A Proclamation against Rioters--Appointments--Duke of Wellington
in Hampshire--General Excitement--The Tory Party--State of
Ireland--More Disturbances--Lord Grey's Colleagues--Election at
Liverpool--The Black Book--The Duke of Wellington's Position
and Character--A Council on a Capital Sentence--Brougham in the
House of Lords--The Clerks of the Council--Lord Grey and Lord
Lyndhurst--The Chancellor of Ireland--Lord Melbourne--Duke of
Richmond--Sir James Graham--Lyndhurst Lord Chief Baron--Judge
Allan Park--Lord Lyndhurst and the Whigs--Duke of Wellington
and Polignac--The King and his Sons--Polish Revolution--
Mechanics' Institute--Repeal of the Union--King Louis
Philippe--Lord Anglesey and O'Connell--A Dinner at the
Athenaeum--Canning and George IV.--Formation of Canning's
Government--Negotiation with Lord Melbourne--Count Walewski--
Croker's Boswell--State of Ireland--Brougham and Sugden--Arrest
of O'Connell--Colonel Napier and the Trades Unions--The Civil
List--Hunt in the House of Commons--Southey's Letter to
Brougham on Literary Honours--The Budget--O'Connell pleads
guilty--Achille Murat--Weakness of the Government--Lady Jersey
and Lord Durham--Lord Duncannon--Ireland--Wordsworth.
November 25th, 1830 {p.073}
The accounts from the country on the 23rd were so bad that a
Cabinet sat all the morning, and concerted a proclamation
offering large rewards for the discovery of offenders, rioters,
or burners. Half the Cabinet walked to St. James's, where I went
with the draft proclamation in my pocket, and we held a Council
in the King's room to approve it. I remember the last Council of
this sort we held was on Queen Caroline's business. She had
demanded to be heard by counsel in support of her asserted right
to be crowned, and the King ordered in Council that she should be
heard. We held the Council in his dressing-room at Carlton House;
he was in his bedgown, and we in our boots. This proclamation did
not receive the sign manual or the Great Seal and was not
engrossed till the next day, but was nevertheless published in
the 'Gazette.'
Yesterday the accounts were better. There was a levee and Council,
all the Ministers present but Palmerston and Holland. The King
made a discourse, and took occasion (about some Admiralty order)
to introduce the whole history of his early naval life, his first
going to sea and the instructions which George III. gave Admiral
Digby as to his treatment. All the old Ministers came to the levee
except the Duke of Wellington, who was in Hampshire to try his
influence as Lord-Lieutenant in putting down the riots. Anson as
Master of the Buckhounds was made a Privy Councillor, not usually
a Privy Councillor's place, but the King said he rather liked
increasing the number than not. Clanricarde has a Gold Stick, so
there is Canning's son-in-law in office under Lord Grey! There has
been a difficulty about the Master-General of the Ordnance, and a
little difference between Lord Grey and Lord Hill: when the Duke
of Richmond was withdrawn, Grey determined to appoint Sir W.
Gordon, but as Gordon would have to give up a permanent for a
temporary office, he bargained that he should have the Grand Cross
of the Bath. Lord Grey at the same time promised his brother Sir
Charles Grey a Grand Cross, but Lord Hill (who as Commander-in-Chief
has all the Crosses at his disposal) was offended at what he
considered a slight to him and went to the King to complain. It is
probable that Lord Grey knew nothing of the matter, and fancied
they were all recommended by himself. As the matter stands now,
Gordon's appointment is suspended. The only other difficulty is to
find a Secretary at War. Sandon is to have it, if they can make no
better arrangement. I had a long conversation with the Duke of
Richmond yesterday about refusing the salary of his office, and
entreated him to take it, for most people think his declining it
great nonsense. He alleged a great many bad reasons for declining,
but promised to consider the matter.
I am in a very disagreeable situation as regards my late
colleague's place. Lord Bathurst wrote a letter to Lord Lansdowne
stating that the King had approved of his son's appointment, and
that he had intended to reduce the salary of the office. Lord
Grey spoke to the King, and said that after what had passed in
both Houses he did not wish to do anything, but to leave the
office to be dealt with by a Committee of the House of Commons,
under whose consideration it would come. Lord Lansdowne said he
certainly should do nothing either, so that it remains to be seen
whether they will give me a colleague, a deputy, or nothing at
all.
November 28th, 1830 {p.075}
The Duke of Wellington, who as soon as he was out of office
repaired to Hants, and exerted himself as Lord-Lieutenant to
suppress the disorders, returned yesterday, having done much
good, and communicated largely with the Secretary of State. The
Government are full of compliments and respects to him, and the
Chancellor wrote him a letter entreating he would name any
gentleman to be added to the Special Commission which was going
down to the county over which he 'so happily presided.' He named
three.
[Page Head: DISTURBED STATE OF THE COUNTRY.]
There has been nothing new within these three days, but the alarm
is still very great, and the general agitation which pervades
men's minds unlike what I have ever seen. Reform, economy, echoed
backwards and forwards, the doubts, the hopes and the fears of
those who have anything to lose, the uncertainty of everybody's
future condition, the immense interests at stake, the magnitude
and imminence of the danger, all contribute to produce a nervous
excitement, which extends to all classes--to almost every
individual. Until the Ministers are re-elected nobody can tell
what will be done in Parliament, and Lord Grey himself has no
idea what sort of strength the Government will have in either
House; but there is a prevailing opinion that they ought to be
supported at this moment, although the Duke of Wellington and
Peel mean to keep their party together. Lyndhurst's resignation
with his colleagues (added to his not being invited to join this
Government) has restored him to the good graces of his party, for
Lord Bathurst told me had behaved very honourably. He means now
to set to work to gain character, and as he is about the ablest
public man going, and nearly the best speaker, he will yet bustle
himself into consideration and play a part once more. Peel,
Lyndhurst, and Hardinge are three capital men for the foundation
of a party--as men of business superior to any three in this
Cabinet. But I doubt if the Duke will ever be in a civil office
again, nor do I think the country would like to see him at the
head of a Government, unless it was one conducted in a very
different manner from the last. For the present deplorable state
of things, and for the effervescence of public opinion, which
threatens the overthrow of the constitution in trying to amend
it, Peel and the Duke are entirely responsible; and the former is
the less excusable because he might have known better, and if he
had gone long ago to the Duke, and laid before him the state of
public opinion, told him how irresistible it was, and had refused
to carry on the Government in the House of Commons with such a
crew as he had, the Duke must have given way. Notwithstanding the
great measures which have distinguished his Government, such as
Catholic Emancipation, and the repeal of the Test Acts, a
continual series of systematic blunders, an utter ignorance of,
and indifference to, public opinion, have rendered the first of
these great measures almost useless. Ireland is on the point of
becoming in a worse state than before the Catholic question was
settled; and why? Because, first of all, the settlement was put
off too long, and the fever of agitation would not subside, and
because it was accompanied by an insult to O'Connell, which he
has been resolved to revenge, and which he knows he can punish.
Then instead of depriving him of half his influence by paying the
priests, and so getting them under the influence of Government,
they neglected this, and followed up the omission by taxing
Ireland, and thus uniting the whole nation against us. What is
this but egregious presumption, blindness, ignorance, and want of
all political calculation and foresight? What remains now to be
done? Perhaps nothing, for the anti-Union question is spreading
far and wide with a velocity that is irresistible, and it is the
more dangerous because the desire for the repeal of the Union is
rather the offspring of imagination than of reason, and arises
from vague, excited hopes, not, like the former agitation, from
real wrongs, long and deeply felt. But common shifts and
expedients, partial measures, will not do now, and in the state
of the game a deep stake must be played or all will be lost. To
buy O'Connell at any price, pay the Catholic Church, establish
poor laws, encourage emigration, and repeal the obnoxious taxes
and obnoxious laws, are the only expedients which have a chance
of restoring order. It is easy to write these things, but perhaps
difficult to carry them into execution, but what we want is a
head to conceive and a heart to execute such measures as the
enormous difficulties of the times demand.
December 1st, 1830 {p.077}
[Page Head: THE RESULTS OF TORY GOVERNMENT.]
The last two or three days have produced no remarkable outrages,
and though the state of the country is still dreadful, it is
rather better on the whole than it was; but London is like the
capital of a country desolated by cruel war or foreign invasion,
and we are always looking for reports of battles, burnings, and
other disorders. Wherever there has been anything like fighting,
the mob has always been beaten, and has shown the greatest
cowardice. They do not, however, seem to have been actuated by a
very ferocious spirit; and considering the disorders of the
times, it is remarkable that they have not been more violent and
rapacious. Lord Craven, who is just of age, with three or four
more young Lords, his friends, defeated and dispersed them in
Hampshire. They broke into the Duke of Beaufort's house at
Heythrop, but he and his sons got them out without mischief, and
afterwards took some of them. On Monday as the field which had
been out with the King's hounds were returning to town, they were
summoned to assist in quelling a riot at Woburn, which they did;
the gentlemen charged and broke the people, and took some of
them, and fortunately some troops came up to secure the
prisoners. The alarm, however, still continues, and a feverish
anxiety about the future universally prevails, for no man can
foresee what course events will take, nor how his own individual
circumstances may be affected by them.
The Government in the meantime promises fair, and they begin by a
display of activity, in early attendance at their offices, and
unusual recommendation of diligence and economy. But Lord Grey's
Government is already carped at, and not without apparent reason.
The distribution of offices is in many instances bad; many of the
appointments were bad, and the number of his own family provided
for is severely criticised. There are of Lord Grey's family:
Howick, Under-Secretary; Ellice, Secretary of the Treasury;
Barrington, Lord of the Admiralty; Durham, Privy Seal; Wood,
Private Secretary (though he has no salary); and Lambton's
brother in the Household. Melbourne at the Home Office is
considered an inefficient successor to Peel, Graham too young and
not enough distinguished for the Admiralty; Poulett Thomson is
said to entertain the most Radical opinions; Althorp put him in.
There never was a more sudden rise than this; a young merchant,
after two or three years of Parliament and two or three speeches,
is made Vice-President of the Board of Trade, Treasurer of the
Navy, and a Privy Councillor. Then Althorp as Chancellor of the
Exchequer may be a good one, but nobody expects much from
anything that is already known about him. This constitution of
the Government has already done harm, and has stamped a character
of rapacity upon Lord Grey, which he will hear of in proper time;
but at this moment he has got all the press on his side, and
people are resolved to give him credit for good intentions.
Brougham has captivated the Archbishop of Canterbury by offering
to give livings to any deserving clergyman he would recommend to
him. I met him at dinner yesterday in the greatest spirits,
elated and not altered by his new dignity. He is full of projects
of reform in the administration of justice, and talks of
remodelling the Privy Council as a Court of Appeal, which would
be of great use.
December 2nd, 1830 {p.078}
[Page Head: LIVERPOOL ELECTION.]
Yesterday a levee and Council and Recorder's report. Clanricarde
and Robert Grosvenor[1] sworn in.
