[14] [Mr. Knight Bruce, afterwards Lord Justice in Equity.]

August 6th, 1835 {p.284}

Yesterday to Brighton, to see my horse Dacre run for the Brighton stake, which he won, and back at night. The day before I met the Vice-Chancellor[15] at Charing Cross, going down, to the House of Lords. 'Well,' said he, shrugging his shoulders, 'here I am going to the House of Lords, after hearing evidence all the morning, to hear it again for the rest of the evening.' 'What is to happen?' I asked him. 'O Lord, it is the greatest bore; they have heard Coventry and Oxford; they got something of a case out of the first, but the other was beyond anything tiresome; they are sick to death of it, and Brougham and Lyndhurst have agreed that it is all damned nonsense, and they will hear nothing more after Saturday next.' So this is the end of all this hubbub, and here are these two great comedians thundering against each other in the House of Lords overnight with all imaginable vehemence and solemnity, only to meet together the next morning and agree that it is all damned nonsense. There is something very melancholy and very ludicrous in all this, and though that great bull calf the public does not care about such things, and is content to roar when he is bid, there are those on the alert who will turn such trilling and folly to account, and convert what is half ridiculous into something all serious. Winchelsea and Newcastle after all did not vote the other night; they said they wanted no evidence, that they would have no such Bill, and would not meddle with the discussion at all except to oppose it point-blank. Fools as they are, their folly is more tolerable and probably less mischievous than the folly of the wise ones.

[15] The Great Seal being in Commission, the Vice-Chancellor of England (Sir Lancelot Shadwell) sat as one of the Commissioners on the Woolsack.

August 9th, 1835

[Page Head: THE KING AND LORD TORRINGTON.]

On Wednesday last at the levee the King made a scene with Lord Torrington, one of his Lords of the Bedchamber, and a very disgraceful scene. A card was put into Torrington's hands of somebody who was presented, which he read, 'So and so, Deputy-Governor.' 'Deputy-Governor?' said the King, 'Deputy-Governor of what? I cannot tell your Majesty,' replied Torrington, 'as it is not upon the card.' 'Hold your tongue, sir,' said the King; 'you had better go home and learn to read;' and shortly after, when some bishop presented an address against (I believe) the Irish Tithe Bill, and the King was going as usual to hand over the papers to the Lord in waiting, he stopped and said to Lord Torrington, who advanced to take them, 'No, Lord Torrington; these are not fit documents to be entrusted to your keeping.' His habitual state of excitement will probably bring on sooner or later the malady of his family. Torrington is a young man in a difficult position, or he ought to have resigned instantly and as publicly as the insult was offered. The King cannot bridle his temper, and lets slip no opportunity of showing his dislike, impotent as it is, of the people who surround him. He admits none but Tories into his private society, wherever he goes Tories accompany him; at Windsor Tories only are his guests. This provokes his Ministers, but it necessarily makes them more indifferent to the cultivation of his favour, and accustoms them to consider themselves as the Ministers of the House of Commons and not of the Crown.

My brother writes me from Paris very interesting details of the funeral of the victims of the assassination plot,[16] which was an imposing and magnificent ceremony, admirably arranged, and as it has produced a burst of enthusiasm for the King, and has brought round the clergy to him, it will serve to strengthen his throne. His undaunted courage ingratiates him with the French.

[16] [The victims of the Fieschi conspiracy.]

August 15th, 1835

[Page Head: DEBATE ON THE CORPORATION BILL.]

On Wednesday the Lords commenced proceedings on the Corporation Bill. The Ministers were aware that they meant to throw it out, for Lord John Russell and Lord Lansdowne both told me at the levee that they had heard such was the intention of the Tories. However, they never had such a design, and the second reading passed without a division; on Thursday they went into Committee, and the freeman's clause was carried against Government by a majority of 93—130 to 37—the debate being distinguished by divers sallies of intemperance from Brougham, who thundered, and menaced, and gesticulated in his finest style. When somebody cried, 'Question,' he burst out, 'Do you think to put me down? I have stood against 300 of the House of Commons, and do you think I will give way to you?' This was uttered with all imaginable rage and scorn.[17] This amendment was always anticipated, and though the Government object to it, Lord Lansdowne told me that as the rate-paying clause had passed without opposition, he did not care for the other alterations, but the minority appeared to everybody bordering upon the ridiculous; a Minister who could only muster thirty-seven present, and who was in a minority of three to one, presented a novel spectacle. Nobody could account for the carelessness of their muster, for many Peers were absent who might easily have been there, and several who belong to Government by office or connexion. It did not, however, occur to anybody that they would feel themselves compelled to resign upon it, except perhaps to a few Tories, who hinted their notion that Melbourne could not go on with such a majority against him, which, however true it may be in the long run, signifies nothing as to any immediate change.

[17] Brougham had some reason to be angry. Lyndhurst did not reply to him on Wednesday, when he might have done so, pleading the fatigue of late hours and his own indisposition, and on Thursday he attacked him when he was absent; he therefore gave him good ground of complaint. Brougham's insolence and violence have done great injury to the House of Lords by lowering the style and character of their debates and introducing coarseness and acrimony such as never were known there before. Hardly a night passes without some discreditable scene of squabbling and vituperation bandied between him and the High Tory Lords, one or other of them; their hatred of him and his scorn of them are everlastingly breaking out. He and Lyndhurst, though constantly pitted against each other, are great friends all the time, but with the others it is a rabid passion of hatred and contempt, mutually felt and continually expressed.

[Page Head: ENERGY OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS.]

