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 Macintosh--The St. Leger--
Visit of Princess Victoria to Burghley--O'Connell's Progress
through Scotland--Mackintosh's Life.
August 19th, 1835 {p.290}
[Page Head: MUNICIPAL CORPORATION BILL.]
Yesterday the Lords finished the Committee on the Corporation
Bill. Their last amendment (which I do not very well understand
at present), by which certain aldermen elected for life are to be
taken in the first instance from the present aldermen, has
disgusted the authors of the Bill more than all the rest. In the
morning I met Duncannon and Howick, both open-mouthed against the
amendments, and this in particular, and declaring that though the
others might have been stomached, this could not go down, as it
was in direct opposition to the principle of the Bill. Howick
talked of 'the Lords being swept away like chaff' and of 'the
serious times that were approaching.' Duncannon said there would
be a conference, and if the Lords insisted on these amendments
the Bill would be lost. I asked if a compromise was not feasible,
the Lords abandoning this and the Commons taking the other
amendments, which he said would not be undesirable, but difficult
to effect. The continual discussions about this Bill have made me
perforce understand something of it towards the end of them. I am
too ignorant of the details and of the tendency of the Bill to
have an opinion of the comparative merits of its present and its
original shape, but I am sure the Lords are bound in prudence not
to mutilate it more than is absolutely necessary to make it a
safe measure, and to have a good, and moreover a popular, case to
go to the country with, if eventually such an appeal is to be
made. On the other hand the House of Commons, powerful as it is,
must not assert its power too peremptorily, and before the
Ministers determine to resign, for the purpose of making their
resignation instrumental to the consolidation of their power and
the destruction of the House of Lords; they also must have a good
case, and be able to show that the amendments made by the Lords
are incompatible with the object proposed, that they were made in
a factious spirit and for the express purpose of thwarting the
principle contended for, and that their conduct in this matter
forms part of a general system, which can only be counteracted by
some fundamental change in the constitution of the Upper House
itself. These are violent conclusions to come to, and when one
reflects calmly upon the possible and probable consequences of a
collision, and the manner in which the interests of the
antagonistic parties collectively and individually are blended
together, it is difficult to believe that both will not pause on
the brink of the precipice and be influenced by a simultaneous
desire to come to a decent and practicable compromise. This would
probably be easy if both parties were actuated by a sincere
desire to enact a law to reform corporations in the safest, best,
and most satisfactory manner; but the reformation of the
corporations is not the first object in the minds of either. One
wants to save as much as possible of the Tory influence, which is
menaced by the Bill, and the other wants to court the democratic
spirit, which vivifies its party, and erect a new and auxiliary
influence on the ruins of the ancient establishments. Any mere
looker-on must perceive through all their wranglings that these
are the _arriere-pensees_ of the two antagonistic parties.
Brougham made a very clever speech (I am told) on Monday night,
and the contest between him and Lyndhurst through the whole
Committee has been remarkable for talent and for a striking
display of the different qualities of the two men. The Duke of
Richmond had a squabble with Lyndhurst last night, 'impar
congressus,' and he has wriggled himself almost back among the
Whigs; nothing but the appropriation clause in the Church Bill
prevents his being First Lord of the Admiralty, and he may be
considered as having dropped off the dilly with so many others.
The Whigs are dying to have him back among them. I must confess I
do not see why, but it is impossible to deny that he contrives to
make himself desired by those with whom he has acted, and as they
must know best what they are about and what he is capable of, it
is reasonable to suppose that he has some talents or some
qualities which are developed in the graver affairs of life, but
which do not appear in its ordinary relations and habitudes. I
thought what he said to me the other night looked like a
severance of his Stanley connexion, and his strenuous support of
this Bill and his pettish attacks upon Lyndhurst show that he at
least is not likely to ally himself with the Conservatives.
August 21st, 1835 {p.292}
Yesterday I fell in with Lyndhurst, just getting out of his
carriage at his door in George Street. He asked me to come in and
look at his house, which I did. I asked him what would happen
about the Bill. He said, 'Oh, they will take it. What can they
do? If they choose to throw it out, let them do so, I don't care
whether they do or not. But they will take it, because they know
it does their business, though not so completely as they desire.'
He said he would alter the qualification, though he did not think
it objectionable. I told him I hoped there might be some
compromise, and that he and his friends would give way on some of
their amendments, and that the Commons would take the rest. Even
the 'Times,' which _goes the whole hog_ with the Opposition,
won't swallow this (the aldermen), and suggests that it should be
withdrawn. Nothing ever was like the outrageous indecency of the
attacks upon the House of Lords in the Ministerial papers, and it
is not clear that they won't overdo the thing; this kind of fury
generally defeats its own object.
August 25th, 1835
[Page Head: WHAT IS HAPPINESS?]
At Hillingdon from Saturday till Monday last; began the Life of
Mackintosh, and was delighted with Sydney Smith's letter which is
prefixed to it; read and walked all day on Sunday--the two things
I do least, viz. exercise my mind and body; therefore both grow
gross and heavy. Shakespeare says fat paunches make lean pates,
but this is taken from a Greek proverb. I admire this family of
Cox's at Hillingdon, and after casting my eyes in every direction,
and thinking much and often of the theory of happiness, I am
convinced that it is principally to be found in contented
mediocrity, accompanied with an equable temperament and warm
though not excitable feelings. When I read such books as
Mackintosh's Life, and see what other men have done, how they have
read and thought, a sort of despair comes over me, a deep and
bitter sensation of regret 'for time misspent and talents
misapplied,' not the less bitter from being coupled with a
hopelessness of remedial industry and of doing better things. Nor
do I know that such men as these were happy; that they possessed
sources of enjoyment inaccessible to less gifted minds is not to
be doubted, but whether knowledge and conscious ability and
superiority generally bring with them content of mind and the
sunshine of self-satisfaction to the possessors is anything but
certain. I wonder the inductive process has not been more
systematically applied to the solution of this great philosophical
problem, _what is happiness_, and _in what it consists_, for the
practical purpose of directing the human mind into the right road
for reaching this goal of all human wishes. Why are not
innumerable instances collected, examined, analysed, and the
results expanded, explained, and reasoned upon for the benefit and
instruction of mankind? Who can tell but what these results may
lead at last to some simple conclusions such as it requires no
vast range of intellect to discover, no subtle philosophy to
teach--conclusions mortifying to the pride and vanity of man, but
calculated to mitigate the evils of life by softening mutual
asperities, and by the establishment of the doctrine of
_humility_, from which all charity, forbearance, toleration, and
benevolence must flow as from their source? These simple
conclusions may amount to no more than a simple maxim that
happiness is to be found 'in the pursuit of truth and the practice
of virtue.'