[1] [Afterwards Lord Ebury.]
The Liverpool election, which is just over, was, considering the
present state of things, a remarkable contest. It is said to have
cost near L100,000 to the two parties, and to have exhibited a
scene of bribery and corruption perfectly unparalleled; no
concealment or even semblance of decency was observed; the price
of tallies and of votes rose, like stock, as the demand
increased, and single votes fetched from L15 to L100 apiece. They
voted by tallies; as each tally voted for one or the other
candidate they were furnished with a receipt for their votes,
with which they went to the committee, when through a hole in the
wall the receipt was handed in, and through another the
stipulated sum handed out; and this scene of iniquity has been
exhibited at a period when the cry for Reform is echoed from one
end of the country to the other, and in the case of a man
(Denison) who stood on the principle of Reform. Nobody yet knows
whence the money for Denison comes (the Ewarts are enormously
rich), but it will be still more remarkable if he should pay it
himself, when he is poor, careful of money, and was going to
India the other day in order to save L12,000 or L15,000. If
anybody had gone down at the eleventh hour and polled one good
vote, he would have beaten both candidates and disfranchised the
borough. As it is, it is probable the matter will be taken up and
the borough disfranchised. The right of voting is as bad as
possible in the freemen, who are the lowest rabble of the town
and, as it appears, a parcel of venal wretches. Here comes the
difficulty of Reform, for how is it possible to reform the
electors?
December 5th, 1830 {p.079}
The country is getting quieter, but though the immediate panic is
passing away men's minds are not the less disquieted as to our
future prospects. Not a soul knows what plan of Reform the
Ministers will propose, nor how far they are disposed to go. The
Duke of Devonshire has begun in his own person by announcing to
the Knaresborough people that he will never again interfere with
that borough. Then the Black Book, as it is called, in which all
places and pensions are exhibited, has struck terror into all who
are named and virtuous indignation into all who are not. Nothing
can be more _mal a propos_ than the appearance of this book at
such a season, when there is such discontent about our institutions
and such unceasing endeavours to bring them into contempt. The
history of the book is this:--Graham moved last year for a return
of all Privy Councillors who had more than L1,000 a year, and
Goulburn chose to give him a return of _all persons_ who had more
than L1,000 a year, because he thought the former return would be
invidious to Privy Councillors; so he caused that to be published,
which will remove no obloquy from those he meant to save, but draw
down a great deal on hundreds of others, and on the Government
under which such things exist. I speak feelingly, for 'quorum pars
magna sum.'
[Page Head: POLITICAL CHARACTER OF WELLINGTON.]
The Duke of Wellington gave a great dinner yesterday to all the
people who had gone out of office (about fifty), so that it is
clear they mean to keep together. Whether he looks forward to be
Prime Minister again it is impossible to say, but his real friends
would prefer his taking the command of the army, whatever his
fools and flatterers may do. Lord Lyndhurst, who loses everything
by the fall of the late Government, cannot get over it,
particularly as he feels that the Duke's obstinacy brought it
about, and that by timely concessions and good management he might
have had Lord Grey, Palmerston, and all that are worth having.
Peel, on the contrary, is delighted; he wants leisure, is glad to
get out of such a firm, and will have time to form his own plans
and avail himself of circumstances, which, according to every
probability, must turn out in his favour. His youth (for a public
man), experience, and real capacity for business will inevitably
make him Minister hereafter. The Duke of Wellington's fall,[2] if
the causes of it are dispassionately traced and considered,
affords a great political lesson. His is one of those mixed
characters which it is difficult to praise or blame without the
risk of doing them more or less than justice. He has talents which
the event has proved to be sufficient to make him the second (and,
now that Napoleon is gone, the first general) of the age, but
which could not make him a tolerable Minister. Confident,
presumptuous, and dictatorial, but frank, open, and good-humoured,
he contrived to rule in the Cabinet without mortifying his
colleagues, and he has brought it to ruin without forfeiting their
regard. Choosing with a very slender stock of knowledge to take
upon himself the sole direction of every department of Government,
he completely sank under the burden. Originally imbued with the
principles of Lord Castlereagh and the Holy Alliance, he brought
all those predilections with him into office. Incapable of
foreseeing the mighty events with which the future was big, and of
comprehending the prodigious alterations which the moral character
of Europe had undergone, he pitted himself against Canning in the
Cabinet, and stood up as the assertor of maxims both of foreign
and domestic policy which that great statesman saw were no longer
fitted for the times we live in. With a flexibility which was more
remarkably exhibited at subsequent periods, when he found that the
cause he advocated was lost, the Duke turned suddenly round, and
surrendered his opinions at discretion; but in his heart he never
forgave Mr. Canning, and from that time jealousy of him had a
material influence on his political conduct, and was the primary
motive of many of his subsequent resolutions. This flexibility has
been the cause of great benefits to the country, but ultimately of
his own downfall, for it has always proceeded from the pressure of
circumstances and considerations of convenience to himself, and
not from a rational adaptation of his opinions and conduct to the
necessities and variations of the times. He has not been
thoroughly true to any principle or any party; he contrived to
disgust and alienate his old friends and adherents without
conciliating or attaching those whose measures he at the eleventh
hour undertook to carry into execution. Through the whole course
of his political conduct selfish considerations have never been
out of sight. His opposition to Canning's Corn Bill was too gross
to admit of excuse. It was the old spite bursting forth, sharpened
by Canning's behaviour to him in forming his Administration,
which, if it was not contumelious, certainly was not courteous.
When at his death the Duke assumed the Government, his disclaiming
speech was thrown in his teeth, but without much justice, for such
expressions are never to be taken literally, and in the subsequent
quarrel with Huskisson, though it is probably true that he was
aiming at domination, he was persuaded that Huskisson and his
party were endeavouring to form a cabal in the Cabinet, and his
expulsion of them is not, therefore, altogether without excuse. On
the question of the Test Act it was evident he was guided by no
principle, probably by no opinion, and that he only thought of
turning it as best he might to his own advantage. Throughout the
Catholic question self was always apparent, not that he was
careless of the safety, or indifferent to the prosperity of the
country, but that he cared as much for his own credit and power,
and never considered the first except in their connection with the
second. The business of Emancipation he certainly conducted with
considerable judgment, boldly trusting to the baseness of many of
his old friends, and showing that he had not mistaken their
characters; exercising that habitual influence he had acquired
over the mind of the King; preserving impenetrable secresy; using
without scruple every artifice that could forward his object; and
contriving to make tools or dupes of all his colleagues and
adherents, and getting the whole merit to himself. From the
passing of the Catholic question his conduct has exhibited a
series of blunders which have at length terminated in his fall.
The position in which he then stood was this:--He had a Government
composed of men who were for the most part incompetent, but
perfectly subservient to him. He had a considerable body of
adherents in both Houses. The Whigs, whose support (enthusiastically
given) had carried him triumphantly through the great contest,
were willing to unite with him; the Tories, exasperated and
indignant, feeling insulted and betrayed, vowed nothing but
vengeance. Intoxicated with his victory, he was resolved to
neglect the Whigs, to whom he was so much indebted, and to regain
the affections of the Tories, whom he considered as his natural
supporters, and whom he thought identity of opinion and interest
would bring back to his standard. By all sorts of slights and
affronting insinuations that they wanted place, but that he could
do without them, he offended the Whigs, but none of his cajoleries
and advances had the least effect on the sulky Tories. It was in
vain that he endeavoured to adapt his foreign policy to their
worst prejudices by opposing with undeviating hostility that of
Mr. Canning (the great object of their detestation), and
disseminating throughout all Europe the belief of his attachment
to ultra-monarchical principles. He opposed the spirit of the age,
he brought England into contempt, but he did not conciliate the
Tories. Having succeeded in uniting two powerful parties (acting
separately) in opposition to his Government, and having nobody but
Peel to defend his measures in the House of Commons, and nobody in
the House of Lords, he manifested his sense of his own weakness by
overtures and negotiations, and evinced his obstinate tenacity of
power by never offering terms which could be accepted, or
extending his invitations to those whose authority he thought
might cope with his own. With his Government falling every day in
public opinion, and his enemies growing more numerous and
confident, with questions of vast importance rising up with a
vigour and celerity of growth which astonished the world, he met a
new Parliament (constituted more unfavourably than the last, which
he had found himself unable to manage) without any support but in
his own confidence and the encouraging adulation of a little knot
of devotees. There still lingered round him some of that
popularity which had once been so great, and which the recollection
of his victories would not suffer to be altogether extinguished.
By a judicious accommodation of his conduct to that public opinion
which was running with an uncontrollable tide, by a frank
invitation to all who were well disposed to strengthen his
Government, he might have raised those embers of popularity into a
flame once more, have saved himself, and still done good service
to the State; but it was decreed that he should fall. He appeared
bereft of all judgment and discretion, and after a King's Speech
which gave great, and I think unnecessary offence, he delivered
the famous philippic against Reform which sealed his fate. From
that moment it was not doubtful, and he was hurled from the seat
of power amidst universal acclamations.
[2] [The following passage will no doubt be read with
surprise, for in later years Mr. Greville became and
remained one of the Duke's most steady admirers, and as
he has himself stated in the memorandum written
nineteen years afterwards, which is inserted at the end
of it, the opinion he entertained of him at this time
was unjust. But he at the same time decided 'to leave
it as it is, because it is of the essence of these
Memoirs not to soften or tone down judgments by the
light of altered convictions, but to leave them
standing as contemporary evidence of what was thought
at the time they were written.' These are his own
words.]
* * * * *
[Memorandum added by Mr. Greville in April 1850.]
N.B.--I leave this as it is, though it is unjust to the
Duke of Wellington; but such as my impressions were at
the time they shall remain, to be corrected afterwards
when necessary. It would be very wrong to impute
_selfishness_ to him in the ordinary sense of the term.
He coveted power, but he was perfectly disinterested, a
great patriot if ever there was one, and he was always
animated by a strong and abiding sense of duty. I have
done him justice in other places, and there is after all
a great deal of truth in what I have said here.
* * * * *
[Page Head: AN ESCAPE FROM THE GALLOWS.]
December 12th, 1830 {p.084}
For the last few days the accounts from the country have been
better; there are disturbances in different parts, and alarms
given, but the mischief seems to be subsiding. The burnings go
on, and though they say that one or two incendiaries have been
taken up, nothing has yet been discovered likely to lead to the
detection of the system. I was at Court on Wednesday, when Kemp
and Foley were sworn in, the first for the Ordnance, the other
Gold Stick (the pensioners). He refused it for a long time, but
at last submitted to what he thought _infra dig_., because it was
to be sugared with the Lieutenancy of Worcestershire. There was
an Admiralty report,[3] at which the Chief Justice was not
present. The Chancellor and the Judge (Sir C. Robinson) were
there for the first time, and not a soul knew what was the form
or what ought to be done; they did, however, just as in the
Recorder's reports. Brougham leans to mercy, I see. But what a
curious sort of supplementary trial this is; how many accidents
may determine the life or death of the culprit. In one case in
this report which they were discussing (before the Council)
Brougham had _forgotten_ that the man was recommended to mercy,
but he told me that at the last Recorder's report there was a
great difference of opinion on one (a forgery case), when
Tenterden was for hanging the man and he for saving him; that he
had it put to the vote, and the man was saved. Little did the
criminal know when there was a change of Ministry that he owed
his life to it, for if Lyndhurst had been Chancellor he would
most assuredly have been hanged; not that Lyndhurst was
particularly severe or cruel, but he would have concurred with
the Chief Justice and have regarded the case solely in a judicial
point of view, whereas the mind of the other was probably biassed
by some theory about the crime of forgery or by some fancy of his
strange brain.