Last night the qualification clause was carried against Government by an equally large majority, or nearly so, and this time Government does not seem disposed to take it so patiently. It was well understood that a qualification would be imposed, and many of the supporters of the Bill said they did not object thereto, but they had no notion of such a qualification as Lyndhurst proposed and carried last night, and the Duke of Richmond (whom I met at Crockford's) told me that it would be fatal to the Bill. He saw Lord John Russell after the division, who told him so, and that the Commons would never take the Bill with such an alteration as this. Richmond himself goes entirely with Government in this measure, and I was rather surprised to hear him say that 'it had been urged that Lord Stanley was opposed to this part of the Bill, but that if this were so a man must judge for himself in so important a matter,' which looks a little as if he meant to back out of the dilly, and I should not be very much surprised if he came into office again with these people, if they stay in. I asked him what in his opinion would happen, and he replied that he thought the House of Lords was nearly done for, that he expected the Commons would reject their amendments and pass some very strong resolutions; he should not be surprised if they refused to pass the Appropriation Bill. I said they would hardly do that, because it would be a measure against Government, and would compel these Ministers to resign. This he admitted, but he went on to say that he expected it would throw the House of Commons into a ferment, that they would adopt some violent course, and then there would be a 'row royal.' What astonishes me most in all this is that Lyndhurst, a man of great abilities, and certainly, if wishing for anything, wishing for the success of the party he belongs to, should urge these desperate courses. He it was who proposed the fatal postponement of Schedule A, which led to such utter ruin and confusion, and now it is he who manages this Bill, and who ventures to mutilate the Ministerial measure in such a manner as will in all probability bring down all the wrath of the Commons on him and his Conservative majority. I am not at all sure but that the Government is content to exhibit its paltry numbers in the House of Lords, in order that the world may see how essentially it is a Tory body, that it hardly fulfils the conditions of a great independent legislative assembly, but presents the appearance of a dominant party-faction which is too numerous to be affected by any constitutional process and too obstinate to be turned from its fixed purpose of opposing all the measures which have a tendency to diminish the influence of the Conservative party in the country. It is impossible to look at the disposition exhibited by this great majority and not admit that there is very small chance of its acting harmoniously with the present House of Commons, and that some change must take place in order to enable Government and legislation to go on at all. It is anything but clear that the nation desires the destruction of the House of Lords, nor is it clear that the nation cares for its preservation. It is, I think, exceedingly probable that a majority of those who return members to Parliament, and in whom collectively the supreme power really resides, though they might be content to retain the House of Lords, if it could be made to act in harmony with, and therefore necessarily in subordination to, the House of Commons, would not hesitate for an instant to decree its downfall if it became clear that there was no other way of crushing the Tory faction which now rules triumphant in that House. At all events the Lords are playing a desperate game; if it succeeds, they who direct the energies of the party are great and wise men; but what if it fail? They seem to have no answer to this but that if they

Screw their courage to the sticking place, It will not fail.



CHAPTER XXIX.

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

August 19th, 1835 {p.290}

[Page Head: MUNICIPAL CORPORATION BILL.]

Yesterday the Lords finished the Committee on the Corporation Bill. Their last amendment (which I do not very well understand at present), by which certain aldermen elected for life are to be taken in the first instance from the present aldermen, has disgusted the authors of the Bill more than all the rest. In the morning I met Duncannon and Howick, both open-mouthed against the amendments, and this in particular, and declaring that though the others might have been stomached, this could not go down, as it was in direct opposition to the principle of the Bill. Howick talked of 'the Lords being swept away like chaff' and of 'the serious times that were approaching.' Duncannon said there would be a conference, and if the Lords insisted on these amendments the Bill would be lost. I asked if a compromise was not feasible, the Lords abandoning this and the Commons taking the other amendments, which he said would not be undesirable, but difficult to effect. The continual discussions about this Bill have made me perforce understand something of it towards the end of them. I am too ignorant of the details and of the tendency of the Bill to have an opinion of the comparative merits of its present and its original shape, but I am sure the Lords are bound in prudence not to mutilate it more than is absolutely necessary to make it a safe measure, and to have a good, and moreover a popular, case to go to the country with, if eventually such an appeal is to be made. On the other hand the House of Commons, powerful as it is, must not assert its power too peremptorily, and before the Ministers determine to resign, for the purpose of making their resignation instrumental to the consolidation of their power and the destruction of the House of Lords; they also must have a good case, and be able to show that the amendments made by the Lords are incompatible with the object proposed, that they were made in a factious spirit and for the express purpose of thwarting the principle contended for, and that their conduct in this matter forms part of a general system, which can only be counteracted by some fundamental change in the constitution of the Upper House itself. These are violent conclusions to come to, and when one reflects calmly upon the possible and probable consequences of a collision, and the manner in which the interests of the antagonistic parties collectively and individually are blended together, it is difficult to believe that both will not pause on the brink of the precipice and be influenced by a simultaneous desire to come to a decent and practicable compromise. This would probably be easy if both parties were actuated by a sincere desire to enact a law to reform corporations in the safest, best, and most satisfactory manner; but the reformation of the corporations is not the first object in the minds of either. One wants to save as much as possible of the Tory influence, which is menaced by the Bill, and the other wants to court the democratic spirit, which vivifies its party, and erect a new and auxiliary influence on the ruins of the ancient establishments. Any mere looker-on must perceive through all their wranglings that these are the arriere-pensees of the two antagonistic parties.