Semita certe
Tranquillae per virtutem patet unica vitae.
The end of the tenth Satire of Juvenal (which is one of the
finest sermons that ever was composed, and worth all the homilies
of all the Fathers of the Church) teaches us what to pray for--
Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.
Healthy body, healthy appetite, healthy feelings, though
accompanied by mediocrity of talent, unadorned with wit and
imagination, and unpolished by learning and science, will
outstrip in the race for happiness the splendid irregularities of
genius and the most dazzling successes of ambition. At the same
time this general view of the probabilities of happiness must be
qualified by the admission that mere vegetation scarcely deserves
the name of happiness, and that the highest enjoyment which
humanity is capable of may be said to consist in the pleasures of
reason and imagination--of a mind expatiating among the wonders
of nature, and ranging through all the 'changes of many-coloured
life,' without being shaken from its equilibrium by the
disturbing causes of jealousy, envy, and the evil passions of our
nature. The most galling of all conditions is that of him whose
conscience and consciousness whisper to him perpetual reproaches,
who reflects on what he might have been and who feels and sees
what he is. When such a man as Macintosh, fraught with all
learning, whose mind, if not kindled into a steady blaze, is
perpetually throwing out sparks and coruscations of exceeding
brightness, is stung with these self-upbraidings, what must be
the reflections of those, the utmost reach of whose industry is
far below the value of _his_ most self-accused idleness, who have
no self-consolation, are plunged in entire darkness, and have not
only to lament the years of omission, but those of commission,
not only the opportunities neglected, but the positive mischief
done by the debasement of the faculties, the deterioration of the
understanding, the impairing of the power of exertion consequent
upon a long devotion to low, despicable, unprofitable habits and
pursuits?
August 27th, 1835 {p.295}
[Page Head: STATE OF PARTIES.]
Melbourne has thrown up the Tithe Bill in the Lords, because the
Opposition expunged the appropriation clauses. In the Corporation
Bill Lyndhurst made still further alterations, such as the Commons
will not take (the town clerks and the exclusion of Dissenters
from the disposal of ecclesiastical patronage), and as it is the
general opinion that they will make no compromise and surrender
none of their amendments, that Bill will probably be lost too.
What then? asks everybody, and nobody can tell what then, but
there is a sort of vague apprehension that _something_ must come
of it, and that this collision (for collision it is) between the
Lords and the Commons will not be terminated without some violent
measures or important changes; if such do take place, they will
have been most wantonly and wickedly brought about, but it is a
lamentable thing to see the two great parties in the country,
equally possessed of wealth and influence, and having the same
interest in general tranquillity, tearing each other to pieces
while the Radicals stand laughing and chuckling by, only waiting
for the proper moment to avail themselves of these senseless
divisions. There is something inconceivable, a sort of political
absurdity, in the notion of a country like this being on the eve
of a convulsion, when it is tranquil, prosperous, and without any
grievance; universal liberty prevails, every man's property and
person are safe, the laws are well administered and duly obeyed;
so far from there being any unredressed grievances, the
imagination of man cannot devise the fiction or semblance of a
grievance without there being a rush to correct it. The only real
evil is that the rage for correction is too violent, and sweeps
all before it. What is it, then, which menaces the existence of
the constitution we live under? It is the fury of parties, it is
the broad line of separation which the Reform Bill has drawn, the
antagonist positions into which the two Houses of Parliament have
been thrown, and the Whigs having identified themselves with the
democratic principle in one House, in order to preserve their
places, and the Conservative principle having taken refuge in the
other House, where it is really endangered by the obstinate and
frantic violence of its supporters. What was the loud and eternal
cry of the Lords, and of all the Conservatives, when the Reform
Bill was in agitation? That it was a revolution, that it would
place all political power in the hands of the people, that it
would establish an irresistible democratic force; and the great
body of them justified their refusal to go into Committee on the
ground that the Bill was so vicious in principle, so irremediably
mischievous, that no alterations could diminish its evil tendency.
It is now as clear as daylight that if they had gone into
Committee and amended the Bill, they might have obviated all or
nearly all the evils they apprehended, for even after the passing
of the 'whole Bill,' with all its clauses perfect and untouched,
parties are so nearly balanced that the smallest difference would
turn the scale the other way. They would, however, listen to
nothing, and now they feel the consequences of their _ruat coelum_
policy; but what I complain of is, that after the verification of
their predictions, and the realisation of their fears, in the
establishment of a democratic power of formidable strength, they
do not act consistently with their own declared opinions; for if
it be true, as they assert, that their legitimate authority and
influence have been transferred to other hands, and that the just
equilibrium of the Constitution has been shaken, it is mad and
preposterous in them to act just as if no such disturbing causes
had occurred, as if they were still in the plenitude of their
constitutional power, and to provoke a collision which, if their
own assertions be true, they are no longer in a condition to
sustain. The answer to such arguments as this invariably is, Are
the Lords, then, to be content to yield everything, and must they
pass every Bill which the House of Commons thinks fit to send to
them purely and simply? Certainly they are not; no such thing is
expected of them by any man or any set of men, but common prudence
and a sense of their own condition and their own relative strength
under the new dispensation demand that they should exercise their
undoubted rights with circumspection and calmness, desisting from
all opposition for opposition's sake, standing out firmly on
questions involving great and important principles, and yielding
with a good grace, without ill-humour, and without subserviency on
minor points. They ought, for example, to have followed in the
footsteps of Peel in this Irish Corporation Bill, and to have
satisfied themselves with making those amendments which he strove
for without success in the House of Commons, and no more. As it
is, he wholly disapproves of the course they have taken, and so I
believe did the Duke of Wellington in the beginning of the
discussions, but Lyndhurst took the lead with the violent party,
overruled the Duke, neglected Peel, and dealt with the Bill in the
slashing manner we have seen.