[3] [The High Court of Admiralty had still a criminal
jurisdiction, and the capital cases were submitted to
the King in Council for approval.]
This was a curious case, as I have since heard. The man owes his
life to the curiosity of a woman of fashion, and then to another
feeling. Lady Burghersh and Lady Glengall wanted to hear St. John
Long's trial (the quack who had _man_-slaughtered Miss Cashir),
and they went to the Old Bailey for that purpose. Castlereagh and
somebody else, who of course were not up in time, were to have
attended them. They wanted an escort, and the only man in London
sure to be out of bed so early was the Master of the Rolls, so
they went and carried him off. When they got to the court there
was no St. John Long, but they thought they might as well stay
and hear whatever was going on. It chanced that a man was tried
for an atrocious case of forgery and breach of trust. He was
found guilty and sentence passed; but he was twenty-three and
good-looking. Lady Burghersh could not bear he should be hanged,
and she went to all the late Ministers and the Judges to beg him
off. Leach told her it was no use, that nothing could save that
man; and accordingly the old Government were obdurate, when out
they went. Off she went again and attacked all the new ones, who
in better humour, or of softer natures, suffered themselves to be
persuaded, and the wretch was saved. She went herself to Newgate
to see him, but I never heard if she had a private interview, and
if he was afforded an opportunity of expressing his gratitude
with all the fervour that the service she had done him demanded.
In the meantime the Government is going on what is called well--that
is, there is a great disposition to give them a fair trial.
All they have done and promise to do about economy gives
satisfaction, and Reform (the awful question) is still at a
distance. There has been, however, some sharp skirmishing in the
course of the week, and there is no want of bitterness and
watchfulness on the part of the old Government. In the Committee
which has been named to enquire into the salaries of the
Parliamentary offices they mean to leave the question in the
hands of the country gentlemen; but they do not think any great
reductions will be practicable, and as Baring is chairman it is
not probable that much will be done. They think Brougham speaks
too often in the House of Lords, but he has done very well there;
and on Friday he made a reply to Lord Stanhope, which was the
most beautiful piece of sarcasm and complete cutting-up (though
with very good humour) that ever was heard, and an exhibition to
the like of which the Lords have not been accustomed. The Duke of
Wellington made another imprudent speech, in which (in answer to
Lord Radnor, who attributed the state of the country to the late
Government) he said that it was attributable to the events of
July and August in other countries, and spoke of them in a way
which showed clearly his real opinion and feelings on the
subject.
[Page Head: THE CLERKS OF THE COUNCIL.]
After some delay Lord Lansdowne made up his mind to fill up the
vacancy in my office, and to give it to William Bathurst; but he
first spoke to the King, who said it was very true he had told
Lord Bathurst that his son should have it, but that he now left
the matter entirely to his decision, showing no anxiety to have
William Bathurst appointed. However, he has it, but reduced to
L1,200 a year. I was agreeably surprised yesterday by a
communication from Lord Lansdowne that he thought no alteration
could be made in my emoluments, and that he was quite prepared to
defend them if anybody attacked them. Still, though it is a very
good thing to be so supported, I don't consider myself safe from
Parliamentary assaults. In these times it will not do to be idle,
and I told Lord Lansdowne that I was anxious to keep my
emoluments, but ready to work for them, and proposed that we
Clerks of the Council should be called upon to act really at the
Board of Trade, as we are, in fact, bound to do; by which means
Lack's place when vacant need not be filled up, and a saving
would be made. My predecessors Cottrell and Fawkener always
acted, their successors Bailer and Chetwynd were incompetent, and
Lack, the Chancellor's Clerk, was made Assistant-Secretary, and
did the work. Huskisson and Hume, his director, made the business
a science; new Presidents and Vice-Presidents succeeded one
another in different Ministerial revolutions; they and Lack were
incompetent, and Hume was made Assistant-Secretary, and it is he
who advises, directs, legislates. I believe he is one of the
ablest practical men who have ever served, more like an American
statesman than an English official. I am anxious to begin my
Trade education under him.
Parliament is going to adjourn directly for three or four weeks,
to give the Ministers time to make their arrangements and get rid
of the load of business which besets them; although there is
every disposition to give them credit for good intentions, and to
let them have a fair trial, there are not wanting causes of
discontent in many quarters.
[Page Head: LORD GREY AND LORD LYNDHURST.]
All the Russells are dissatisfied that Lord John has not a seat
in the Cabinet, and that Graham should be preferred to him, and
the more so because they know or believe that his preference is
owing to Lambton, who does what he likes with Lord Grey. My mind
has always misgiven me about Lord Grey, and what I have lately
heard of him satisfies me that a more overrated man never lived,
or one whose speaking was so far above his general abilities, or
who owed so much to his oratorical plausibility. His tall,
commanding, and dignified appearance, his flow of language,
graceful action, well rounded periods, and an exhibition of
classical taste united with legal knowledge, render him the most
finished orator of his day; but his conduct has shown him to be
influenced by pride, still more by vanity, personal antipathies,
caprice, indecision, and a thousand weaknesses generated by these
passions and defects. Anybody who is constantly with him and who
can avail themselves of his vanity can govern him. There was a
time when Sir Robert Wilson was his 'magnus Apollo' (and
Codrington), till they quarrelled. Now Lambton is all in all with
him. Lambton dislikes the Russells, and hence Lord John's
exclusion and the preference of Graham. Everybody remembers how
Lord Grey refused to lead the Whig party when Canning formed his
junction with the Whigs, and declared that he abdicated in favour
of Lord Lansdowne; and then how he came and made that violent
speech against Canning which half killed him with vexation, and
in consequence of which he meant to have moved into the House of
Lords for the express purpose of attacking Lord Grey. Then when
he had quarrelled with his old Whig friends he began to approach
the Tories, the object of his constant aversion and contempt; and
we knew what civilities passed between the Bathursts and him, and
what political coquetries between him and the Duke of Wellington,
and how he believed that it was only George IV. who prevented his
being invited by the Duke to join him. Then George IV. dies, King
William succeeds; no invitation to Lord Grey, and he plunges into
furious opposition to the Duke.
About three years ago the Chancellor, Lyndhurst, was the man in
the world he abhorred the most; and it was about this time that I
well recollect one night at Madame de Lieven's I introduced Lord
Grey to Lady Lyndhurst. We had dined together somewhere, and he
had been praising her beauty; so when we all met there I presented
him, and very soon all his antipathies ceased and he and Lyndhurst
became great friends. This was the cause of Lady Lyndhurst's
partiality for the Whigs, which enraged the Tory ladies and some
of their lords so much, but which served her turn and enabled her
to keep two hot irons in the fire. When the Duke went out Lord
Grey was very anxious to keep Lyndhurst as his Chancellor, and
would have done so if it had not been for Brougham, who, whirling
Reform _in terrorem_ over his head, announced to him that it must
not be. Reluctantly enough Grey was obliged to give way, for he
saw that with Brougham in the House of Commons, against him he
could not stand for five minutes, and that the only alternative
was to put Brougham on the Woolsack. Hence his delay in sending
for Brougham, the latter's speech and subsequent acceptance of the
Great Seal. Grey, however, was still anxious to serve Lyndhurst,
and to neutralise his opposition has now proposed to him to be
Chief Baron. This is tempting to a necessitous and ambitious man.
On the other hand he had a good game before him, if he had played
it well, and that was to regain character, exhibit his great and
general powers, and be ready to avail himself of the course of
events; but he has made his bargain and pocketed his pride. He
takes the judicial office upon an understanding that he is to have
no political connection with the Government (though of course he
will not oppose them), and that he is to be Chief Justice on
Tenterden's death or retirement. This is the secret article of the
treaty, and altogether he has not done amiss; for there are so few
Chancellors in the field that he will probably (if he chooses)
return to the Woolsack in the event of a change of Government, and
he is now in a position in which he may join either party, and
that without any _additional_ loss of character. The public will
gain by the transaction, because they will get a good judge.
In Ireland the Government have made a change (the motives of
which are not apparent) which will be very unpopular, and
infallibly get them into trouble in various ways. They have
removed Hart and made Plunket Chancellor. Hart was very popular
with the Bar; he was slow, but had introduced order and
regularity in the proceedings of the Court. There were no arrears
and no appeals. Plunket is unpopular, and was a bad judge in the
Common Pleas, and will probably make a worse Chancellor; he is
rash, hasty, and imprudent, and it is the more extraordinary as
Hart was affronted by Goderich and went with Anglesey, so upon
the score of confidence (on which they put it) there is in fact
not a pretext for it.
[Page Head: SIR JAMES GRAHAM.]
As yet not much can be known of the efficiency of the rest of the
Ministers. The only one who has had anything to do is Melbourne,
and he has surprised all those about him by a sudden display of
activity and vigour, rapid and diligent transaction of business,
for which nobody was prepared, and which will prove a great
mortification to Peel and his friends, who were in hopes he would
do nothing and let the country be burnt and plundered without
interruption. The Duke of Richmond has plunged neck-deep in
politics, and says he is delighted with it all, and with Lord
Grey's candour and unassuming bearing in the Cabinet. He is
evidently piqued that none of his party have followed him, and
made a speech in the House of Lords the other night expressing
his readiness to defend his having taken office, when nobody
attacked him. Knowing him as I do, and the exact extent of his
capacity, I fancy he must feel rather small by the side of Lord
Grey and Brougham. Graham's elevation is the most monstrous of
all. He was once my friend, a college intimacy revived in the
world, and which lasted six months, when, thinking he could do
better, he cut me, as he had done others before. I am not a fair
judge of him, because the pique which his conduct to me naturally
gave me would induce me to underrate him, but I take vanity and
self-sufficiency to be the prominent features of his character,
though of the extent of his capacity I will give no opinion. Let
time show; I think he will fail. [Time did show it to be very
considerable, and the _volvenda dies_ brought back our former
friendship, as will hereafter appear; he certainly did _not
fail_.]