Brougham made a very clever speech (I am told) on Monday night, and the contest between him and Lyndhurst through the whole Committee has been remarkable for talent and for a striking display of the different qualities of the two men. The Duke of Richmond had a squabble with Lyndhurst last night, 'impar congressus,' and he has wriggled himself almost back among the Whigs; nothing but the appropriation clause in the Church Bill prevents his being First Lord of the Admiralty, and he may be considered as having dropped off the dilly with so many others. The Whigs are dying to have him back among them. I must confess I do not see why, but it is impossible to deny that he contrives to make himself desired by those with whom he has acted, and as they must know best what they are about and what he is capable of, it is reasonable to suppose that he has some talents or some qualities which are developed in the graver affairs of life, but which do not appear in its ordinary relations and habitudes. I thought what he said to me the other night looked like a severance of his Stanley connexion, and his strenuous support of this Bill and his pettish attacks upon Lyndhurst show that he at least is not likely to ally himself with the Conservatives.

August 21st, 1835 {p.292}

Yesterday I fell in with Lyndhurst, just getting out of his carriage at his door in George Street. He asked me to come in and look at his house, which I did. I asked him what would happen about the Bill. He said, 'Oh, they will take it. What can they do? If they choose to throw it out, let them do so, I don't care whether they do or not. But they will take it, because they know it does their business, though not so completely as they desire.' He said he would alter the qualification, though he did not think it objectionable. I told him I hoped there might be some compromise, and that he and his friends would give way on some of their amendments, and that the Commons would take the rest. Even the 'Times,' which goes the whole hog with the Opposition, won't swallow this (the aldermen), and suggests that it should be withdrawn. Nothing ever was like the outrageous indecency of the attacks upon the House of Lords in the Ministerial papers, and it is not clear that they won't overdo the thing; this kind of fury generally defeats its own object.

August 25th, 1835

[Page Head: WHAT IS HAPPINESS?]

At Hillingdon from Saturday till Monday last; began the Life of Mackintosh, and was delighted with Sydney Smith's letter which is prefixed to it; read and walked all day on Sunday—the two things I do least, viz. exercise my mind and body; therefore both grow gross and heavy. Shakespeare says fat paunches make lean pates, but this is taken from a Greek proverb. I admire this family of Cox's at Hillingdon, and after casting my eyes in every direction, and thinking much and often of the theory of happiness, I am convinced that it is principally to be found in contented mediocrity, accompanied with an equable temperament and warm though not excitable feelings. When I read such books as Mackintosh's Life, and see what other men have done, how they have read and thought, a sort of despair comes over me, a deep and bitter sensation of regret 'for time misspent and talents misapplied,' not the less bitter from being coupled with a hopelessness of remedial industry and of doing better things. Nor do I know that such men as these were happy; that they possessed sources of enjoyment inaccessible to less gifted minds is not to be doubted, but whether knowledge and conscious ability and superiority generally bring with them content of mind and the sunshine of self-satisfaction to the possessors is anything but certain. I wonder the inductive process has not been more systematically applied to the solution of this great philosophical problem, what is happiness, and in what it consists, for the practical purpose of directing the human mind into the right road for reaching this goal of all human wishes. Why are not innumerable instances collected, examined, analysed, and the results expanded, explained, and reasoned upon for the benefit and instruction of mankind? Who can tell but what these results may lead at last to some simple conclusions such as it requires no vast range of intellect to discover, no subtle philosophy to teach—conclusions mortifying to the pride and vanity of man, but calculated to mitigate the evils of life by softening mutual asperities, and by the establishment of the doctrine of humility, from which all charity, forbearance, toleration, and benevolence must flow as from their source? These simple conclusions may amount to no more than a simple maxim that happiness is to be found 'in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue.'

Semita certe Tranquillae per virtutem patet unica vitae.

The end of the tenth Satire of Juvenal (which is one of the finest sermons that ever was composed, and worth all the homilies of all the Fathers of the Church) teaches us what to pray for—

Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.

Healthy body, healthy appetite, healthy feelings, though accompanied by mediocrity of talent, unadorned with wit and imagination, and unpolished by learning and science, will outstrip in the race for happiness the splendid irregularities of genius and the most dazzling successes of ambition. At the same time this general view of the probabilities of happiness must be qualified by the admission that mere vegetation scarcely deserves the name of happiness, and that the highest enjoyment which humanity is capable of may be said to consist in the pleasures of reason and imagination—of a mind expatiating among the wonders of nature, and ranging through all the 'changes of many-coloured life,' without being shaken from its equilibrium by the disturbing causes of jealousy, envy, and the evil passions of our nature. The most galling of all conditions is that of him whose conscience and consciousness whisper to him perpetual reproaches, who reflects on what he might have been and who feels and sees what he is. When such a man as Macintosh, fraught with all learning, whose mind, if not kindled into a steady blaze, is perpetually throwing out sparks and coruscations of exceeding brightness, is stung with these self-upbraidings, what must be the reflections of those, the utmost reach of whose industry is far below the value of his most self-accused idleness, who have no self-consolation, are plunged in entire darkness, and have not only to lament the years of omission, but those of commission, not only the opportunities neglected, but the positive mischief done by the debasement of the faculties, the deterioration of the understanding, the impairing of the power of exertion consequent upon a long devotion to low, despicable, unprofitable habits and pursuits?

August 27th, 1835 {p.295}

[Page Head: STATE OF PARTIES.]

