ‘Morning Chronicle,’ and other papers of that persuasion,
which trumpeted forth the original lie, never inserted the subsequent
correspondence, and Lord John’s contradiction of his own statement. I like
him so much personally, that I am sorry for all this. To return to the party,
they are boiling with indignation at the idea of another dissolution, and talk
of UNION WITH O’CONNELL. such advice to the King as affording good ground for
impeachment, though till they have settled the House of Lords, and had
their wicked will of it, the Ministers would be pretty safe before that
tribunal for such an act. It is the general opinion that Peel will dissolve, and
go once more to the country if he can, but this must depend upon the sort of
opposition they offer, and the majorities they can bring into the field.
Adolphus FitzClarence told me that he never saw the King so determined as
he is to stand by this Government to the last, and I do not think any of these
men will prove deficient in courage.

February 24th, 1835
The Opposition expect a majority of from thirty to forty on the
amendment. The union with O’Connell is complete, however long it may
last, and he has agreed to give up Repeal, and they are to find some
lucrative place for him when they get in again. What he wants is to be a
Master of the Rolls in Ireland; the rent fails, and money he must have. It is a
wretched thing that there is no buying that man now without disgrace; well
would it have been to have made the purchase long ago; and it will not be
the least curious part of his curious life if this bargain takes place, and he
settles down into the regular discharge of his professional duties, and bonâ
fide abandons agitation. There was great curiosity last night to know
whether the Speaker dined with Peel. It is usual for him to dine with the

leader of the House of Commons on these occasions, and hear the speech
read. Sutton always dined with Althorp, but then Althorp put him in the
chair. Abercromby, however, very properly told Peel the difficulty he felt,
and that he thought he should only embarrass the company, and Peel
acquiesced in his excuse.

February 25th, 1835
The King went down to Parliament in the midst of a vast crowd, and
was neither well nor ill received; nobody takes his hat off, but there was
some slight cheering. The speech disappointed me, it was rather bald, and
so thought some of the moderate men. In the morning there was a meeting
at the King’s Head, Palace Yard, to which moderate members of Parliament
were invited by an anonymous circular. Thirty-three were present, Sir
Oswald Mosley in the chair. Graham came to it, and said Lord Stanley
would have come also, but that he had invited a few of his friends to
assemble at his house, with an object similar to that which had brought the
present meeting[2] together and that if it were agreeable to any of these
gentlemen to meet his friends that afternoon he should be glad to see them.
They all went, and there were present forty-five or fifty, of whom eight had
voted for Abercromby. He made them a speech, stating that it was evident
the Government must fall if they were to be repeatedly defeated, and his
view of the necessity of obstructing violent measures directed against them
was something to this effect. The result was an agreement to meet again this
day, and last night a few more names were added to their list. This may,
therefore, be considered the Stanley party, and the best thing that can
happen will be that this party should grow numerous. Many men do not like
the composition of the Government, and yet wish to support it, without
being identified with it, as the majority of those who attend the meetings are
disposed to support Peel. Stanley securing them as his adherents, and
placing himself at their head, must in fact subscribe to their opinions and
disposition; and as men are more inclined to join a numerous than a scanty
sect, fresh adherents may repair to that standard. Eventually he will join the
Government, and the best chance of weathering the storm will be through
this moderate Liberal party.

[2] [This meeting (which will probably have important results, as it was the
foundation of that which met afterwards at Stanley’s, and the formation of this
party will turn the balance on the Conservative side) originated in the most
insignificant causes. Sir Oswald Mosley, an ordinary person, and a Mr. Young,
talking the thing over, suggested to one another to try and get together moderate
men, and they penned and sent out a parcel of notes addressed to those who they
thought came under that description, bearing no signature, and giving no
indication of the quarter from which they emanated. When the thirty-three
people who came were assembled, they found themselves for the most part
strangers to each other, and each asking who such and such an one was. When
Graham invited any who chose to go to Lord Stanley’s, Mosley rather wanted to
decline, to go on with his own meeting, and play an important part, but nobody
would hear of this, so he was obliged to go with the rest to Stanley’s house.]

DEBATE ON THE ADDRESS. The debate was opened by Sandon in a speech
feebly delivered, but containing good matter. Morpeth made a good speech,
moving the amendment. The debate was very dull indeed, Dr. Bowring a
total failure. It was expected the House would adjourn, if not divide, and the
Speaker put the question, when Peel got up. It was curious to see the lulling
of the uproar, and the shuffling and scrambling into seats, till all was quiet
and the whole coast clear. He spoke very ably for nearly two hours and a
half, his speech not containing much oratory, but in a tone at once lofty and
firm, yet discreet, calculated to inspire confidence and to make an
impression on all who are impressible. There is no use in entering into
details of speeches which are now reported with such perfect fidelity. This
may not be without its effect on Stanley’s meeting to-day, and his speech
will be listened to with intense anxiety to-night. The Opposition (as
Duncannon told me) expected a majority of between thirty and forty, so that
if it is considerably less than that, it will be tantamount to a defeat.