[Page Head: SECLUSION OF SIR R. PEEL.]
I was talking to Lord John Russell yesterday at Court on this
subject, and he said that he had no doubt Peel highly disapproved
of their proceedings, and that it was evident he did not pretend
to guide them; for one day in the House of Commons he went over to
Peel, and said that he meant to recommit (or some such thing, no
matter what the particular course was) the Bill that night, and he
supposed he would not object. Peel said, 'Oh, no, I don't object,'
and as he was going away Peel called him back and said, 'Remember
I speak only for myself; I can answer for no other individual in
the House.' He went out of town about a fortnight ago, has never
returned, and will not; his own friends think he ought, but it is
evident that he prefers to wash his hands of the matter. He knows
well enough that the Conservatives hate him in their hearts;
besides having never cordially forgiven him for his conduct on the
Catholic question, they are indignant at his Liberal views and
opinions, and when they adopted him as their leader it was in the
fond hope that he would restore the good old days of Tory
Government, than which nothing could be farther from his thoughts.
John Russell said of him yesterday 'that he was, in fact, a great
lover of changes and innovations;' and so he is. It often occurs
to me that he would not care very much if the House of Lords did
go to the wall, and that though he is the acknowledged head of the
Conservative party, he doesn't in his heart care much for
Conservative principles. He may possibly calculate that no change
can take place in this country by which property will be menaced;
that personally he is safe, and politically his vast superiority
in all the requisites for public life must, under all possible
circumstances, make him the most eminent performer on the great
stage. I do not know that he has any such thoughts as these, but
it appears to me far from improbable, and the more so from his
keeping aloof at this moment and abstaining (as far as we know)
from any attempt to restrain the indiscretion and impetuosity of
his party.
[Page Head: THE WHIGS' TITHE BILL.]
But if on the one hand the conduct of the Tories with respect to
the Corporation Bill has been violent and rash, that of the
Government with respect to the Tithe Bill has been unspeakably
wicked. I cannot recollect an instance of so complete a sacrifice
of the interests of others, of their own principles, and of
national tranquillity to mere party objects, and the more I
reflect upon the course they have taken the more profligate and
disgraceful it appears. These Ministers have recorded their
opinion that the question of appropriation ought not to be mixed
up with that of commutation; that they are essentially distinct,
and ought to remain so. At the beginning of this session the
united Whigs and Radicals considered only one thing--how to drive
Peel out, and though they had a choice of means to accomplish this
end, the famous resolution about appropriation was the one which
they finally selected for the purpose. In so doing they were
altogether regardless of future consequences,[1] and never stopped
to calculate what would be the effect of saddling the measure of
relief (in which all parties concurred) with this impossible
condition. Now how stands the case? They declare that Ireland (as
all the world knows) is a scene of disorder and bloodshed, of
which the Tithe system is the principal cause, and that the Tithe
Bill will afford an effectual remedy to the evil. It is therefore
their imperative and paramount duty, as it ought to be their
earnest and engrossing desire, to secure the application of their
remedy, and, whether in office or out of office (with the
expectation and intention of coming in), to take care that nothing
should be mixed up with it by which it can be endangered, and that
it should be proposed merely for what it is, and not made
subservient to any object but that for which it has been
professedly framed. Having committed the first error of employing
this resolution to drive out the Government, they then considered
themselves obliged to adopt it as an integral part of the Bill,
and accordingly they did so, with a full knowledge that by so
doing they should ensure the rejection of the Bill itself and that
Ireland would continue in the same state of anarchy and confusion,
only aggravated by the furious contests of parties here and by the
failure of all schemes of remedial legislation. Nothing can be
more certain than this, that if the state of Ireland had been
taken into consideration with the simple, straightforward view of
tranquillising the country, and that no party object had been
mixed up with it, the framers of the Tithe Bill would sedulously
have avoided introducing the appropriation clause; but during the
great battle with Peel the establishment of this principle (not
only the principle of _appropriation_, but that _no relief_ should
be afforded without its recognition) was made the condition of
Radical support and the bond of Radical connection, and having as
the result of this compact pledged the House of Commons to the
principle, they refuse to retrace their steps, and offer the House
of Lords the alternative of its recognition (knowing that they
cannot in sincerity, honour, or conscience recognise it) or that
of an irreparable injury to the Irish Church, which it is the
grand object of the Lords to uphold. But the question must not be
considered as one merely affecting the interests of the clergy of
Ireland. If that were all, there might be no such great harm in
these proceedings. Entertaining very strong (and as I think very
sound) opinions with respect to the expediency of dealing with its
revenues, and for purposes ultimately to be effected which they
cannot yet venture to avow, they might be justified, or think
themselves justified, in coping with the difficulties which
embarrass this question in the best mode that is open to them, and
deem it better that the Irish clergy should suffer the temporary
privations they undergo than that the final settlement of the
ecclesiastical question should be indefinitely postponed. But they
do not pretend to be actuated by any such considerations; their
declared object is to restore peace to Ireland, to terminate the
Tithe quarrel, to raise the Protestant clergy from their fallen
state, and to assert the authority of the law by taking away the
inducements which now exist for setting the law at defiance. Those
who undertake to govern the country are above all things bound to
see that the laws are obeyed, and they do not deserve the name of
a Government if they submit to, much less if they connive at, a
permanent state of anarchy in any part of the country. They know
that the law in Ireland is a dead letter, that neither to statute
nor common law do the lower orders of Irish Catholics (the bulk of
the nation) pay the slightest obedience, and that they are
countenanced and urged on in their disobedience by those agitators
with whom the Government act in political fellowship, and in
deference to whom their measures have been shaped. Granting that
after the adoption of the resolution by the House of Commons they
were bound to insert it in their Bill, what justification is there
for their refusal to receive the Bill back from the Lords with no
other alteration than the omission of the appropriation clause? In
so refusing they destroy their own measure; they publish to the
world that it is the principle of appropriation, and not the Tithe
composition, that they really care for; and in thus strangling
their own Bill, because they cannot tack that principle on to it,
they make themselves accomplices of the outrages and violence
which are perpetrated in the Tithe warfare, and abettors of the
regular and systematic violation of the law. The King's Government
exhibits itself in a conspiracy with Catholic agitators and
Protestant republicans against the clergy of the Established
Church and against the laws of the land. If they are sincere in
their own statements and declarations they must of necessity deem
no object commensurate with this in point of urgency and
importance; and what is the object to which this is postponed?