Melbourne has thrown up the Tithe Bill in the Lords, because the Opposition expunged the appropriation clauses. In the Corporation Bill Lyndhurst made still further alterations, such as the Commons will not take (the town clerks and the exclusion of Dissenters from the disposal of ecclesiastical patronage), and as it is the general opinion that they will make no compromise and surrender none of their amendments, that Bill will probably be lost too. What then? asks everybody, and nobody can tell what then, but there is a sort of vague apprehension that something must come of it, and that this collision (for collision it is) between the Lords and the Commons will not be terminated without some violent measures or important changes; if such do take place, they will have been most wantonly and wickedly brought about, but it is a lamentable thing to see the two great parties in the country, equally possessed of wealth and influence, and having the same interest in general tranquillity, tearing each other to pieces while the Radicals stand laughing and chuckling by, only waiting for the proper moment to avail themselves of these senseless divisions. There is something inconceivable, a sort of political absurdity, in the notion of a country like this being on the eve of a convulsion, when it is tranquil, prosperous, and without any grievance; universal liberty prevails, every man's property and person are safe, the laws are well administered and duly obeyed; so far from there being any unredressed grievances, the imagination of man cannot devise the fiction or semblance of a grievance without there being a rush to correct it. The only real evil is that the rage for correction is too violent, and sweeps all before it. What is it, then, which menaces the existence of the constitution we live under? It is the fury of parties, it is the broad line of separation which the Reform Bill has drawn, the antagonist positions into which the two Houses of Parliament have been thrown, and the Whigs having identified themselves with the democratic principle in one House, in order to preserve their places, and the Conservative principle having taken refuge in the other House, where it is really endangered by the obstinate and frantic violence of its supporters. What was the loud and eternal cry of the Lords, and of all the Conservatives, when the Reform Bill was in agitation? That it was a revolution, that it would place all political power in the hands of the people, that it would establish an irresistible democratic force; and the great body of them justified their refusal to go into Committee on the ground that the Bill was so vicious in principle, so irremediably mischievous, that no alterations could diminish its evil tendency. It is now as clear as daylight that if they had gone into Committee and amended the Bill, they might have obviated all or nearly all the evils they apprehended, for even after the passing of the 'whole Bill,' with all its clauses perfect and untouched, parties are so nearly balanced that the smallest difference would turn the scale the other way. They would, however, listen to nothing, and now they feel the consequences of their ruat coelum policy; but what I complain of is, that after the verification of their predictions, and the realisation of their fears, in the establishment of a democratic power of formidable strength, they do not act consistently with their own declared opinions; for if it be true, as they assert, that their legitimate authority and influence have been transferred to other hands, and that the just equilibrium of the Constitution has been shaken, it is mad and preposterous in them to act just as if no such disturbing causes had occurred, as if they were still in the plenitude of their constitutional power, and to provoke a collision which, if their own assertions be true, they are no longer in a condition to sustain. The answer to such arguments as this invariably is, Are the Lords, then, to be content to yield everything, and must they pass every Bill which the House of Commons thinks fit to send to them purely and simply? Certainly they are not; no such thing is expected of them by any man or any set of men, but common prudence and a sense of their own condition and their own relative strength under the new dispensation demand that they should exercise their undoubted rights with circumspection and calmness, desisting from all opposition for opposition's sake, standing out firmly on questions involving great and important principles, and yielding with a good grace, without ill-humour, and without subserviency on minor points. They ought, for example, to have followed in the footsteps of Peel in this Irish Corporation Bill, and to have satisfied themselves with making those amendments which he strove for without success in the House of Commons, and no more. As it is, he wholly disapproves of the course they have taken, and so I believe did the Duke of Wellington in the beginning of the discussions, but Lyndhurst took the lead with the violent party, overruled the Duke, neglected Peel, and dealt with the Bill in the slashing manner we have seen.

[Page Head: SECLUSION OF SIR R. PEEL.]

I was talking to Lord John Russell yesterday at Court on this subject, and he said that he had no doubt Peel highly disapproved of their proceedings, and that it was evident he did not pretend to guide them; for one day in the House of Commons he went over to Peel, and said that he meant to recommit (or some such thing, no matter what the particular course was) the Bill that night, and he supposed he would not object. Peel said, 'Oh, no, I don't object,' and as he was going away Peel called him back and said, 'Remember I speak only for myself; I can answer for no other individual in the House.' He went out of town about a fortnight ago, has never returned, and will not; his own friends think he ought, but it is evident that he prefers to wash his hands of the matter. He knows well enough that the Conservatives hate him in their hearts; besides having never cordially forgiven him for his conduct on the Catholic question, they are indignant at his Liberal views and opinions, and when they adopted him as their leader it was in the fond hope that he would restore the good old days of Tory Government, than which nothing could be farther from his thoughts. John Russell said of him yesterday 'that he was, in fact, a great lover of changes and innovations;' and so he is. It often occurs to me that he would not care very much if the House of Lords did go to the wall, and that though he is the acknowledged head of the Conservative party, he doesn't in his heart care much for Conservative principles. He may possibly calculate that no change can take place in this country by which property will be menaced; that personally he is safe, and politically his vast superiority in all the requisites for public life must, under all possible circumstances, make him the most eminent performer on the great stage. I do not know that he has any such thoughts as these, but it appears to me far from improbable, and the more so from his keeping aloof at this moment and abstaining (as far as we know) from any attempt to restrain the indiscretion and impetuosity of his party.

[Page Head: THE WHIGS' TITHE BILL.]