He came into Parliament ten years ago, spoke and failed. He had
been a provincial hero, the Cicero and the Romeo of Yorkshire and
Cumberland, a present Lovelace and a future Pitt. He was
disappointed in love (the particulars are of no consequence),
married and retired to digest his mortifications of various
kinds, to become a country gentleman, patriot, reformer,
financier, and what not, always good-looking (he had been very
handsome), pleasing, intelligent, cultivated, agreeable as a man
can be who is not witty and who is rather pompous and slow, after
many years of retirement, in the course of which he gave to the
world his lucubrations on corn and currency. Time and the hour
made him master of a large but encumbered estate and member for
his county. Armed with the importance of representing a great
constituency, he started again in the House of Commons; took up
Joseph Hume's line, but ornamented it with graces and flourishes
which had not usually decorated such dry topics. He succeeded,
and in that line is now the best speaker in the House. I have no
doubt he has studied his subjects and practised himself in public
speaking. Years and years ago I remember his delight on Hume's
comparison between Demosthenes and Cicero, and how he knew the
passage by heart; but it is one thing to attack strong abuses and
fire off well-rounded set phrases, another to administer the
naval affairs of the country and be ready to tilt against all
comers, as he must do for the future.[4] Palmerston is said to
have given the greatest satisfaction to the foreign Ministers,
and to have begun very well. So much for the Ministers.
[4] [This opinion of Sir James Graham is the more curious
as he afterwards became one of Mr. Greville's
confidential friends, and rose to the first rank of
oratory and authority in the House of Commons. As
Secretary of State for the Home Department in the great
Administration of Sir Robert Peel he showed
administrative ability of the highest order, and he
was, perhaps, the most trusted colleague of that
illustrious chief. The principal failing of Sir James
Graham was, in truth, that he was not so brave and bold
a man as he looked.]
December 14th, 1830 {p.091}
[Page Head: LORD LYNDHURST AND THE WHIGS.]
There is a delay in Lyndhurst's appointment, if it takes place at
all. Alexander[5] now will not resign, though he himself proposed
to do so in the first instance. His physician signed a certificate
to say that if he went on this Committee it would cost him his
life; some difficulty about the pension is the cause, or the
peerage that he wants. He is seventy-six and very rich, a wretched
judge, and never knew anything of Common Law. If it is not
arranged, it will be a bad business for Lyndhurst, for the Duke
and his friends are grievously annoyed at his taking the office,
having counted on him as their great champion in the House of
Lords. Mrs. Arbuthnot told me the other night that they considered
themselves released from all obligations to him for the future.
However, they have not at all quarrelled, and they knew his
deplorable state in point of money. Dined yesterday at Agar
Ellis's with eighteen people. Brougham in great force and very
agreeable, and told some stories of Judge Allan Park, who is a
most ridiculous man, and yet a good lawyer, a good judge, and was
a most eminent counsel.
[5] [The Chief Baron.]
Park is extraordinarily ridiculous. He is a physiognomist, and is
captivated by pleasant looks. In a certain cause, in which a boy
brought an action for defamation against his schoolmaster,
Campbell, his counsel, asked the solicitor if the boy was
good-looking. 'Very.' 'Oh, then, have him in court; we shall get
a verdict.' And so he did. His eyes are always wandering about,
watching and noticing everything and everybody. One day there was
a dog in court making a disturbance, on which he said, 'Take away
that dog.' The officers went to remove another dog, when he
interposed. 'No, not that dog. I have had my eye on that dog the
whole day, and I will say that a better behaved little dog I
never saw in a court of justice.'
One of Brougham's best speeches was one of his last at the Bar,
made in moving for a new trial on the ground of misdirection in a
great cause (Tatham and Wright) about a will. He said that on
that occasion Park did what he thought no man's physical powers
were equal to; he spoke in summing up for eleven hours and a
half, and was as fresh at the end as at the beginning; the trial
lasted eight days. This same evening Lord Grosvenor, who is by
way of being a friend to Government, made an _amicable_ attack
upon everything, and talked nonsense. Lord Grey answered him, and
defended his own family appointments in a very good speech.
December 15th, 1830 {p.093}
Dined yesterday with Lord Dudley; sat next to Lady Lyndhurst, and
had a great deal of talk about politics. She said that the Duke
never consulted or communicated with the Chancellor, who never
heard of his overtures to Palmerston till Madame de Lieven told
him; that he had repeatedly remonstrated with the Duke upon going
on in his weakness, and on one occasion had gone to Walmer on
purpose (leaving her behind that he might talk more freely) to
urge him to take in Lord Grey and some of that party, but he would
not; said he had tried to settle with them, and it would not do;
had tried individuals and had tried the party. Up to a very late
period it appears that Lord Grey would have joined him, and
Lambton came to her repeatedly to try and arrange something; but
this answer of the Duke's put it out of the question. Then after
Lord Grey made his hostile speech it seems as if the Duke wanted
to get him, for one day Jersey made an appointment with Lady
Lyndhurst, never having called upon her in his life before, came,
and entreated her to try and bring about an accommodation with
Lord Grey, not making use of the Duke's name, but saying he and
Lady Jersey were so unhappy that the Duke and Lord Grey should not
be on good terms, and were so anxious for the junction; but it was
too late then, and the Lyndhursts themselves had something else to
look to. They both knew very well that Brougham alone prevented
his remaining on the Woolsack, still they have very wisely not
quarrelled with him. After dinner I took Lyndhurst to Lady Dudley
Stuart's, and had some more talk with him. He thinks, as I do,
that this Government does not promise to be strong. What passed in
the House of Commons the other night exhibited deplorable weakness
and the necessity of depending upon the caprices of hundreds of
loose votes, without anything like a party with which they could
venture to oppose popular doctrines or measures. He thinks that
Peel must be Minister if there is not a revolution, and that the
Duke's being Prime Minister again is out of the question; says he
_knows_ Peel would never consent to act with him again in the same
capacity, that all the Duke's little cabinet (the women and the
toad-eaters) hate Peel, and that there never was any real
cordiality between them. Everything confirms my belief that Peel,
if he did not bring about the dissolution of the late Ministry by
any overt act, saw to what things were tending, and saw it with
satisfaction.
December 16th, 1830 {p.094}
At Court yesterday; William Bathurst sworn in. All the Ministers
were there, and the Duke of Wellington at the levee looking out
of sorts. Dined at the Lievens'; Lady Cowper told me that in the
summer the Duke had not made a _direct_ offer to Melbourne, but
what was tantamount to it. He had desired somebody (she did not
say who) to speak to Frederick,[6] and said he would call on him
himself the next day. Something, however, prevented him, and she
did not say whether he did call or not afterwards. He denied ever
having made any overture at all. To Palmerston he proposed the
choice of four places, and she thinks he would have taken in
Huskisson if the latter had lived. He would have done nothing but
on compulsion; that is clear. It is very true (what they say Peel
said of him) that no _man_ ever had any influence with him, only
_women_, and those always the silliest. But who are Peel's
confidants, friends, and parasites? Bonham, a stock-jobbing
ex-merchant; Charles Ross, and the refuse of society of the House
of Commons.
[6] [Sir Frederick Lamb.]
Lamb told me afterwards, talking of the Duke and Polignac, that
Sebastiani had told him that Hyde de Neuville (who was Minister
at the time Polignac went over from here on his first short
visit, before he became Minister) said that upon that occasion
Polignac took over a letter from the Duke to the King of France,
in which he said that the Chambers and the democratical spirit
required to be curbed, that he advised him to lose no time in
restraining them, and that he referred him to M. de Polignac for
his opinion generally, who was in possession of his entire
confidence. I think this _may_ be true, never having doubted that
these were his real sentiments, whether he expressed them or not.
[Page Head: THE KING AND HIS SONS.]
There has been a desperate quarrel between the King and his sons.
George Fitzclarence wanted to be made a Peer and have a pension;
the King said he could not do it, so they struck work in a body,
and George resigned his office of Deputy Adjutant-General and
wrote the King a furious letter. The King sent for Lord Hill, and
told him to try and bring him to his senses; but Lord Hill could
do nothing, and then he sent for Brougham to talk to him about
it. It is not yet made up, but one of them (Frederick, I believe)
dined at the dinner the King gave the day before yesterday. They
want to renew the days of Charles II., instead of waiting
patiently and letting the King do what he can for them, and as he
can.
The affair at Warsaw seems to have begun with a conspiracy
against Constantine, and four of the generals who were killed
perished in his anteroom in defending him. With the smallest
beginnings, however, nothing is more probable than a general
rising in Poland; and what between that, Belgians, and Piedmont,
which is threatened with a revolution, the Continent is in a
promising state. I agree with Lamb, who says that such an
_imbroglio_ as this cannot be got right without a war; such a
flame can only be quenched by blood.
December 19th, 1830 {p.095}
The week has closed without much gain to the new Government. On
the debate in the House of Commons about the Evesham election
they did not dare go to a division, as they would certainly have
been beaten, but Peel made a speech which was very good in
itself, and received in a way which proved that he has more
consideration out of office than any of the Ministers, and much
more than he ever had when he was in. Men are looking more and
more to him, and if there is not a revolution he will assuredly
be Prime Minister. The Government is fully aware how little
strength they have, so they have taken a new line, and affect to
carry on the Government without Parliamentary influence, and to
throw themselves and their measures upon the impartial judgment
of the House. Sefton informed me the other night that they had
resolved not to take upon themselves the responsibility of
proposing any renewal of the Civil List, but to refer the whole
question to Parliament. I told him that I thought such conduct
equally foolish and unjust, and that it amounted to an abdication
of their Ministerial functions, and a surrender of them into the
hands of the Legislative power; in itself amounting to a
revolution not of dynasty and institutions, but of system of
Government in this country. He is the _ame damnee_ of Lord Grey,
and defends everything of course.
O'Connell is gone rabid to Ireland, having refused a silk gown
and resolved to pull down Lord Anglesey's popularity. Shiel
writes word that they have resolved _not_ to give Lord Anglesey a
public reception, and to propose an ovation for O'Connell. The
law appointments there, made without any adequate reason, have
been ingeniously contrived so as to disgust every party in
Ireland, and to do, or promise to do, in their ultimate results
as much harm as possible. So much for the only act that the
Ministers have yet performed.
I had some conversation with Lyndhurst yesterday, who thinks the
way is already preparing for Peel's return to office, and that he
must be Prime Minister. I told him that I thought Peel had a fine
game to play, but that his own was just as good, as Peel could do
nothing without him in the other House; to which he replied that
they should have no difficulty, and could make a Government if
the Duke of Wellington did not interpose his claims and aspire
again to be at the head; to which I said that they must not
listen to it, as the country would not bear it; he said he was
afraid the Duke's own set and his women were encouraging him in
such views. Now that it is all over his own Cabinet admit as
freely as anybody his Ministerial despotism. Lyndhurst partakes
of the general alarm at the state of affairs, and of the
astonishment which I and others feel at the apathy of those who
are most interested in averting the impending danger. Yesterday
Mr. Stapleton (Canning's late private secretary) called on me to
discuss this subject, and the propriety and feasibility of
setting up some dyke to arrest the torrent of innovation and
revolution that is bursting in on every side. All the press
almost is silenced, or united on the other side. 'John Bull'
alone fights the battle, but 'John Bull' defends so many
indefensible things that its advocacy is not worth much. An
anti-Radical upon the plan of the Anti-Jacobin might be of some
use, provided it was well sustained. I wrote a letter yesterday
to Barnes,[7] remonstrating upon the general tone of the 'Times,'
and inviting him to adopt some Conservative principles in the
midst of his zeal for Reform. Stanley told me that his election
(at Preston) was lost by the stupidity or ill-will of the
returning officer, who managed the booths in such a way that
Hunt's voters were enabled to vote over and over at different
booths, and that he had no doubt of reducing his majority on a
scrutiny.