February 26th, 1835
Stanley spoke last night, attacking both sides, not violently, but
announcing his intention to vote against the amendment. The Government
were annoyed at his speech, especially at his expressing some sort of
disapprobation of the Duke of Wellington, which he would have done well
to omit, for many reasons. Lord John Russell, by universal admission even
of his enemies, made an excellent speech. I did not hear either him or
Stanley. John has surpassed all expectations hitherto, as leader, which is
matter of great exultation to his party, but the tide is already beginning to

turn, and there are evident symptoms of weakness in the great unwieldy
heterogeneous body he is at the head of. Tavistock came to me yesterday
morning, and told me his brother had sent for him, ‘finding himself in
difficulties.’ He did not particularise them, but said that naturally, in a
situation of such novelty, he found considerable difficulties to contend with.
He owned that the meeting at Lichfield House, which O’Connell had
attended by invitation, had alarmed and disgusted many of the old Whigs,
and it was settled there should be no more such meetings. Then there has
been some little correspondence between Ward and Lord John about the
Irish Church question, the former wishing to manage the matter, which he
brought forward last year, and he wrote to John about it, who replied rather
shortly, that he himself intended to submit a motion on the subject. This is a
trifle, but trifles like these contribute to form an aggregate of importance,
and the moment there is any beginning of disunion or weakness in such a
party, a very short time will make it fall to pieces.
Lord Stanley assembled his followers again yesterday to the number of
about fifty; other adhesions, and half-adhesions, occurred in the course of
the evening, and the result is an expectation that the boasted majority of
thirty or forty will dwindle down to four or five, or perhaps be no majority
at all. The erection of this standard will therefore, in all probability, save the
Government, and defeat the factious designs of the great Whig and Radical
coalition; but I distrust Stanley himself, and see the great chance there is of
his vanity and selfish ambition producing other difficulties, the pressure of
which, though he may not feel it now, will some time hence become heavy
to him. His object at present is to gather to himself the largest party he can;
but though he may lead them, he can only lead them the way they are
minded to go, and the design of his friends is to show themselves
Conservatives without being Tories, to save this Government, not from love
to it, but from fear of its opponents and of the alternative. He certainly may
have the appearance of being the arbiter of all great questions, and actually
be so to a certain degree, but as his ultimate object must be his return to
office, he can only hope to return (at least with any prospects of success)
with Peel and the Tories. It is, therefore, egregious folly in him, by an
affectation of neutrality and independence, to shock and disgust that great
body, which must ever be the strength of a Conservative Government, by
twitting the Duke of Wellington and attacking with sarcasms or reproaches

certain measures POSITION OF LORD STANLEY. or omissions, or particular members
of Government, and especially the Duke himself. The Duke is, after all, the
idol of the Tories, and they will not endure that a youth like Stanley shall
avail himself of his accidental advantages to treat their great man with
levity and disrespect; and all this he has not coolness, sagacity, and temper
enough to see, nor to discern that his most becoming and dignified course
would be to conduct himself with a seriousness and gravity suitable to the
importance of the crisis and of the part he aspires to play and the magnitude
of the interests which are at stake. If he believes in his conscience that the
Opposition are animated with a spirit of faction, and that their triumph
would be the forerunner of revolution or confusion, he should take his stand
on a great principle, and support the Government in such a manner as might
best enable it to confound the schemes of its antagonists; but all this time he
is dreading to be called a Tory, and he does not certainly give up the hope
and notion of reuniting himself with the moderate section of his late
colleagues. He endeavours to keep up an amicable intercourse with them,
and to make them believe that he has no intention of connecting himself
more closely with this Government. Such ambiguous conduct, and his
occasional asperities and incivilities, have begun already to disgust and
alienate the Tories; and though they have too much need of him now not to
be obliged to restrain the expression of their feelings, the time may come
when he will have need of them, and he will then find the inconvenient
consequences of his present behaviour.

February 27th, 1835
They divided at half-past one this morning, 309 to 302. I went over the
list before dinner, and made out a majority of six (correct all but one).
Gisborne, Howick, and Graham spoke tolerably, O’Connell very good for
the first ten minutes, and very bad all the rest. I was not there. Certainly
Stanley’s conduct is queer. Notwithstanding the sharp things he said against
Government in his speech on Wednesday, and various little marks of scorn
he throws out here and there, he said to Francis Egerton on Tuesday, after
all the Opposition men had been speaking, ‘Why does not Peel get up, or at
least put up one of the Government, to put an end to all this balderdash?’
Francis went and told Peel, who was very much out of sorts (at the state of

the debate I suppose), and asked rather angrily for Sir G. Clerk. Francis
went to look for Clerk, and when he returned Peel was on his legs. This he
told me yesterday morning.