But if on the one hand the conduct of the Tories with respect to the Corporation Bill has been violent and rash, that of the Government with respect to the Tithe Bill has been unspeakably wicked. I cannot recollect an instance of so complete a sacrifice of the interests of others, of their own principles, and of national tranquillity to mere party objects, and the more I reflect upon the course they have taken the more profligate and disgraceful it appears. These Ministers have recorded their opinion that the question of appropriation ought not to be mixed up with that of commutation; that they are essentially distinct, and ought to remain so. At the beginning of this session the united Whigs and Radicals considered only one thing—how to drive Peel out, and though they had a choice of means to accomplish this end, the famous resolution about appropriation was the one which they finally selected for the purpose. In so doing they were altogether regardless of future consequences,[1] and never stopped to calculate what would be the effect of saddling the measure of relief (in which all parties concurred) with this impossible condition. Now how stands the case? They declare that Ireland (as all the world knows) is a scene of disorder and bloodshed, of which the Tithe system is the principal cause, and that the Tithe Bill will afford an effectual remedy to the evil. It is therefore their imperative and paramount duty, as it ought to be their earnest and engrossing desire, to secure the application of their remedy, and, whether in office or out of office (with the expectation and intention of coming in), to take care that nothing should be mixed up with it by which it can be endangered, and that it should be proposed merely for what it is, and not made subservient to any object but that for which it has been professedly framed. Having committed the first error of employing this resolution to drive out the Government, they then considered themselves obliged to adopt it as an integral part of the Bill, and accordingly they did so, with a full knowledge that by so doing they should ensure the rejection of the Bill itself and that Ireland would continue in the same state of anarchy and confusion, only aggravated by the furious contests of parties here and by the failure of all schemes of remedial legislation. Nothing can be more certain than this, that if the state of Ireland had been taken into consideration with the simple, straightforward view of tranquillising the country, and that no party object had been mixed up with it, the framers of the Tithe Bill would sedulously have avoided introducing the appropriation clause; but during the great battle with Peel the establishment of this principle (not only the principle of appropriation, but that no relief should be afforded without its recognition) was made the condition of Radical support and the bond of Radical connection, and having as the result of this compact pledged the House of Commons to the principle, they refuse to retrace their steps, and offer the House of Lords the alternative of its recognition (knowing that they cannot in sincerity, honour, or conscience recognise it) or that of an irreparable injury to the Irish Church, which it is the grand object of the Lords to uphold. But the question must not be considered as one merely affecting the interests of the clergy of Ireland. If that were all, there might be no such great harm in these proceedings. Entertaining very strong (and as I think very sound) opinions with respect to the expediency of dealing with its revenues, and for purposes ultimately to be effected which they cannot yet venture to avow, they might be justified, or think themselves justified, in coping with the difficulties which embarrass this question in the best mode that is open to them, and deem it better that the Irish clergy should suffer the temporary privations they undergo than that the final settlement of the ecclesiastical question should be indefinitely postponed. But they do not pretend to be actuated by any such considerations; their declared object is to restore peace to Ireland, to terminate the Tithe quarrel, to raise the Protestant clergy from their fallen state, and to assert the authority of the law by taking away the inducements which now exist for setting the law at defiance. Those who undertake to govern the country are above all things bound to see that the laws are obeyed, and they do not deserve the name of a Government if they submit to, much less if they connive at, a permanent state of anarchy in any part of the country. They know that the law in Ireland is a dead letter, that neither to statute nor common law do the lower orders of Irish Catholics (the bulk of the nation) pay the slightest obedience, and that they are countenanced and urged on in their disobedience by those agitators with whom the Government act in political fellowship, and in deference to whom their measures have been shaped. Granting that after the adoption of the resolution by the House of Commons they were bound to insert it in their Bill, what justification is there for their refusal to receive the Bill back from the Lords with no other alteration than the omission of the appropriation clause? In so refusing they destroy their own measure; they publish to the world that it is the principle of appropriation, and not the Tithe composition, that they really care for; and in thus strangling their own Bill, because they cannot tack that principle on to it, they make themselves accomplices of the outrages and violence which are perpetrated in the Tithe warfare, and abettors of the regular and systematic violation of the law. The King's Government exhibits itself in a conspiracy with Catholic agitators and Protestant republicans against the clergy of the Established Church and against the laws of the land. If they are sincere in their own statements and declarations they must of necessity deem no object commensurate with this in point of urgency and importance; and what is the object to which this is postponed? That of maintaining their own consistency; because they turned the late Government out on this question they must now adhere to it with desperate tenacity; their interests as a party demand that they should; O'Connell and the Radicals will not forgive them if they give it up. They might if they would declare their unchanged opinion in favour of the principle of appropriation, and their determination to press the adoption of it at all times and by all means, and never to desist till they had accomplished its recognition, but at the same time announce that the perilous state of Ireland—the magnitude of the evil resulting from the Tithe system—would not allow them to reject the Tithe Bill though denuded of the appropriation clauses, as all the rest of its provisions (all those by which the Tithe system was to be determined) had been passed by the Lords. I cannot conceive how a conscientious Minister can take upon himself the responsibility of quashing this measure, and contentedly look forward to the probability—almost certainty—of a fresh course of outrage and disorder, and a new catalogue of miseries and privations, which he all the time believes it is in his power to avert. But these Ministers think that they could not avert these evils (by accepting the Bill) without giving umbrage to their task-masters and allies, and they do not scruple to sacrifice the mighty interests at stake in Ireland to the paltry and ephemeral interests of their party—interests which cannot outlive the present hour and party, which the slightest change in the political atmosphere may sweep away in an instant. There is also another reason by which they are determined; they cannot face the accusation of inconsistency—the question that would be put, Why did you turn out Peel's Government? You turned him out on this very principle which you are now ready to abandon. There is no doubt that this question would be put with a very triumphant air by their opponents, but they might easily answer it, without admitting in so many words—what everybody well knows without any admission—that the resolution was brought forward for the express purpose of turning Peel out. They might say that they moved that resolution because it is a principle that they wished to establish, and that they still think ought to be established; that Peel's resignation on that particular question was of his own choice, and that if they are not irrevocably bound by the resolution itself, they are not the more bound by that circumstance; that they sent the Bill to the House of Lords in what they consider the best form, but that after the Lords had agreed to the whole measure, with the exception of the appropriation clauses, it was their duty to take the matter again into their serious consideration, and to determine whether it was on the whole more advantageous to Ireland and to the Empire that the Bill should be rejected (with all the consequences of its rejection apparent) or that it should be passed without these clauses. There was no necessity for their abandonment of any opinion or principle, nor any obstacle to the appropriation clauses being brought forward again and again in a substantive independent shape. Besides this, it is not pretended that these clauses were to produce any immediate perhaps not even any remote, effect, and they not only acknowledge that the state of Ireland calls for an immediate remedy, but they assert that unless the remedy is applied without loss of time it will come too late; that the Tithe Bill, which this year would accomplish its object, will in all probability next year be wholly inoperative. To my mind this reasoning is so conclusive that I can come to no other than the harsh judgment which I have passed upon their conduct, and I think I have made good my charges against both Whigs and Tories.