[7] [Mr. Barnes was then editor of the 'Times' newspaper,
and retained that position till his death in 1841. Mr.
Greville was well acquainted with him, and had a high
opinion of his talents, character, and influence.]
December 22nd, 1830 {p.097}
[Page Head: BISHOP OF EXETER AND LORD MELBOURNE.]
Dudley showed me Phillpotts' (Bishop of Exeter) correspondence
with Melbourne and minutes of conversation on the subject of the
commendam of the living of Stanhope; trimming letters. The Bishop
made proposals to the Government which they rejected, and at
last, after writing one of the ablest letters I ever read, in
which he exposed their former conduct and present motives, he
said that as the Ministers had thought fit to exert the power
they had over him, he should show them that he had some over
them, and appeal to public opinion to decide between them. On
this they gave way, and agreed to an arrangement which, if not
satisfactory to him, will leave him as to income not much worse
off than he was before.
December 23rd, 1830 {p.097}
Last night to Wilmot Horton's second lecture at the Mechanics'
Institute; I could not go to the first. He deserves great credit
for his exertions, the object of which is to explain to the
labouring classes some of the truths of political economy, the
folly of thinking that the breaking of machinery will better
their condition, and of course the efficacy of his own plan of
emigration. The company was respectable enough, and they heard
him with great attention. He is full of zeal and animation, but
so totally without method and arrangement that he is hardly
intelligible. The conclusion, which was an attack on Cobbett, was
well done and even eloquent. There were a good many women, and
several wise men, such as Dr. Birkbeck, M'Culloch, and Owen of
Lanark.
[Page Head: LORD ANGLESEY AND O'CONNELL.]
O'Connell had a triumphant entry into Dublin, and advised that no
honours should be shown to Lord Anglesey. They had an interview
of two hours in London, when Lord Anglesey asked him what he
intended to do. He said, 'Strive _totis viribus_ to effect a
repeal of the Union;' when Lord Anglesey told him that he feared
he should then be obliged to govern Ireland by force, so that
they are at daggers drawn. There is not a doubt that Repeal is
making rapid advances. Moore[8] told me that he had seen
extraordinary signs of it, and that men of the middle classes,
intelligent and well educated, wished for it, though they knew
the disadvantages that would attend a severance of their
connection with England. He said that he could understand it, for
as an Irishman he felt it himself.
[8] [Thomas Moore, the poet.]
Roehampton, December 26th, 1830 {p.098}
At Lord Clifden's; Luttrell, Byng, and Dudley; the latter very
mad, did nothing but soliloquise, walk about, munch, and rail at
Reform of every kind. Lord Anglesey has entered Dublin amidst
silence and indifference, all produced by O'Connell's orders,
whose entry was greeted by the acclamations of thousands, and his
speeches then and since have been more violent than ever. His
authority and popularity are unabated, and he is employing them
to do all the mischief he can, his first object being to make
friends of the Orangemen, to whom he affects to humble himself,
and he has on all public occasions caused the orange ribband to
be joined with the green.
We had a meeting at the Council Office on Friday to order a
prayer 'on account of the troubled state of certain parts of the
United Kingdom'--great nonsense.
The King of the French has put an end to the disturbances of
Paris about the sentence on the ex-Ministers by a gallant _coup
d'etat_. At night, when the streets were most crowded and
agitated, he sallied from the Palais Royal on horseback, with his
son, the Duc de Nemours, and his personal _cortege_, and paraded
through Paris for two hours. This did the business; he was
received with shouts of applause, and at once reduced everything
to tranquillity. He deserves his throne for this, and will
probably keep it.
December 30th, 1830 {p.099}
Notwithstanding the conduct of King Louis Philippe, and the happy
termination of the disorders and tumults at Paris last week, the
greatest alarm still prevails about the excitement in that place.
In consequence of the Chamber of Deputies having passed some
resolutions altering the constitution of the National Guard, and
voting the post of Commandant-General unnecessary, Lafayette
resigned and has been replaced by Lobau. I never remember times
like these, nor read of such--the terror and lively expectation
which prevail, and the way in which people's minds are turned
backwards and forwards from France to Ireland, then range
excursively to Poland or Piedmont, and fix again on the burnings,
riots, and executions here.
Lord Anglesey's entry into Dublin turned out not to have been so
mortifying to him as was at first reported. He was attended by a
great number of people, and by all the most eminent and
respectable in Dublin, so much so that he was very well pleased,
and found it better than he expected. War broke out between him
and O'Connell without loss of time. O'Connell had intended to
have a procession of the trades, and a notice from him was to
have been published and stuck over the door of every chapel and
public place in Dublin. Anglesey issued his proclamation, and
half an hour before the time when O'Connell's notice was to
appear had it pasted up, and one copy laid on O'Connell's
breakfast table, at which anticipation he chuckled mightily.
O'Connell instantly issued a handbill desiring the people to
obey, as if the order of the Lord-Lieutenant was to derive its
authority from his permission, and he afterwards made an able
speech. Since the beginning of the world there never was so
extraordinary and so eccentric a position as his. It is a moral
power and influence as great in its way, and as strangely
acquired, as Bonaparte's political power was. Utterly lost to all
sense of shame and decency, trampling truth and honour under his
feet, cast off by all respectable men, he makes his faults and
his vices subservient to the extension of his influence, for he
says and does whatever suits his purpose for the moment, secure
that no detection or subsequent exposure will have the slightest
effect with those over whose minds and passions he rules with
such despotic sway. He cares not whom he insults, because, having
covered his cowardice with the cloak of religious scruples, he is
invulnerable, and will resent no retaliation that can be offered
him. He has chalked out to himself a course of ambition which,
though not of the highest kind--if the _consentiens laus bonorum_
is indispensable to the aspirations of noble minds--has
everything in it that can charm a somewhat vulgar but highly
active, restless, and imaginative being; and nobody can deny to
him the praise of inimitable dexterity, versatility, and even
prudence in the employment of the means which he makes conducive
to his ends. He is thoroughly acquainted with the audiences which
he addresses and the people upon whom he practises, and he
operates upon their passions with the precision of a dexterous
anatomist who knows the direction of every muscle and fibre of
the human frame. After having been throughout the Catholic
question the furious enemy of the Orangemen, upon whom he
lavished incessant and unmeasured abuse, he has suddenly turned
round, and inviting them to join him on the Repeal question, has
not only offered them a fraternal embrace and has humbled himself
to the dust in apologies and demands for pardon, but he has
entirely and at once succeeded, and he is now as popular or more
so with the Protestants (or rather Orangemen) as he was before
with the Catholics, and Crampton writes word that the lower order
of Protestants are with him to a man.
* * * * *
1831.
January 2nd, 1831 {p.101}
[Page Head: A DINNER AT THE ATHENAEUM.]
Came up to town yesterday to dine with the Villiers at a dinner
of clever men, got up at the Athenaeum, and was extremely bored.
The original party was broken up by various excuses, and the
vacancies supplied by men none of whom I knew. There were Poulett
Thomson, three Villiers, Taylor, Young, whom I knew; the rest I
never saw before--Buller, Romilly, Senior, Maule,[9] a man whose
name I forget, and Walker, a police magistrate, all men of more
or less talent and information, and altogether producing anything
but an agreeable party. Maule was senior wrangler and senior
medallist at Cambridge, and is a lawyer. He was nephew to the man
with whom I was at school thirty years ago, and I had never seen
him since; he was then a very clever boy, and assisted to teach
the boys, being admirably well taught himself by his uncle, who
was an excellent scholar and a great brute. I have young Maule
now in my mind's eye suspended by the hair of his head while
being well caned, and recollect as if it was yesterday his
doggedly drumming a lesson of Terence into my dull and reluctant
brain as we walked up and down the garden walk before the house.
When I was introduced to him I had no recollection of him, but
when I found out who he was I went up to him with the blandest
manner as he sat reading a newspaper, and said that 'I believed
we had once been well acquainted, though we had not met for
twenty-seven years.' He looked up and said, 'Oh, it is too long
ago to talk about,' and then turned back to his paper. So I set
him down for a brute like his uncle and troubled him no further.
I am very sure that dinners of all fools have as good a chance of
being agreeable as dinners of all clever people; at least the
former are often gay, and the latter are frequently heavy.
Nonsense and folly gilded over with good breeding and _les usages
du monde_ produce often more agreeable results than a collection
of rude, awkward intellectual powers.
[9] [Afterwards Mr. Justice Maule.]
Roehampton, January 4th, 1831 {p.101}
Called on Lady Canning this morning, who wanted me to read some
of her papers. Most of them (which are very curious) I had seen
before, but forgotten. I read the long minute of Canning's
conversation with the King ten days before his Majesty put the
formation of the Administration in his hands. They both appear to
have been explicit enough. The King went through his whole life,
and talked for two hours and a half, particularly about the
Catholic question, on which he said he had always entertained the
same opinions--the same as those of George III. and the Duke of
York--and that with the speech of the latter he entirely
concurred, except in the 'so help me God' at the end, which he
thought unnecessary. He said _he_ had wished the Coronation Oath
to be altered, and had proposed it to Lord Liverpool. His great
anxiety was not to be annoyed with the discussion of the
question, to keep Canning and Lord Liverpool's colleagues, and to
put at the head of the Treasury some anti-Catholic Peer. This
Canning would not hear of; he said that having lost Lord
Liverpool he had lost his only support in the Cabinet, that the
King knew how he had been thwarted by others, and how impossible
it would have been for him to go on but for Lord Liverpool, that
he could not serve _under_ anybody else, or act with efficacy
except as First Minister, that he would not afford in his person
an example of any such rule as that support of the Catholic
question was to be _ipso facto_ an exclusion from the chief
office of the Government, that he advised the King to try and
make an anti-Catholic Ministry, and thought that with his
feelings and opinions on the subject it was what he ought to do.
This the King said was out of the question. In the course of the
discussion Canning said that if he continued in his service he
must continue as free as he had been before; that desirous as he
was to contribute to the King's ease and comfort, he could not in
any way pledge himself on the subject, because he should be
assuredly questioned in the House of Commons, and he must have it
in his power to reply that he was perfectly free to act on that
question as he had ever done, and that he thought the King would
better consult his own ease by retaining him in office without
any pledge, relying on his desire above all things to consult his
Majesty's ease and comfort. He said among other things that,
though leader of the House of Commons, he had never had any
patronage placed at his disposal, nor a single place to give
away.