That of maintaining their own consistency; because they turned the
late Government out on this question they must now adhere to it
with desperate tenacity; their interests as a party demand that
they should; O'Connell and the Radicals will not forgive them if
they give it up. They might if they would declare their unchanged
opinion in favour of the principle of appropriation, and their
determination to press the adoption of it at all times and by all
means, and never to desist till they had accomplished its
recognition, but at the same time announce that the perilous state
of Ireland--the magnitude of the evil resulting from the Tithe
system--would not allow them to reject the Tithe Bill though
denuded of the appropriation clauses, as all the rest of its
provisions (all those by which the Tithe system was to be
determined) had been passed by the Lords. I cannot conceive how a
conscientious Minister can take upon himself the responsibility of
quashing this measure, and contentedly look forward to the
probability--almost certainty--of a fresh course of outrage and
disorder, and a new catalogue of miseries and privations, which he
all the time believes it is in his power to avert. But these
Ministers think that they could not avert these evils (by
accepting the Bill) without giving umbrage to their task-masters
and allies, and they do not scruple to sacrifice the mighty
interests at stake in Ireland to the paltry and ephemeral
interests of their party--interests which cannot outlive the
present hour and party, which the slightest change in the
political atmosphere may sweep away in an instant. There is also
another reason by which they are determined; they cannot face the
accusation of inconsistency--the question that would be put, Why
did you turn out Peel's Government? You turned him out on this
very principle which you are now ready to abandon. There is no
doubt that this question would be put with a very triumphant air
by their opponents, but they might easily answer it, without
admitting in so many words--what everybody well knows without any
admission--that the resolution was brought forward for the express
purpose of turning Peel out. They might say that they moved that
resolution because it is a principle that they wished to
establish, and that they still think ought to be established; that
Peel's resignation on that particular question was of his own
choice, and that if they are not irrevocably bound by the
resolution itself, they are not the more bound by that circumstance;
that they sent the Bill to the House of Lords in what they
consider the best form, but that after the Lords had agreed to the
whole measure, with the exception of the appropriation clauses, it
was their duty to take the matter again into their serious
consideration, and to determine whether it was on the whole more
advantageous to Ireland and to the Empire that the Bill should be
rejected (with all the consequences of its rejection apparent) or
that it should be passed without these clauses. There was no
necessity for their abandonment of any opinion or principle, nor
any obstacle to the appropriation clauses being brought forward
again and again in a substantive independent shape. Besides this,
it is not pretended that these clauses were to produce any
immediate perhaps not even any remote, effect, and they not only
acknowledge that the state of Ireland calls for an immediate
remedy, but they assert that unless the remedy is applied without
loss of time it will come too late; that the Tithe Bill, which
this year would accomplish its object, will in all probability
next year be wholly inoperative. To my mind this reasoning is so
conclusive that I can come to no other than the harsh judgment
which I have passed upon their conduct, and I think I have made
good my charges against both Whigs and Tories.
[1] The Whigs were not, probably, the Radicals. O'Connell,
without doubt, had very good reasons for pinning the
Government to this, and foresaw all the consequences of
the compact by which he bound them.
August 29th, 1835 {p.303}
[Page Head: ALTERCATION IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.]
The House of Lords has become a beargarden since Brougham has
been in it; there is no night that is not distinguished by some
violent squabble between him and the Tories. Lord Winchelsea
directly accused him of cowardice the night before last, to which
he replied, 'As to my being _afraid_ to say elsewhere what I say
here, oh, that is too absurd to require an answer.' It is
nevertheless true. Melbourne does very well; his memory served
him happily on this night. Brougham had lashed the Lords into a
fury by calling them a _mob_, and Melbourne quoted Lord
Chesterfield, who said that _all_ deliberative assemblies were
_mobs_. The other day Lord Howick was inveighing passionately
against the Lords for their mutilations of the Corporation Bill,
when Melbourne said, with his characteristic _nonchalance_, 'Why,
what does it matter? We have gone on tolerably well for 500 years
with these corporations, and we may contrive to go on with them
for another year or so.'
On the King's birthday his Majesty had Lord Lansdowne and Lord
Melbourne to dine with him at Windsor, and he made some
extraordinary speeches, of which various versions are about the
town. By-the-bye, I was turning over the 'Annual Register' the
other day, and hit upon his speech last year to the bishops, and
I was astonished at the eloquence of it. It is said that
Phillpotts composed it for him, but there are some internal marks
of its emanating from himself. It is certainly remarkably good of
the kind, and I think it more probable that he spoke what he
thought and felt, and that Phillpotts reported it and made the
best of it.
September 1st, 1835 {p.303}
Lord John Russell assembled his Whigs and Radicals at the Foreign
Office yesterday morning, and announced to them the course he
proposed to adopt with regard to the Corporation Bill, the
amendments he would accept, those he would modify, and those he
would decline. Hume made a violent speech, deprecating any
concessions, but O'Connell made a very moderate one, recommending
a compromise, and saying that great alarm prevailed among many
well-meaning and conscientious persons lest Reform should proceed
too far; that it was highly expedient to quiet these apprehensions,
and upon every account therefore he recommended a moderate and
conciliatory course. There were between two and three hundred
present at this meeting. Accordingly in the afternoon John Russell
stated over again in the House of Commons pretty much what he had
said in the morning, and made a very temperate and conciliatory
speech. Peel, who had arrived suddenly and unexpectedly in
town,[2] rose after him, and, as everybody said (some with joy,
others with rage), 'threw over the Lords.' He declared his
concurrence in those amendments which John Russell agreed to, and
his acquiescence in most of the other provisions without the
amendments of the Lords; to the aldermen for life he objected, and
to some other particulars, as his speech shows. The only amendment
to which he subscribed (and that was objected to by Government)
was the exclusion of Dissenters from the disposal of Church
patronage, and I was very much surprised to hear him stand out for
this upon (as I think) very insufficient grounds. Nothing could
exceed the dismay and the rage (though suppressed) of the
Conservatives at his speech. He was not a bit cheered by those
behind him, but very heartily by those opposite. One silly, noisy
fellow, whose principal vocation in the House of Commons is to
bellow, came near me under the gallery, and I asked him why they
did not cheer, when he sulkily answered, 'he was so well cheered
by the other side that it was not necessary.' Lord Harrowby was
under the gallery. I asked him what he said to Peel's speech. 'I
did not hear it,' he tartly replied, 'but he seems to have given
up the aldermen. I have a great affection for the aldermen.' At
the 'Travellers' I met Strangford, and asked him the same
question. He said, 'I say, Not content.' 'But,' said I, 'you must
take the Bill.' 'Not I, for one; the Lords cannot take it, and if
we are to be ruined I think we had better be ruined by real
Radicals than by sham Tories.' Afterwards I saw Lord Londonderry,
who talked in the same strain, not denying that the Duke of
Wellington had unwillingly come into the measures which Lyndhurst
had adopted, but talking of Lyndhurst's Conservative scruples as a
constitutional lawyer, and such stuff as this. The manner in which
the Duke has been ousted from the leadership, and the alacrity
with which the Lords have followed Lyndhurst, because he led them
into violent courses, is not the least curious part of this
business. (It seems they only meant to make Lyndhurst their leader
_pro hac vice_.)