March 5th, 1835
Met Mulgrave at dinner at Seaford’s, and he still talks with confidence
of turning the Government out; that five or six of Stanley’s tail have
whisked round again to the Whigs; that they can beat the Government on
every question by greater majorities than on the two they have already tried,
which were the worst for them, and that any other Government (of their
party) would get through the business of the session.

March 11th, 1835
The repeal of the malt tax was defeated by a majority of 158, much
more than was necessary, and it is thought that Government would have
done wisely, when they found they were sure of not being beaten, to allow
their friends to redeem their pledges (or as many of them as stood deeply
committed), for it will be found that several of them will suffer greatly from
this vote in their counties. Peel (as usual) made an admirable speech; he
continues to distinguish himself by a marked superiority, both in oratory
and management, which cannot fail to produce a great effect both in the
House of Commons and the country. There is nobody who approaches him,
and every day he displays more and more his capacity for government and
undoubted fitness for the situation he is in. He cannot help being a great
man, because he lives in an age of pigmies; and he will be as great as great
talents without a great mind can make anybody. Even some of the violent
Radicals say that if Peel’s associates could be disposed of, they would not
object to him.

March 13th, 1835

There was a meeting of the Opposition at Lichfield House yesterday,
to consider what they should do about Hume’s motion to grant the supplies
for three months, and the result was that the design should be abandoned.
APPOINTMENT OF LORD LONDONDERRY. Thus they have shown their teeth without
daring to bite. Many of their people would not have gone with them, and if
this grand project failed now thus early in the session, still less chance will
it have at a later period. Peel’s skill and great superiority, and the disunion
and uncertainty of the vast unwieldy body opposed to him, will carry him
through.

March 14th, 1835
Last night was a terribly damaging night to the Government, and fully
justifies all that I, in common with almost everybody else, thought of that
miserable appointment of Londonderry.[3] Shiel brought it forward, and a
storm burst from every side. Stanley made a strong speech against it, and
Mahon totally broke down. Peel spoke cleverly, as usual, but fighting under
difficulties, and dodging about, and shifting his ground with every mark of
weakness. The result is that Londonderry cannot go, and must either resign
or his nomination be cancelled. This is miserable weakness on the part of
the Government, and an awkward position to be placed in. It is very
questionable if the Duke of Wellington will not resign upon it, which would
make another great embarrassment, for there is nobody to fill his place. It
serves the Government right, and the Duke especially, for having built up
such a wall to run their heads against. They knew the loathing people had
for the man, how odious and ridiculous he had made himself, how
obnoxious and indefensible the appointment would be, and yet, though
there was no reason or occasion for it, and their circumstances were so
difficult that the utmost caution and prudence were requisite in all their
subordinate and collateral proceedings, as well as in the great and essential
ones, they had the blind and obstinate folly to make this appointment. It is
not contempt of public opinion in the Duke, but it is that ignorance or
indifference, or disregard of it, which has been the besetting sin of his
political life, and has so largely affected his political sayings and doings.
Peel ought to have known better, and have taken a more correct view of his
position, and the effect such an appointment would have on it. It is difficult

to say what consequences may flow from this affair. The Government can
stand no shocks and buffets; if they go on, it can only be by the most
dexterous management, and by obtaining constant advantages in the petty
and daily warfare of Parliament, and thus gathering confidence by degrees,
that they can accomplish it. It would be too mortifying if such a man should
be the cause of the downfall of the Government and of all the evils that
would result therefrom. Knatchbull, who was dragged into the discussion
by Peel (in order to make a diversion), defended himself and spoke
remarkably well. He is the only Cabinet Minister who has shown anything
like a faculty to support Peel. It was rather amusing to see the attempt of
Peel to take the dogs off the scent of Londonderry and throw them on that
of Knatchbull; but they were soon whipped off, and put again upon the right
track. There was one good hit. A Sir George Strickland, attacking
Knatchbull, said, ‘Talk of the Right Honourable Baronet as a Reformer,
indeed, when I remember his coming down night after night during the
Reform Bill, and opposing every part and particle of it, clause after clause,’
when Knatchbull took his hat off and said, ‘I was not a member of that
Parliament.’
[3] [The Marquis of Londonderry had been appointed Ambassador to St.
Petersburg.]

March 15th, 1835
The Londonderry debate has made a great sensation, and is a source of
prodigious triumph and exultation to the Opposition. In the morning I met
Lady Peel, who was full of compassion for Londonderry, and said, ‘He had
behaved very nobly about it.’ Nobody doubts that he cannot go, whether he
resigns voluntarily or not; but, end how it may, it is a disastrous occurrence.
If Government should persist in the appointment, they would be beaten by a
great majority, and the House of Commons would vote him out; if it is
given up, it is a monstrous concession to the violence and power of the
House of Commons, for however objectionable the appointment may have
been, it is not so outrageous as to call for the interference of Parliament
with the King’s undoubted prerogative, and on the whole the principle of
such interference may be considered more inconvenient THE DUKE ON LORD
LONDONDERRY. than submitting to the appointment itself. It will probably lead