[Page Head: THE DUKE AND MR. CANNING.]
About the time of this conversation Canning was out of humour with
the Duke of Wellington, for he had heard that many of the
adherents of Government who pretended to be attached to the Duke
had spoken of him (Canning) in the most violent and abusive terms.
In their opinions he conceived the Duke to be to a certain degree
implicated, and this produced some coldness in his manner towards
him. Shortly after Arbuthnot came to him, complained first and
explained after, and said the Duke would call upon him. The Duke
did call, and in a conversation of two hours Canning told him all
that had passed between himself and the King, thereby putting the
Duke, as he supposed, in complete possession of his sentiments as
to the reconstruction of the Government. A few days after Mr.
Canning was charged by the King to lay before him the plan of an
Administration, and upon this he wrote the letter to his former
colleagues which produced so much discussion. I read the letters
to the Duke, Bathurst, Melville, and Bexley, and I must say that
the one to the Duke was rather the stiffest of the whole,[10]
though it was not so cold as the Duke chose to consider it. Then
came his letter to the Duke on his speech, and the Duke's answer.
When I read these last year I thought the Duke had much the best
of it; but I must alter this opinion if it be true that he knew
Mr. Canning's opinions, as it is stated that he did entirely,
after their long interview, at which the conversation with the
King was communicated to him. That materially alters the case.
There was a letter from Peel declining, entirely on the ground of
objecting to a pro-Catholic Premier, and on the impossibility of
his administering Ireland with the First Lord of the Treasury of a
different opinion on that subject from his own. There was likewise
a curious correspondence relative to a paper written by the Duke
of York during his last illness, and not very long before his
death, to Lord Liverpool on the dangers of the country from the
progress of the Catholic question, the object of which (though it
was vaguely expressed) was to turn out the Catholic members and
form a Protestant Government for the purpose of crushing the
Catholic interest. This Lord Liverpool communicated (privately) to
Canning, and it was afterwards communicated to the King, who
appears (the answer was not there) to have given the Duke of York
a rap on the knuckles, for there is a reply of the Duke's to the
King, full of devotion, zeal, and affection to his person, and
disclaiming any intention of breaking up the Government, an idea
which could have arisen only from misconception of the meaning of
his letter by Lord Liverpool. It is very clear, however, that he
did mean that, for his letter could have meant nothing else. The
whole thing is curious, for he was aware that he was dying, and he
says so.
[10] [This correspondence is now published in the third
volume of the Duke's 'Correspondence,' New Series, p.
628.]
January 12th, 1831 {p.104}
Passed two days at Panshanger, but my room was so cold that I
could not sit in it to write. Nobody there but F. Lamb and J.
Russell. Lady Cowper told me what had passed relative to the
negotiation with Melbourne last year, and which the Duke or his
friends denied. The person who was employed (and whom she did not
name) told F. Lamb that the Duke would take in Melbourne and two
others (I am not sure it was not three), but not Huskisson. He
said that it would be fairer at once to say that those terms
would not be accepted, and to save him therefore from offering
them, that Melbourne would not be satisfied with any Government
which did not include Huskisson and Lord Grey, and that upon this
answer the matter dropped. I don't think the Duke can be blamed
for answering to anybody who chose to ask him any questions on
the subject that he had _made no offer_; it was the truth, though
not the whole truth, and a Minister must have some shelter
against impertinent questioners, or he would be at their mercy.
An Envoy is come here from the Poles,[11] who brought a letter
from Prince Czartoryski to Lord Grey, who has not seen him, and
whose arrival has naturally given umbrage to the Lievens.
[11] [This Envoy was Count Alexander Walewski, a natural son
of the Emperor Napoleon, who afterwards played a
considerable part in the affairs of France and of
Europe, especially under the Second Empire. During his
residence in London in 1831 he married Lady Caroline
Montagu, a daughter of the Earl of Sandwich, but she
did not live long. I remember calling upon him in St.
James's Place, and seeing cards of invitation for Lady
Grey's assemblies stuck in his glass. The fact is he
was wonderfully handsome and agreeable, and soon became
popular in London society.]
January 19th, 1831 {p.105}
To Roehampton on Saturday till Monday, having been at the Grove
on Friday. George Villiers at the Grove showed me a Dublin paper
with an attack on Stanley's proclamation, and also a character of
Plunket drawn with great severity and by a masterly hand; it is
supposed to be by Baron Smith, a judge who is very able, but
fanciful and disaffected. He will never suffer any but policemen
or soldiers to be hanged of those whom he tries. George Villiers
came from Hatfield, where he had a conversation with the Duke of
Wellington, who told him that he had committed a great error in
his Administration in not paying more attention to the press, and
in not securing a portion of it on his side and getting good
writers into his employment, that he had never thought it
necessary to do so, and that he was now convinced what a great
mistake it was. At Roehampton nothing new, except that the Reform
plan is supposed to be settled, or nearly so. Duncannon has been
consulted, and he and one or two more have had meetings with
Durham, who were to lay their joint plans before Lord Grey first,
and he afterwards brought them to the Cabinet.
[Page Head: CROKER'S BOSWELL.]
Ellis told me (a curious thing enough) that Croker (for his
'Boswell's Life of Johnson') had collected various anecdotes from
other books, but that the only new and original ones were those
he had got from Lord Stowell, who was a friend of Johnson, and
that he had written them under Stowell's dictation. Sir Walter
Scott wanted to see them, and Croker sent them to him in Scotland
by the post. The bag was lost; no tidings could be heard of it,
Croker had no copy, and Stowell is in his dotage and can't be got
to dictate again. So much for the anecdote; then comes the story.
I said how surprising this was, for nothing was so rare as a
miscarriage by the post. He said, 'Not at all, for I myself lost
_two reviews_ in the same way. I sent them both to _Brougham_ to
forward to Jeffrey (for the "Edinburgh"), and _they were both
lost in the same_ way!' That villain Brougham!
G. Lamb said that the King is supposed to be in a bad state of
health, and this was confirmed to me by Keate the surgeon, who
gave me to understand that he was going the way of both his
brothers. He will be a great loss in these times; he knows his
business, lets his Ministers do as they please, but expects to be
informed of everything. He lives a strange life at Brighton, with
tagrag and bobtail about him, and always open house. The Queen is
a prude, and will not let the ladies come _decolletees_ to her
parties. George IV., who liked ample expanses of that sort, would
not let them be covered. In the meantime matters don't seem more
promising either here or abroad. In Ireland there is open war
between Anglesey and O'Connell, to whom it is glory enough (of his
sort) to be on a kind of par with the Viceroy, and to have a power
equal to that of the Government. Anglesey issues proclamation
after proclamation, the other speeches and letters in retort. His
breakfasts and dinners are put down, but he finds other places to
harangue at, and letters he can always publish; but he does not
appear in quite so triumphant an attitude as he did. The O'Connell
tribute is said to have failed; no men of property or respectability
join him, and he is after all only the leader of a mob; but it is
a better sort of mob, and formidable from their numbers, and the
organisation which has latterly become an integral part of mob
tactics. Nothing can be more awful than the state of that country,
and everybody expects that it will be found necessary to
strengthen the hands of the Government with extraordinary powers
to put an end to the prevailing anarchy. O'Connell is a coward,
and that is the best chance of his being beaten at last.
Lord Lyndhurst took his seat as Chief Baron yesterday morning,
Alexander retiring without an equivalent, and only having waited
for quarter day. Brougham has had a violent squabble in his Court
with Sugden, who having bullied the Vice-Chancellor and governed
Lyndhurst, has a mind to do the same by Brougham; besides, he
hates him for the repeated thrashings he got from him in the
House of Commons, and has been heard to say that he will take his
revenge in the Court of Chancery. The present affair was merely
that Brougham began writing, when Sugden stopped and told him 'it
was no use his going on if his Lordship would not attend to the
argument,' and so forth.
I met Lyndhurst at dinner yesterday, who talks of himself as
standing on neutral ground, disconnected with politics. It is
certainly understood that he is not to fight the battles of the
present Government, but of course he is not to be against them.
His example is a lesson to statesmen to be frugal, for if he had
been rich he would have had a better game before him. He told a
curious anecdote about a trial. There was a (civil) cause in
which the jury would not agree on their verdict. They retired on
the evening of one day, and remained till one o'clock the next
afternoon, when, being still disagreed, a juror was drawn. There
was only one juror who held out against the rest--Mr. Berkeley
(member for Bristol). The case was tried over again, and the jury
were unanimously of Mr. Berkeley's opinion, which was in fact
right, a piece of conscientious obstinacy which prevented the
legal commission of wrong.
Roehampton, January 22nd, 1831 {p.107}
[Page Head: O'CONNELL ARRESTED.]
The event of the week is O'Connell's arrest on a charge of
conspiracy to defeat the Lord-Lieutenant's proclamation. Lord
Anglesey writes to Lady Anglesey thus:--'I am just come from a
consultation of six hours with the law officers, the result of
which is a determination to arrest O'Connell, for things are now
come to that pass that the question is whether he or I shall
govern Ireland.' We await the result with great anxiety, for the
opinion of lawyers seems divided as to the legality of the
arrest, and laymen can form none.
January 23rd, 1831 {p.107}
No news; Master of the Rolls, George Ponsonby, and George
Villiers here. The latter told a story of Plunket, of his wit.
Lord Wellesley's aide-de-camp Keppel wrote a book of his travels,
and called it his personal narrative. Lord Wellesley was quizzing
it, and said, 'Personal narrative? what is a personal narrative?
Lord Plunket, what should you say a personal narrative meant?'
Plunket answered, 'My Lord, you know we lawyers always understand
_personal_ as contradistinguished from _real_.' And one or two
others of Parsons, the Irish barrister. Lord Norbury on some
circuit was on the bench speaking, and an ass outside brayed so
loud that nobody could hear. He exclaimed, 'Do stop that noise!'
Parsons said, 'My Lord, there is a great echo here.' Somebody
said to him one day, 'Mr. Parsons, have you heard of my son's
robbery?' 'No; whom has he robbed?'
[Page Head: O'CONNELL'S CASE.]
Nothing but talk about O'Connell and his trial, and we have more
fears he will be acquitted than hopes that he will be convicted.
They still burn in the country, and I heard the other day that
the manufacturing districts, though quiet, are in a high state of
organisation.
January 25th, 1831 {p.108}
Met Colonel Napier[12] last night, and talked for an hour of the
state of the country. He gave me a curious account of the
organisation of the manufacturers in and about Manchester, who
are divided into four different classes, with different objects,
partly political, generally to better themselves, but with a
regular Government, the seat of which is in the Isle of Man. He
says that the agriculturists are likewise organised in Wiltshire,
and that there is a sort of free-masonry among them; he thinks a
revolution inevitable; and when I told him what Southey had
said--that if he had money enough he would transport his family
to America--he said he would not himself leave England in times
of danger, but that he should like to remove his family if he
could.