[1] The Whigs were not, probably, the Radicals. O'Connell, without doubt, had very good reasons for pinning the Government to this, and foresaw all the consequences of the compact by which he bound them.

August 29th, 1835 {p.303}

[Page Head: ALTERCATION IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.]

The House of Lords has become a beargarden since Brougham has been in it; there is no night that is not distinguished by some violent squabble between him and the Tories. Lord Winchelsea directly accused him of cowardice the night before last, to which he replied, 'As to my being afraid to say elsewhere what I say here, oh, that is too absurd to require an answer.' It is nevertheless true. Melbourne does very well; his memory served him happily on this night. Brougham had lashed the Lords into a fury by calling them a mob, and Melbourne quoted Lord Chesterfield, who said that all deliberative assemblies were mobs. The other day Lord Howick was inveighing passionately against the Lords for their mutilations of the Corporation Bill, when Melbourne said, with his characteristic nonchalance, 'Why, what does it matter? We have gone on tolerably well for 500 years with these corporations, and we may contrive to go on with them for another year or so.'

On the King's birthday his Majesty had Lord Lansdowne and Lord Melbourne to dine with him at Windsor, and he made some extraordinary speeches, of which various versions are about the town. By-the-bye, I was turning over the 'Annual Register' the other day, and hit upon his speech last year to the bishops, and I was astonished at the eloquence of it. It is said that Phillpotts composed it for him, but there are some internal marks of its emanating from himself. It is certainly remarkably good of the kind, and I think it more probable that he spoke what he thought and felt, and that Phillpotts reported it and made the best of it.

September 1st, 1835 {p.303}

Lord John Russell assembled his Whigs and Radicals at the Foreign Office yesterday morning, and announced to them the course he proposed to adopt with regard to the Corporation Bill, the amendments he would accept, those he would modify, and those he would decline. Hume made a violent speech, deprecating any concessions, but O'Connell made a very moderate one, recommending a compromise, and saying that great alarm prevailed among many well-meaning and conscientious persons lest Reform should proceed too far; that it was highly expedient to quiet these apprehensions, and upon every account therefore he recommended a moderate and conciliatory course. There were between two and three hundred present at this meeting. Accordingly in the afternoon John Russell stated over again in the House of Commons pretty much what he had said in the morning, and made a very temperate and conciliatory speech. Peel, who had arrived suddenly and unexpectedly in town,[2] rose after him, and, as everybody said (some with joy, others with rage), 'threw over the Lords.' He declared his concurrence in those amendments which John Russell agreed to, and his acquiescence in most of the other provisions without the amendments of the Lords; to the aldermen for life he objected, and to some other particulars, as his speech shows. The only amendment to which he subscribed (and that was objected to by Government) was the exclusion of Dissenters from the disposal of Church patronage, and I was very much surprised to hear him stand out for this upon (as I think) very insufficient grounds. Nothing could exceed the dismay and the rage (though suppressed) of the Conservatives at his speech. He was not a bit cheered by those behind him, but very heartily by those opposite. One silly, noisy fellow, whose principal vocation in the House of Commons is to bellow, came near me under the gallery, and I asked him why they did not cheer, when he sulkily answered, 'he was so well cheered by the other side that it was not necessary.' Lord Harrowby was under the gallery. I asked him what he said to Peel's speech. 'I did not hear it,' he tartly replied, 'but he seems to have given up the aldermen. I have a great affection for the aldermen.' At the 'Travellers' I met Strangford, and asked him the same question. He said, 'I say, Not content.' 'But,' said I, 'you must take the Bill.' 'Not I, for one; the Lords cannot take it, and if we are to be ruined I think we had better be ruined by real Radicals than by sham Tories.' Afterwards I saw Lord Londonderry, who talked in the same strain, not denying that the Duke of Wellington had unwillingly come into the measures which Lyndhurst had adopted, but talking of Lyndhurst's Conservative scruples as a constitutional lawyer, and such stuff as this. The manner in which the Duke has been ousted from the leadership, and the alacrity with which the Lords have followed Lyndhurst, because he led them into violent courses, is not the least curious part of this business. (It seems they only meant to make Lyndhurst their leader pro hac vice.)