[2] Peel gave no notice of his intention to come to town.
Hardinge, who is more intimate with him than most of
his political associates, was so sure he would not come
that he told Bradshaw, who asked him, that he certainly
would not be here, and that he (Bradshaw) might go into
the country when he pleased.
[Page Head: PEEL'S CONCILIATORY CONDUCT.]
Bingham Baring and I walked away together, and I went with him to
Lord Ashburton's house, who was not a little astonished at what we
told him, and asserted that Peel was quite wrong about the
aldermen. The violent Whigs were rather provoked at the turn
things took, and Howick, whom I saw under the gallery, said with
great bitterness (mixed with pleasure at Peel's abandonment of the
Lords) that he, for one, 'only consented to these alterations,
which made the Bill so much worse, with a view to obtain future
compensation, and _with interest_.' The English Radicals were very
indignant, and Hume, Grote, and Roebuck spoke one after another
against the Government concessions, but there was no disposition
to listen to them, and an evident satisfaction at the prospect of
an amicable termination of the rising dispute. Nobody apprehends
any other termination, for though the Lords will bluster, and
fume, and fret, and there will be no small fermentation of
mortified pride and vanity, there must be some difference of
opinion at least, and the Duke of Wellington is quite sure to
exert his influence to bring the majority to adopt Peel's views.
It has always been considered by the Tories an object of paramount
importance to keep their party together (this was the pretext of
Wharncliffe and Harrowby for joining in that fatal postponement of
Schedule A), and if after Peel's speech they were to refuse to
accept the fair compromise which is tendered to them, it is
impossible to suppose that he would consider himself as belonging
to them, or that they could pretend to acknowledge him as their
leader, and the Tory party would by this schism be effectually
broken up.
I have long considered the breaking up of the Tory party as a
grand desideratum, and though I earnestly desire to see a powerful
Conservative party in the country and in Parliament, it must be
one reconstructed out of materials more various and more Liberal
than that which now calls itself Conservative, but which in its
heart clings to the narrow notions and loves the exclusive system
of bygone days. The dissolution of the Tory party in the House of
Lords, by a division of them into a high and a low section, would
in itself be a reform of that House, and it is to such a
dissolution and fresh modification of parties that we must look
for a reform, which without any violent change will redress the
balance and enable the machine of government to move without
obstruction. I sat next to Senior in the House of Lords, and he
was talking of the necessity of a reform of the House of Peers,
and he said, 'I can see the steps of it very plainly.' 'What, by
making Peers for life, as you suggest in your pamphlet?' 'No, it
is too late for that now, but by the election of representatives.
When Scotland was united she sent representative Peers elected
from the body; Ireland the same. Now fifty years of Tory rule have
given such a preponderance to the Tory interest in the House of
Lords, that the balance cannot be redressed but by a creation
which would make the House of Peers too numerous for a legislative
assembly. I would therefore begin by creating, in order to
equalise the strength of the opposite parties, and then the Peers
should elect representatives.' I said, 'All this will be
unnecessary, for the Tory party will be broken up, and without a
change so startling and extensive the balance will be quietly
redressed, and in the natural order of things.' The Duc de Nemours
was under the gallery in the House of Commons, but he soon went
away, and in the middle of Peel's speech.
September 3rd, 1835 {p.306}
[Page Head: RECONCILIATION.]
Nothing could be better than the temper and disposition of the
House on Tuesday night, as well as on Monday, nothing more
flattering to Peel. John Russell said 'he was anxious that the
clause (I forget which) should go forth with the sanction of the
right honourable baronet's approbation.' Peel said he spoke only
for himself; Lord John said that made no difference, indicating in
fact that his opinion was worth more than those of all his
followers put together. The Lords in the meantime are tremendously
sulky, and though it is impossible to believe they will have the
frantic folly to refuse the accommodation that by God's mercy is
offered to them, it is not quite safe, and they are now in grand
conclave at Apsley House to determine upon their course. Lord
Lansdowne told me at Court yesterday that the day before he went
up to Lyndhurst in the House of Lords, to speak to him about some
Bill, when Lyndhurst said, 'I was in hopes you were coming to
speak to me about the amendments.' 'No; it will be time enough to
talk about them when they are again before the House.' 'Well, and
what do they say now?' 'They say that the lives of your aldermen
are not at a premium.' 'Do they? But they will rise in the market
to-morrow, I can tell you.' What satisfies me most in all this is
the conduct of the Government, and even that of many of the
Radicals--of Hume, for instance--and the general temper and
disposition evinced by the House, symptomatic of a more healthy
feeling than I ever expected to see displayed. In the division the
Radical numbers were contemptible, showing that the Conservative
interest, if not broken up by party divisions, and if ever it was
roused and connected by the acknowledgment of a common danger,
would crush the Radical force in an instant. These are valuable
manifestations, and worth a hundred clauses in the Corporation
Bill; for what matters it whether aldermen and town clerks are
perpetuated or suppressed? and it really is grotesque to fight for
these puerilities as if it was a contest _pro aris et focis_, and
to hesitate one instant whether a collision should be provoked
between the two Houses of Parliament, and the advantages both
direct and collateral flowing from Peel's mediation be thrown
away, for the sake of maintaining these secondary and questionable
objects.