[12] [Sir William Napier, author of the 'History of the
Peninsular War.'.]
The King is ill. I hope he won't die; if he does, and the little
girl, we shall have Cumberland, and (though Lyndhurst said he
would make a very good King the other night) that would be a good
moment for dispensing with the regal office. It is reported that
they differ in the Cabinet about Reform; probably not true. What
a state of terror and confusion we are in, though it seems to
make no difference.
January 31st, 1831 {p.109}
At Roehampton on Saturday; Lord Robert Spencer and Sir G.
Robinson. Agar Ellis had just resigned the Woods, after asking to
be made a Peer, which they refused. All last week nobody thought
of anything but O'Connell, and great was the joy at the charge of
Judge Jebb, the unanimous opinion of the King's Bench, and the
finding of the Grand Jury. Whatever happens, Government are now
justified in the course they have taken; and now he has
traversed, which looks like weakness, and it is the general
opinion that he is beaten; but he is so astute, and so full of
resources, that I would never answer for his being beaten till I
see him in prison or find his popularity gone. The subscription
produced between L7,000 and L8,000. It is an extraordinary thing,
and the most wonderful effect I ever heard of the power of moral
causes over the human body, that Lord Anglesey, who has scarcely
been out of pain at all for years during any considerable
intervals, has been quite free from his complaint (the tic
douloureux) since he has been in Ireland; the excitement of these
events, and the influence of that excitement on his nervous
system, have produced this effect. There is a puzzler for
philosophy, and such an amalgamation of moral and physical
accidents as is well worth unravelling for those who are wise
enough.
Yesterday there was a dinner at Lord Lansdowne's to name the
Sheriffs, and there was I in attendance on my old school-fellows
and associates Richmond, Durham, Graham, all great men now!
While some do laugh, and some do weep,
Thus runs the world away.
Lord Grey was not there, for he was gone to Brighton to lay the
Reform Bill before the King. What a man Brougham is; he wants to
ride his Chancery steed to the Devil, as if he had not enough to
do. Nothing would satisfy him but to come and hear causes in our
Court;[13] but as I knew it was only to provoke Leach, I would not
let him come, and told the Lord President we had no causes for him
to hear. He insisted, so did I, and he did not come; but some day
I will invite him, and then he will have forgotten it or have
something else to do, and he won't come. He is a Jupiter-Scapin if
ever there was one.
[13] [At the Privy Council, where the Master of the Rolls
was at that time in the habit of sitting with two lay
Privy Councillors to hear Plantation Appeals.]
February 6th, 1831 {p.110}
[Page Head: THE CIVIL LIST.]
Parliament met again on the 3rd, and the House of Commons
exhibited a great array on the Opposition benches; nothing was
done the first day but the announcement of the Reform measure for
the 2nd of March, to be brought in by Lord John Russell in the
House of Commons, though not a Cabinet Minister. The fact is that
if a Cabinet Minister had introduced it, it must have been
Althorp, and he is wholly unequal to it; he cannot speak at all,
so that though the pretence is to pay a compliment to John Russell
because he had on former occasions brought forward plans of
Reform, it is really expedient to take the burden off the leader
of the Government. The next night came on the Civil List, and as
the last Government was turned out on this question, there had
existed a general but vague expectation that some wonderful
reductions were to be proposed by the new Chancellor of the
Exchequer. Great, then, was the exultation of the Opposition when
it was found that no reductions would be made, and that the
measure of this Government only differed from that of the last in
the separation of the King's personal expenses from the other
charges and a _prospective_ reduction in the Pension List. There
was not much of a debate. Althorp did it ill by all accounts;
Graham spoke pretty well; and Calcraft, who could do nothing while
in office, found all his energies when he got back to the
Opposition benches, and made (everybody says) a capital speech.
There is certainly a great disappointment that the Civil List does
not produce some economical novelty, and to a certain degree the
popularity of the Government will be affected by it. But they have
taken the manliest course, and the truth is the Duke of Wellington
had already made all possible reductions, unless the King and the
Government were at once to hang out the flag of poverty and change
their whole system. After what Sefton had told me of the
intentions of Government about the Pension List, and my reply to
him, it was a satisfaction to me to find they could not act on
such a principle; and accordingly Lord Althorp at once declared
the opinion and intentions of Government about the Pensions,
instead of abandoning them to the rage of the House of Commons.
There is not even a surmise as to the intended measure of Reform,
the secret of which is well kept, but I suspect the confidence of
the Reformers will be shaken by their disappointment about the
Civil List. It is by no means clear, be it what it may, that the
Government will be able to carry it, for the Opposition promises
to be very formidable in point of numbers; and in speaking the two
parties are, as to the first class, pretty evenly divided--Palmerston,
the Grants, Graham, Stanley, John Russell, on one side; Peel,
Calcraft, Hardinge, Dawson, on the other; fewer in numbers, but
Peel immeasurably the best on either side--but in the second line,
and among the younger ones, the Opposition are far inferior.
February 9th, 1831 {p.111}
Just got into my new home--Poulett Thomson's house, which I have
taken for a year. The day before yesterday came the news that the
French had refused the nomination of the Duc de Nemours to the
throne of Belgium, the news of his being chosen having come on
Sunday. The Ministers were _rayonnants_; Lord Lansdowne came to
his office and told it me with prodigious glee.
Met with Sir J. Burke on Sunday at Brooks's, who said that
O'Connell was completely beaten by the address of the merchants
and bankers, among whom were men--Mahon, for instance (O'Gorman
Mahon's uncle)--who had always stood by him. I do not believe he
is completely beaten, and his resources for mischief are so great
that he will rally again before long, I have little doubt.
However, what has occurred has been productive of great good; it
has elicited a strong Conservative demonstration, and proved that
out of the rabbleocracy (for everything is in _ocracy_ now) his
power is anything but unlimited. There are 20,000 men in Ireland,
so Lord Hill told me last night. Hunt[14] spoke for two hours
last night; his manner and appearance very good, like a country
gentleman of the old school, a sort of rural dignity about it,
very civil, good-humoured, and respectful to the House, but dull;
listened to, however, and very well received.
[14] [Henry Hunt, a well-known Radical, had just been
returned for Preston, where he had beaten Mr. Stanley.]
February 12th, 1831 {p.112}
The debate three nights ago on Ireland, brought on by O'Gorman
Mahon, is said to have been the best that has been heard in the
House of Commons for many years. Palmerston, Burdett, Althorp,
Peel, Wyse, all made good speeches; it was spirited, statesmanlike,
and creditable to the House, which wanted some such exhibition to
raise its credit. I saw the day before yesterday a curious letter
from Southey to Brougham, which some day or other will probably
appear. Taylor showed it me. Brougham had written to him to ask
him what his opinion was as to the encouragement that could be
given to literature, by rewarding or honouring literary men, and
suggested (I did not see his letter) that the Guelphic Order
should be bestowed upon them. Southey's reply was very courteous,
but in a style of suppressed irony and forced politeness, and
exhibited the marks of a chafed spirit, which was kept down by an
effort. 'You, my Lord, are _now_ on the Conservative side,' was
one of his phrases, which implied that the Chancellor had not
always been on that side. He suggested that it might be useful to
establish a sort of lay fellowships; L10,000 would give 10 of L500
and 25 of L200; but he proposed them not to reward the meritorious,
but as a means of silencing or hiring the mischievous. It was
evident, however, that he laid no stress on this plan, or
considered it practicable, and only proposed it because he thought
he must suggest something. He said that honours might be desirable
to scientific men, as they were so considered on the Continent,
and Newton and Davy had been titled, but for himself, if a
_Guelphic_ distinction was adopted, 'he should be a _Ghibelline_.'
He ended by saying that all he asked for was a repeal of the
Copyright Act which took from the families of literary men the
only property they had to give them, and this 'I ask for with the
earnestness of one who is conscious that he has laboured for
posterity.' It is a remarkable letter.
February 13th, 1831 {p.113}
[Page Head: THE FIRST WHIG BUDGET.]
The Budget, which was brought forward two nights ago, has given
great dissatisfaction; Goulburn attacked the taxation of the
funds (half per cent. on transfer of stock and land) in the best
speech he ever made, Peel in another good speech. The bankers
assailed it one after another, and not a man on the Government
side spoke decently. Great of course was the exultation of the
Opposition, and it is supposed that this will be withdrawn and a
Property Tax laid on instead. There is a meeting to-day in
Downing Street, at which I suspect it will be announced. The
Budget must appear hurried, and nothing but the circumstances in
which they are placed could have justified their bringing it on
so soon. In two months, besides having foreign affairs of the
greatest consequence on their hands, they have concocted a Reform
Bill and settled the finances of the nation for the next year,
which is quite ludicrous; but they are obliged to have money
voted immediately, that in case they should be beaten on Reform
or any other vital question which may compel them to dissolve
Parliament, they may have passed their estimates and be provided
with funds. Their secrets are well kept--rather too well, for
nobody knew of this Budget, and not a soul has a guess what their
Reform is to be. At present nothing can cut a poorer figure than
the Government does in the House of Commons, and they have shown
how weak a Government a strong Opposition may make.
I have just been to hear Benson preach at the Temple, but I was
so distant that I heard ill. His manner is impressive, and
language good without being ambitious, but I was rather
disappointed. Brougham was there, with Lord King of all people!
February 15th, 1831 {p.114}
Yesterday morning news came that O'Connell had withdrawn his plea
of not guilty and (by his counsel, Mr. Perrin) pleaded guilty, to
the unutterable astonishment of everybody, and not less delight.
Sheil wrote word that his heart sank at the terror of a gaol, and
'how would such a man face a battle, who could not encounter
Newgate?' Everybody's impression was that it was a compromise
with the law officers, and that he pleaded guilty on condition
that he should not be brought up for judgment, but it was no such
thing; he made in the preceding days several indirect overtures
to Lord Anglesey, who would listen to nothing, and told him that
after his conduct he could do nothing for him, and that he must
take his own course. He comes to England directly, and will be
brought up for judgment (if at all, which I doubt) next term. He
gives out that he was forced to do this in order to hasten to
England and repair in the House of Commons the errors of O'Gorman
Mahon. There is no calculating what may be the extent of the
credulity of an Irish mob with regard to him, but after all his
bullies and bravadoes this will hardly go down even with them.
Sheil says 'O'Connell is fallen indeed.' I trust, though hardly
dare hope, that 'he sinks like stars that fall to rise no more.'
It is impossible to form an idea of the astonishment of everybody
at this termination of the law proceedings, which have ended so
triumphantly for Lord Anglesey and Plunket. Lord Anglesey,
however, wrote word to Lady Anglesey that no one could form an
idea of the state of that country: that fresh plots were
discovered every day, that from circumstances he had been able to
do more than another man would, but that it was not, he firmly
believed, possible to save it.
[Page Head: LORD ALTHORP'S BUDGET.]