[2] Peel gave no notice of his intention to come to town. Hardinge, who is more intimate with him than most of his political associates, was so sure he would not come that he told Bradshaw, who asked him, that he certainly would not be here, and that he (Bradshaw) might go into the country when he pleased.

[Page Head: PEEL'S CONCILIATORY CONDUCT.]

Bingham Baring and I walked away together, and I went with him to Lord Ashburton's house, who was not a little astonished at what we told him, and asserted that Peel was quite wrong about the aldermen. The violent Whigs were rather provoked at the turn things took, and Howick, whom I saw under the gallery, said with great bitterness (mixed with pleasure at Peel's abandonment of the Lords) that he, for one, 'only consented to these alterations, which made the Bill so much worse, with a view to obtain future compensation, and with interest.' The English Radicals were very indignant, and Hume, Grote, and Roebuck spoke one after another against the Government concessions, but there was no disposition to listen to them, and an evident satisfaction at the prospect of an amicable termination of the rising dispute. Nobody apprehends any other termination, for though the Lords will bluster, and fume, and fret, and there will be no small fermentation of mortified pride and vanity, there must be some difference of opinion at least, and the Duke of Wellington is quite sure to exert his influence to bring the majority to adopt Peel's views. It has always been considered by the Tories an object of paramount importance to keep their party together (this was the pretext of Wharncliffe and Harrowby for joining in that fatal postponement of Schedule A), and if after Peel's speech they were to refuse to accept the fair compromise which is tendered to them, it is impossible to suppose that he would consider himself as belonging to them, or that they could pretend to acknowledge him as their leader, and the Tory party would by this schism be effectually broken up.

I have long considered the breaking up of the Tory party as a grand desideratum, and though I earnestly desire to see a powerful Conservative party in the country and in Parliament, it must be one reconstructed out of materials more various and more Liberal than that which now calls itself Conservative, but which in its heart clings to the narrow notions and loves the exclusive system of bygone days. The dissolution of the Tory party in the House of Lords, by a division of them into a high and a low section, would in itself be a reform of that House, and it is to such a dissolution and fresh modification of parties that we must look for a reform, which without any violent change will redress the balance and enable the machine of government to move without obstruction. I sat next to Senior in the House of Lords, and he was talking of the necessity of a reform of the House of Peers, and he said, 'I can see the steps of it very plainly.' 'What, by making Peers for life, as you suggest in your pamphlet?' 'No, it is too late for that now, but by the election of representatives. When Scotland was united she sent representative Peers elected from the body; Ireland the same. Now fifty years of Tory rule have given such a preponderance to the Tory interest in the House of Lords, that the balance cannot be redressed but by a creation which would make the House of Peers too numerous for a legislative assembly. I would therefore begin by creating, in order to equalise the strength of the opposite parties, and then the Peers should elect representatives.' I said, 'All this will be unnecessary, for the Tory party will be broken up, and without a change so startling and extensive the balance will be quietly redressed, and in the natural order of things.' The Duc de Nemours was under the gallery in the House of Commons, but he soon went away, and in the middle of Peel's speech.

September 3rd, 1835 {p.306}

[Page Head: RECONCILIATION.]

Nothing could be better than the temper and disposition of the House on Tuesday night, as well as on Monday, nothing more flattering to Peel. John Russell said 'he was anxious that the clause (I forget which) should go forth with the sanction of the right honourable baronet's approbation.' Peel said he spoke only for himself; Lord John said that made no difference, indicating in fact that his opinion was worth more than those of all his followers put together. The Lords in the meantime are tremendously sulky, and though it is impossible to believe they will have the frantic folly to refuse the accommodation that by God's mercy is offered to them, it is not quite safe, and they are now in grand conclave at Apsley House to determine upon their course. Lord Lansdowne told me at Court yesterday that the day before he went up to Lyndhurst in the House of Lords, to speak to him about some Bill, when Lyndhurst said, 'I was in hopes you were coming to speak to me about the amendments.' 'No; it will be time enough to talk about them when they are again before the House.' 'Well, and what do they say now?' 'They say that the lives of your aldermen are not at a premium.' 'Do they? But they will rise in the market to-morrow, I can tell you.' What satisfies me most in all this is the conduct of the Government, and even that of many of the Radicals—of Hume, for instance—and the general temper and disposition evinced by the House, symptomatic of a more healthy feeling than I ever expected to see displayed. In the division the Radical numbers were contemptible, showing that the Conservative interest, if not broken up by party divisions, and if ever it was roused and connected by the acknowledgment of a common danger, would crush the Radical force in an instant. These are valuable manifestations, and worth a hundred clauses in the Corporation Bill; for what matters it whether aldermen and town clerks are perpetuated or suppressed? and it really is grotesque to fight for these puerilities as if it was a contest pro aris et focis, and to hesitate one instant whether a collision should be provoked between the two Houses of Parliament, and the advantages both direct and collateral flowing from Peel's mediation be thrown away, for the sake of maintaining these secondary and questionable objects.

September 6th, 1835 {p.307}

On Thursday there was a great meeting at Apsley House; eighty Peers present, and four hours' deliberation. They kept their resolutions a profound secret, but as I knew what they were on Friday morning, I went to Melbourne and told him, in order that the Government might be prepared, and turn over in their minds how matters might be accommodated. The Tories adhered to the justices and wards, and abandoned the rest. I found Melbourne and Lord John together; the latter said there would be no difficulty about the justices, but the amendment about the wards was impossible.