September 6th, 1835 {p.307}
On Thursday there was a great meeting at Apsley House; eighty
Peers present, and four hours' deliberation. They kept their
resolutions a profound secret, but as I knew what they were on
Friday morning, I went to Melbourne and told him, in order that
the Government might be prepared, and turn over in their minds
how matters might be accommodated. The Tories adhered to the
justices and wards, and abandoned the rest. I found Melbourne and
Lord John together; the latter said there would be no difficulty
about the justices, but the amendment about the wards was
impossible.
[Page Head: EFFECTS OF MUNICIPAL REFORM.]
The debate at night was carried on with extraordinary temper and
calmness; Brougham complimented Lyndhurst in very glowing terms.
The matter now stands over till Monday, when the Commons must
determine whether to accept the Bill with these alterations or
reject it on account of them. There is great division of opinion
as to the result, but I cannot bring myself to believe that they
will let the Bill drop for such trifles. I asked Wharncliffe last
night to explain to me in what manner these things would operate
_politically_, and he owned that he thought their political
importance was greatly overrated, but that the division proposed
by Government gave greater influence to numbers, while that
substituted by the Peers gave more to property, and that the
constitution of the town councils, whether they were more or less
Radical or Conservative, would have a political effect in this
way; that in every borough little democracies would be established,
which would be continually exercising a democratic influence and
extending democratic principles, and that the greater the infusion
of Conservative interest you could make in these new bodies the
more that tendency would be counteracted. In my opinion a fallacy
lurks under this argument; they assume the certain democratic,
even revolutionary, character of the new town councils without any
sufficient reason, but if this be so, and if they are correct in
their anticipations, I doubt whether the guards and drawbacks with
which they are endeavouring to counteract the pernicious influence
they dread will be found efficacious. I do not despair of the
prevalence of sound Conservative principles _upon a Liberal
basis_, and it appears to me that the Peers have committed a great
blunder in expressing such violent suspicion and distrust of the
new corporations; that nothing is so likely to make them Radical
as to insist that they must and will be so, or to render them
inimical to the aristocracy and to aristocratic institutions as to
exhibit a violent hostility on the part of the aristocracy towards
them. I apply this observation generally to their way of dealing
with the question rather than to the particular words of the
disputed clause, which is probably on the whole fairer and better
as the Peers amended it than as the Commons framed it, so much so
that I do not understand the tenacity with which the Government
cling to it. One thing is very clear, that neither for this nor
for the justices clause is it worth while (to either party) that
the prevailing harmony should be broken and the Bill be lost. If
both parties were sincerely desirous of an accommodation, and
there was any common interest, any common ground on which they
could meet, there would be no difficulty in an adjustment; but
this is not the case. Not only are the interests and wishes of the
two parties at variance, but the desires of the moderate and the
violent in each party are so too. The moderate in both probably do
wish for an accommodation. The Bill is the Bill of the Whigs, and
with all the amendments it does in point of fact accomplish their
object, though not, as Lyndhurst said, so completely as without
them. They wish the Bill to pass, therefore, but the Tories detest
the Bill even as it is, and it is no concern of theirs _quoad
Bill_ that it should pass; on the contrary, they would rejoice at
its failure, but its failure would place the two Houses in a state
of collision, and though each party would throw the blame on the
other (on very plausible grounds either way), it is more the
interest of the Lords than of the Commons to avert this, because
the danger of collision attaches exclusively to the Lords. The
violent of the Commons would rather like it; the violent of the
Lords would doggedly encounter it. There are many who desire that
the dispute should not be settled, in order to push matters to
extremities and involve the Houses in a contest, in order to
extirpate the House of Lords. What renders it more desirable on
account of the Lords that the Bill should not be lost, and a cry
got up against them, is the circumstance of their having thrown
out so many other Bills, and some on very unjustifiable
grounds--the Dublin Police Bill, for example. Not a word was said
against its merits; on the contrary, it was not denied that the
case was urgent, and it was only thrown out because the Lord Mayor
and Corporation of Dublin had not been consulted. Now it might
have been very proper to consult these functionaries; it may even
be a culpable omission to have neglected them; but this is not a
time, nor is the House of Lords in circumstances, to be so
fastidious and to stickle for such formalities. Their character
with the nation is at stake, and it is of far greater consequence
that they should do nothing calculated to throw suspicion on their
motives, or odium on their proceedings, than to provide for a
punctilious observance of respect and deference to the Dublin
Corporation. They seem to me to have made a great mistake in
throwing out this Bill, and I am much deceived if they do not hear
more of it hereafter.
September 8th, 1835 {p.310}
Lord John called another meeting at the Foreign Office yesterday
morning, when he proposed, and they agreed to take the Lords'
amendments and finish the business; so this famous Corporation
Bill has got through at last. O'Connell and Warburton concurred
in accepting it. The only man who violently opposed its being
accepted was Tom Duncombe, who made a furious harangue, and
boldly asserted that _he knew_ to a positive certainty that if
the Commons would hold out the Peers would abandon the justices
and wards, and he offered _privately_ to give John Russell a list
of Peers sufficient to carry this, and who, he would answer for
it, were ready to make the concession. Lord John, however, was
too wise to listen to such impudent nonsense, and, though very
reluctantly, it was settled that the Commons should give way.
Both parties probably overrate the value of the disputed clauses,
and it is to be regretted that the two Houses will not part
_amicably_. Government takes the Bill under a sort of engagement
to consider it as an instalment, and that they shall try and get
the difference next year. This is mere humbug, and a poor sop
thrown to the Radicals, but as it answers the immediate purpose
it is very well.
September 9th, 1835 {p.311}
[Page Head: THE KING'S HARANGUE ON THE MILITIA.]