There was a meeting at Althorp's on Sunday, when he agreed to
withdraw the Transfer Tax, and that there should be no Property
Tax. A more miserable figure was never cut than his; but how
should it be otherwise? A respectable country gentleman, well
versed in rural administration, in farming and sporting, with all
the integrity of L15,000 a year in possession and L50,000 in
reversion, is all of a sudden made leader in the House of Commons
without being able to speak, and Chancellor of the Exchequer
without any knowledge, theoretical or practical, of finance. By
way of being discreet, and that his plan may be a secret, he
consults nobody; and then he closets himself with his familiar
Poulett Thomson, who puts this notable scheme into his head, and
out he blurts it in the House of Commons, without an idea how it
will be received, without making either preparations for
defending it or for an alternative in case of its rejection. If
Althorp and Poulett Thomson are to govern England, these things
are likely to happen. The Opposition cannot contain themselves;
the women think they are to come in directly. Goulburn said to
Baring as they left the House on Friday, 'Mr. Baring, you said
last year you thought my Budget was the most profligate that any
Chancellor of the Exchequer had ever brought forward; I think you
will now no longer say it was the _most_ profligate.' Last night
Praed[15] made his first speech, which was very good.
[15] [Winthrop Mackworth Praed, a young man of great
promise, who had just entered Parliament. He took his
degree in 1825, and was regarded by the Tories as the
rival and competitor of Thomas Babington Macaulay. But
unhappily he died in 1839.]
February 17th, 1831 {p.115}
The day before yesterday Duncannon called on me, and told me
O'Connell had got up an opposition to him in Kilkenny; that he
was of opinion that the recent events would diminish neither his
power nor his popularity, and that in fact he was infallible with
the Irish mob. As Richard says, 'if this have no effect, he is
immortal.'
The Duke of Wellington called on my family yesterday; he says the
Reform question will not be carried, and he thinks the Government
cannot stand, that things are certainly better (internally), and
that the great fear is lest people should be too much afraid.
Went to Lady Dudley Stewart's last night; a party; saw a
vulgar-looking, fat man with spectacles, and a mincing, rather
pretty pink and white woman, his wife. The man was Napoleon's
nephew, the woman Washington's granddaughter. What a host of
associations, all confused and degraded! He is a son of Murat,
the King of Naples, who was said to be 'le dieu Mars jusqu'a six
heures du soir.' He was heir to a throne, and is now a lawyer in
the United States, and his wife, whose name I know not, Sandon
told me, was Washington's granddaughter. (This must be a mistake,
for I think Washington never had any children.)[16]
[16] [Achille Murat and his wife were living at this time in
the Alpha Road, Regent's Park. It was said she was
Washington's grand-niece, but I am not sure what the
relationship was, if any. She was certainly not his
granddaughter.]
February 24th, 1831 {p.116}
[Page Head: WEAKNESS OF THE GOVERNMENT.]
At Newmarket for three days, from Saturday till Tuesday; riding
out at eight o'clock every morning and inhaling salubrious air.
Came back the night before last and found matters in a strange
state. The Government, strong in the House of Lords (which is a
secondary consideration), is weak in the House of Commons to a
degree which is contemptible and ridiculous. Even Sefton now
confesses that Althorp is wretched. There he is _leading_ the
House of Commons without the slightest acquaintance with the
various subjects that come under discussion, and hardly able to
speak at all; not one of the Ministers exhibits anything like
vigour, ability, or discretion. As Althorp cannot speak, Graham
is obliged to talk, or thinks he is, and, as I predicted, he is
failing;[17] with some cleverness and plenty of fluency, he is
unequal to the situation he is placed in, and his difference with
Grant the other night and his apology to O'Gorman Mahon have been
prejudicial to the Government and to his own character. The
exultation of the Opposition is unbounded, and Peel plays with
his power in the House, only not putting it forth because it does
not suit his convenience; but he does what he likes, and it is
evident that the very existence of the Government depends upon
his pleasure. His game, however, is to display candour and
moderation, and rather to protect them than not, so he defends
many of their measures and restrains the fierce animosity of his
friends, but with a sort of sarcastic civility, which, while it
is put forth in their defence, is always done in such a manner as
shall best exhibit his own authority and his contempt for their
persons individually. While he upholds the Government he does all
he can to bring each member of it into contempt, and there they
are, helpless and confused, writhing under his lash and their own
impotence, and only intent upon staving off a division which
would show the world how feeble they are. Neither the late nor
any other Government ever cut so poor a figure as this does.
Palmerston does nothing, Grant does worse, Graham does no good,
Althorp a great deal of harm; Stanley alone has distinguished
himself, and what he has had to do has done very well. It is not,
however, only in the House of Commons that the Government are in
such discredit; the Budget did their business in the City, and
alienated the trading interest. It is a curious circumstance that
both Goulburn and Herries have been beset by deputations and
individual applications for advice and assistance nearly as much
since they left office as when they were in it by merchants and
others, who complain to them that it was quite useless to go to
Lord Althorp, for they find that he has not the slightest
acquaintance with any of the subjects and interests on which they
addressed themselves to him, and one man told Herries this, at
the same time owning that he was a Whig in principle, and had
been an opponent of the late and a supporter of the present
Government. The press generally are falling off from the
Government, which is an ominous sign. While the Government is
thus weak and powerless the elements of confusion and violence
are gathering fresh force, and without any fixed and loyal
authority to check them will pursue their eccentric course till
some public commotion arrives, or till the Conservative resources
of the country are called into action and the antagonistic
principles are fairly brought to trial.
[17] It was on Lord Chandos's motion to take into
consideration the state of the West Indies.
The King went to the play the night before last; was well
received in the house, but hooted and pelted coming home, and a
stone shivered a window of his coach and fell into Prince George
of Cumberland's lap. The King was excessively annoyed, and sent
for Baring, who was the officer riding by his coach, and asked
him if he knew who had thrown the stone; he said that it
terrified the Queen, and 'was very disagreeable, as he should
always be going somewhere.'
In the House of Commons Committee on the Parliament Offices they
are making the whole thing ridiculous by the sort of reductions
they suggest. Hume proposed to cut down the President of the
Council to L1,000 a year, on which Stormont moved he should have
nothing, and this (which was intended to ridicule Hume's proposal)
was carried, but will probably be rescinded. There is no directing
power anywhere, and the sort of anarchy that is fast increasing
must beget confusion. Nobody has the least idea how reform will
go, or of the nature of what they mean to propose, but the King
said to Cecil Forrester yesterday, who went to resign his office
of Groom of the Bedchamber, 'Why do you resign?' He said he could
not support Government or vote for Reform. 'Well, but you don't
know what it is, and you might have waited till it came on, for it
probably will not be carried;' and this he repeated twice. Lord
Durham has volunteered to give up his salary as Privy Seal, which
is no great sacrifice, considering how long he is likely to enjoy
it, and everybody gives him credit for having suggested the relief
to coals for his own interest. Lady Holland, who has got a West
Indian estate, attacked him about the sugar duties, and asked him
if they would not reduce them. He said 'No.' She retorted, 'That
is because you have no West Indian estate; you have got your own
job about coals done, and you don't care about us.' In the House
of Lords they have it all their own way. The other night, on Lord
Strangford's motion about the Methuen treaty, Brougham exhibited
his wonderful powers in his very best style. Without any
preparation for the question, and after it had been exhausted in a
very good speech of Goderich's, he got up, and in answer to
Strangford and Ellenborough banged their heads together, and
displayed all his power of ridicule, sarcasm, and argument in a
manner which they could not themselves help admiring. The next
night he brought forward his Chancery Reform measure in a speech
of three hours, which, however luminous, was too long for their
Lordships, and before the end of it the House had melted away to
nothing. But, notwithstanding this success, he must inwardly chafe
at being removed from his natural element and proper sphere of
action, and he must burn with vexation at seeing Peel riot and
revel in his unopposed power, like Hector when Achilles would not
fight, though this Achilles can never fight again, but he would
give a great deal to go back to the field, and would require much
less persuasion than Achilles did.
February 25th, 1831 {p.119}
[Page Head: LADY JERSEY AND LORD DURHAM.]
A drawing-room yesterday, at which the Princess Victoria made her
first appearance. I was not there. Lady Jersey made a scene with
Lord Durham. She got up and crossed the room to him and said,
'Lord Durham, I hear that you have said things about me which are
not true, and I desire that you will call upon me to-morrow with
a witness to hear my positive denial, and I beg that you will not
repeat any such things about me,' or, as the Irishman said,
'words to that effect.' She was in a fury, and he, I suppose, in
a still greater. He muttered that he should never set foot in her
house again, which she did not hear, as after delivering herself
of her speech she flounced back again to her seat, mighty proud
of the exploit. It arose out of his saying that he should make
Lady Durham demand an audience of the Queen to contradict the
things Lady Jersey had said of her and the other Whig ladies.
I saw Lady Jersey last night and had a long conversation with her
about her squabbles. She declares solemnly (and I believe it)
that she never said a syllable to the Queen against her quondam
friends, owns she abused Sefton to other people, cried, and
talked, and the end was that I am to try to put an end to these
_tracasseries_. She was mighty glorious about her _sortie_ upon
Lambton, whom she dislikes, but she is vexed at the hornets' nest
she has brought round her head. All this comes of talking. The
wisest man mentioned in history was the vagrant in the Tuileries
Gardens some years ago, who walked about with a gag on, and when
taken up by the police and questioned why he went about in that
guise, he said he was imprudent, and that he might not say
anything to get himself into jeopardy he had adopted this
precaution. I wonder what Lambton would say now about appointing
others instead of Palmerston and Co. if they should go out, which
he talked of as such an easy and indifferent matter. What
arrogance and folly there is in the world! I don't know how long
this will last, but it must end in Peel's being Prime Minister.
What a foolish proverb that is that 'honesty is the best policy!'
I am just come home from breakfasting with Henry Taylor to meet
Wordsworth; the same party as when he had Southey--Mill, Elliot,
Charles Villiers. Wordsworth may be bordering on sixty;
hard-featured, brown, wrinkled, with prominent teeth and a few
scattered grey hairs, but nevertheless not a disagreeable
countenance; and very cheerful, merry, courteous, and talkative,
much more so than I should have expected from the grave and
didactic character of his writings. He held forth on poetry,
painting, politics, and metaphysics, and with a great deal of
eloquence; he is more conversible and with a greater flow of
animal spirits than Southey. He mentioned that he never wrote
down as he composed, but composed walking, riding, or in bed, and
wrote down after; that Southey always composes at his desk. He
talked a great deal of Brougham, whose talents and domestic
virtues he greatly admires; that he was very generous and
affectionate in his disposition, full of duty and attention to
his mother, and had adopted and provided for a whole family of
his brother's children, and treats his wife's children as if they
were his own. He insisted upon taking them both with him to the
drawing-room the other day when he went in state as Chancellor.
They remonstrated with him, but in vain.