To-day at Court, when his Majesty made one of his most
extraordinary harangues, and much more lengthy than usual. It was
evidently got up with great care and previous determination. The
last article on the Council list was one for the reduction of the
militia, and it was upon this that he descanted with great
vehemence. He gave a historical account of the militia from the
year 1756, when he said it was increased against the inclination
of George II., who was not so well acquainted with the country as
his successors have been, 'when there was a Whig Administration,
as there is now.' He declared his conviction that the safety of
the country demanded a numerous and effective militia, that
nothing should have induced him to consent to the present
reduction but the necessity of making some changes which had
become indispensable owing to the culpable conduct of colonels of
the militia who had neglected their duty, but whose names he
would not expose; that agitators in Ireland and political
economists here wished to reduce this force, in order, under the
pretext of economy, to leave the country defenceless; but he
never would consent to this, and only agreed to the present
measure upon a clear understanding that early in the next session
the matter was to be brought forward in Parliament with a view to
render the militia more efficient; that nothing but the militia
justified the smallness of our military establishments as
compared with those of other nations; and he finished by saying
that the state of our relations with Russia made the maintenance
of this force of paramount importance, as it was impossible to
say what dangers we might not be menaced with from that quarter,
or how soon we might be called upon to face them, and that the
advisers of the Crown would incur a deep responsibility if any
mischief arose from the undue reduction of this force. He ended a
very long speech (of which I can only put down an outline) with
this strange denunciation against Russia, and then said, 'One
word more. I have spoken thus in the presence of many Lords who
are connected with the militia, either immediately or through
their friends, because I wish that my sentiments should be
thoroughly and extensively promulgated.' This is a very brief
outline of his oration, which was delivered with great energy.
At the levee I had some talk with Hobhouse, who expressed himself
well satisfied with the termination of the Corporation contest;
he said that the King was delighted, and added (in which I think
he flatters himself) that he was in high good-humour in
consequence, and that though he disliked them politically, he
liked them very well personally, and that if the Irish Church
question could be arranged, he would be quite content with them,
and they should be excellent friends.
Lord Howick, who is the bitterest of all that party, and
expresses himself with astonishing acrimony, talked in his usual
strain, and I could not refrain from giving him a bit of my mind.
He talked of 'the Lords having played their last trump,' of 'the
impossibility of their going on, of the hostility towards them in
the country, and the manner in which suggestions of reforming the
House of Lords were received in the House of Commons,' and
expressed his conviction that 'that House as an institution was
in imminent danger.' I told him I did not believe that such
sentiments pervaded the country, that I had not yet seen
sufficient evidence of it, and asked if such a spirit really was
in activity, did he not think he was bound to set about resisting
and counteracting it? He talked of 'its not being resistible;' he
said that 'the Lords must give way or a collision would be the
consequence,' and 'he knew who would go to the wall.' I said that
'it was such sentiments as those, uttered by such men as himself,
which most contributed to create the danger the existence of
which he deplored.' To this he made no answer; but who can feel
secure when a Minister of the Crown, in the palace of the King,
within three yards of his person, while he is there present
exercising the functions of royalty, holds language the most
revolutionary, and such as might more naturally be uttered at
some low meeting in St. Giles's or St. Pancras' than in such a
place? In spite of my disposition to be sanguine, it is
impossible to shake off all alarm when I hear the opinions of men
of different parties (opinions founded on different data and
biassed by opposite wishes) meeting at the same point, and
arriving by different roads at the same conclusion.
[Page Head: THE KING AND THE DUCHESS OF KENT.]
Lyndhurst (who called on me the day before yesterday about some
business) talked over the Corporation Bill, which he considers to
be nearly as important as the Reform Bill. He says it must give
them all the corporate boroughs, for he assumes as an undoubted
fact that the new councils will be Radical, and that their
influence will radicalise the boroughs. He said there was no
chance of the House of Lords surviving ten years, that power must
reside in the House of Commons, as it always had, and that the
House of Commons would not endure the independent authority of
the other House; so that Howick and Lyndhurst are not far apart
in their calculations. It is certainly true, what Lyndhurst said
to me the other day in George Street, that 'they know the Bill
accomplishes their purpose.' Melbourne said to me at Court that
'it was a great _bouleversement_, a great experiment, and we must
see how it worked.' I met him in St. James's Park afterwards, and
walked with him to the Palace. He told me the King was in a state
of great excitement, especially about this militia question, but
that the thing which affected him most was the conduct of the
Duchess of Kent--her popularity-hunting, her progresses, and
above all the addresses which she received and replied to. He
told me what the King had said at dinner on his birthday about
her. 'I cannot expect to live very long, but I hope that my
successor may be of full age when she mounts the throne. I have
great respect for the person upon whom, in the event of my death,
the Regency would devolve, but I have great distrust of the
persons by whom she is surrounded. I know that everything which
falls from my lips is reported again, and I say this thus
candidly and publicly because it is my desire and intention that
these my sentiments should be made known.' Melbourne told me that
he believed Lord Durham is not in favour with the Duchess of
Kent, who has discovered that he had made use of her for his own
ends, and she has now withdrawn her confidence from him. I asked
him who her confidants were, but he either did not know or would
not tell me.
Doncaster, September 15th, 1835 {p.314}
Left London on Saturday morning with Matuscewitz; I had a good
deal of conversation with him about the state and prospects of
this country, in the course of which he told me that Louis
Philippe had consulted Talleyrand about the maintenance of his
intimate connection with England, and that Talleyrand had
replied, 'When you came to the throne four years ago, I advised
you to cultivate your relations with England as the best security
you could obtain. I now advise you to relinquish that connection,
for in the present state of English politics it can only be
productive of danger or embarrassment to you.' Having omitted to
put it down at the time, I can't recollect the exact words, but
this was the sense, and _I think_ Matuscewitz said that Louis
Philippe had told him this himself.
[Page Head: PRINCESS VICTORIA AT BURGHLEY.]
We dined at Burghley on the way, and got here at two on Sunday;
read Mackintosh's Life in the carriage, which made me dreadfully
disgusted with my racing _metier_. What a life as compared with
mine!--passed among great and wise men, and intent on high
thoughts and honourable aspirations, existing amidst interests
far more pungent even than those which engage me, and of the
futility of which I am for ever reminded. I am struck with the
coincidence of the tastes and dispositions of Burke and
Mackintosh, and of something in the mind of the one which bears
an affinity to that of the other; but their characters--how
different! their abilities--how unequal! yet both, how superior,
even the weakest of the two, to almost all other men, and the
success of each so little corresponding with his powers, neither
having ever attained any object of ambition beyond that of fame.
All their talents, therefore, and all their requirements, did not
procure them content, and probably Burke was a very unhappy, and
Mackintosh not a very happy, man. The suavity, the indolent
temperament, the 'mitis sapientia' of Mackintosh may have warded
off sorrow and mitigated disappointment, but the stern and
vindictive energies of Burke must have kept up a storm of
conflicting passions in his breast. But I turn from Mackintosh
and Burke to all that is vilest and foolishest on earth, and
among such I now pass my unprofitable hours. There seems to me
less gaiety and bustle here than formerly, but as much villany as
ever. From want of money or of enterprise, or from greater
distrust and a paucity of spectators, there is very little
betting, and what there is, spiritless and dull. There are vast
crowds of people to see the Princess Victoria, who comes over
from Wentworth to-day, and the Due de Nemours is here. I am going
to run for the St. Leger, which I shall probably not win, and
though I am nervous and excited, I shall not care much if I lose,
and I doubt whether I should care very much if I won; but this
latter sensation will probably be for ever doubtful. There is
something in it all which displeases me, and I often wish I was
well out of it.
Burghley, September 21st, 1835 {p.315}
I did lose the St. Leger, and did not care; idled on at Doncaster
to the end of the week, and came here on Saturday to meet the
Duchess of Kent. They arrived from Belvoir at three o'clock in a
heavy rain, the civic authorities having turned out at Stamford
to escort them, and a procession of different people all very
loyal. When they had lunched, and the Mayor and his brethren had
got dry, the Duchess received the address, which was read by Lord
Exeter as Recorder. It talked of the Princess as 'destined to
mount the throne of these realms.' Conroy handed the answer, just
as the Prime Minister does to the King. They are splendidly
lodged, and great preparations have been made for their
reception.
London, September 27th, 1835 {p.315}
The dinner at Burghley was very handsome; hall well lit; and all
went off well, except that a pail of ice was landed in the
Duchess's lap, which made a great bustle. Three hundred people at
the ball, which was opened by Lord Exeter and the Princess, who,
after dancing one dance, went to bed. They appeared at breakfast
the next morning at nine o'clock, and at ten set off to Holkham.
Went to Newmarket on Tuesday and came to town on Wednesday; found
it very empty and no news. Lord Chatham died the day before
yesterday, which is of no other importance than that of giving
some honours and emoluments to Melbourne to distribute.
The papers are full of nothing but O'Connell's progress in
Scotland, where he is received with unbounded enthusiasm by
enormous crowds, but by no people of rank, property, or
character. It is a rabble triumph altogether, but it is made the
most of by all the Ministerial papers. The Opposition papers pour
torrents of invective upon him, and he in his speeches is not
behindhand with the most virulent and scurrilous of them; he is
exalted to the bad eminence at which he has arrived more by the
assaults of his enemies than by the efforts of his friends. It is
the Tories who are ever insisting upon the immensity of his
power, and whose excess of hatred and fear make him of such vast
account that 'he draws the rabble after him as a monster makes a
show.' However mean may be his audiences in Scotland, he has
numbers to boast of, and that will serve his purpose; he will no
doubt render this reception instrumental to the increase of his
authority in Ireland. He now avows that he has abandoned Repeal,
and all other projects, in order to devote himself to the great
task of reforming the House of Lords.
[Page Head: SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH.]
I have finished Mackintosh's Life with great delight, and many
painful sensations, together with wonder and amazement. His
account of his reading is utterly incomprehensible to me; he must
have been endowed with some superhuman faculty of transferring the
contents of books to his own mind. He talks in his journals of
reading volumes in a few hours which would seem to demand many
days even from the most rapid reader. I have heard of Southey, who
would read a book through as he stood in a bookseller's shop; that
is, his eye would glance down the page, and by a process partly
mechanical, partly intellectual, formed by long habit, he would
extract in his synoptical passage all that he required to know.
(Macaulay was, and George Lewis is, just as wonderful in this
respect.) Some of the books that Mackintosh talks of, philosophical
and metaphysical works, could not be so disposed of, and I should
like much to know what his system or his secret was. I met Sydney
Smith yesterday, and asked him why more of the journals had not
been given. He said because the editors had been ill advised, but
that in another edition more should be given; that Mackintosh was
the most agreeable man he had ever known, that he had been
shamefully used by his friends, and by none more than by Brougham.
So, I said, it would appear by what you say in your letter. 'Oh
no,' he said, laughing and chuckling, and shaking his great belly,
'you don't really think I meant to allude to Brougham?'
'Mackintosh's son,' he said 'is a man of no talents, the
composition (what there is of it) belongs to Erskine, his
son-in-law, a sensible man.' To be sure there are some strange
things said by Mackintosh here and there; among others, that Lord
Holland only wanted voice--not to be impeded in his utterance--to
be a greater orator than Canning or Brougham! If he had not been a
man 'whom no sense of wrongs could rouse to vengeance,' he would
have flung the India Board in Lord Grey's face when he was
insulted with the offer of it.[3] What are we to think of the
necessary connection between intellectual superiority and official
eminence, when we have seen the Duke of Richmond invited to be a
member of the Cabinet, while Mackintosh was thrust into an obscure
and subordinate office--Mackintosh placed under the orders of
Charles Grant! Well might he regret that he had not been a
professor, and, 'with safer pride content,' adorned with unusual
glory some academical chair. Then while he was instructing and
delighting the world, there would have been many regrets and
lamentations that such mighty talents were confined to such a
narrow sphere, and innumerable speculations of the greatness he
would have achieved in political life, and how the irresistible
force of his genius and his eloquence must have raised him to the
pinnacle of Parliamentary fame and political power. Perhaps he
would have partaken in this delusion, and have bitterly lamented
the success which had deprived him of a more brilliant fortune and
a loftier fame; for it may reasonably be doubted whether all his
laborious investigations of the deepest recesses of the human
mind, and his extensive acquaintance with the theory of mental
phenomena, would have enabled him accurately to ascertain the
practical capabilities of his own mind, and to arrive at those
just conclusions which should indicate to him that path of life on
which it was most expedient for him to travel, with reference to
the strength of his understanding, and the softness, not to say
feebleness, of his character.
[3] Sir James Mackintosh was a member of the Board of
Control under Lord Grey's Government. He never held any
other office in England.