[Page Head: EFFECTS OF MUNICIPAL REFORM.]

The debate at night was carried on with extraordinary temper and calmness; Brougham complimented Lyndhurst in very glowing terms. The matter now stands over till Monday, when the Commons must determine whether to accept the Bill with these alterations or reject it on account of them. There is great division of opinion as to the result, but I cannot bring myself to believe that they will let the Bill drop for such trifles. I asked Wharncliffe last night to explain to me in what manner these things would operate politically, and he owned that he thought their political importance was greatly overrated, but that the division proposed by Government gave greater influence to numbers, while that substituted by the Peers gave more to property, and that the constitution of the town councils, whether they were more or less Radical or Conservative, would have a political effect in this way; that in every borough little democracies would be established, which would be continually exercising a democratic influence and extending democratic principles, and that the greater the infusion of Conservative interest you could make in these new bodies the more that tendency would be counteracted. In my opinion a fallacy lurks under this argument; they assume the certain democratic, even revolutionary, character of the new town councils without any sufficient reason, but if this be so, and if they are correct in their anticipations, I doubt whether the guards and drawbacks with which they are endeavouring to counteract the pernicious influence they dread will be found efficacious. I do not despair of the prevalence of sound Conservative principles upon a Liberal basis, and it appears to me that the Peers have committed a great blunder in expressing such violent suspicion and distrust of the new corporations; that nothing is so likely to make them Radical as to insist that they must and will be so, or to render them inimical to the aristocracy and to aristocratic institutions as to exhibit a violent hostility on the part of the aristocracy towards them. I apply this observation generally to their way of dealing with the question rather than to the particular words of the disputed clause, which is probably on the whole fairer and better as the Peers amended it than as the Commons framed it, so much so that I do not understand the tenacity with which the Government cling to it. One thing is very clear, that neither for this nor for the justices clause is it worth while (to either party) that the prevailing harmony should be broken and the Bill be lost. If both parties were sincerely desirous of an accommodation, and there was any common interest, any common ground on which they could meet, there would be no difficulty in an adjustment; but this is not the case. Not only are the interests and wishes of the two parties at variance, but the desires of the moderate and the violent in each party are so too. The moderate in both probably do wish for an accommodation. The Bill is the Bill of the Whigs, and with all the amendments it does in point of fact accomplish their object, though not, as Lyndhurst said, so completely as without them. They wish the Bill to pass, therefore, but the Tories detest the Bill even as it is, and it is no concern of theirs quoad Bill that it should pass; on the contrary, they would rejoice at its failure, but its failure would place the two Houses in a state of collision, and though each party would throw the blame on the other (on very plausible grounds either way), it is more the interest of the Lords than of the Commons to avert this, because the danger of collision attaches exclusively to the Lords. The violent of the Commons would rather like it; the violent of the Lords would doggedly encounter it. There are many who desire that the dispute should not be settled, in order to push matters to extremities and involve the Houses in a contest, in order to extirpate the House of Lords. What renders it more desirable on account of the Lords that the Bill should not be lost, and a cry got up against them, is the circumstance of their having thrown out so many other Bills, and some on very unjustifiable grounds—the Dublin Police Bill, for example. Not a word was said against its merits; on the contrary, it was not denied that the case was urgent, and it was only thrown out because the Lord Mayor and Corporation of Dublin had not been consulted. Now it might have been very proper to consult these functionaries; it may even be a culpable omission to have neglected them; but this is not a time, nor is the House of Lords in circumstances, to be so fastidious and to stickle for such formalities. Their character with the nation is at stake, and it is of far greater consequence that they should do nothing calculated to throw suspicion on their motives, or odium on their proceedings, than to provide for a punctilious observance of respect and deference to the Dublin Corporation. They seem to me to have made a great mistake in throwing out this Bill, and I am much deceived if they do not hear more of it hereafter.

September 8th, 1835 {p.310}

Lord John called another meeting at the Foreign Office yesterday morning, when he proposed, and they agreed to take the Lords' amendments and finish the business; so this famous Corporation Bill has got through at last. O'Connell and Warburton concurred in accepting it. The only man who violently opposed its being accepted was Tom Duncombe, who made a furious harangue, and boldly asserted that he knew to a positive certainty that if the Commons would hold out the Peers would abandon the justices and wards, and he offered privately to give John Russell a list of Peers sufficient to carry this, and who, he would answer for it, were ready to make the concession. Lord John, however, was too wise to listen to such impudent nonsense, and, though very reluctantly, it was settled that the Commons should give way. Both parties probably overrate the value of the disputed clauses, and it is to be regretted that the two Houses will not part amicably. Government takes the Bill under a sort of engagement to consider it as an instalment, and that they shall try and get the difference next year. This is mere humbug, and a poor sop thrown to the Radicals, but as it answers the immediate purpose it is very well.

September 9th, 1835 {p.311}

[Page Head: THE KING'S HARANGUE ON THE MILITIA.]

To-day at Court, when his Majesty made one of his most extraordinary harangues, and much more lengthy than usual. It was evidently got up with great care and previous determination. The last article on the Council list was one for the reduction of the militia, and it was upon this that he descanted with great vehemence. He gave a historical account of the militia from the year 1756, when he said it was increased against the inclination of George II., who was not so well acquainted with the country as his successors have been, 'when there was a Whig Administration, as there is now.' He declared his conviction that the safety of the country demanded a numerous and effective militia, that nothing should have induced him to consent to the present reduction but the necessity of making some changes which had become indispensable owing to the culpable conduct of colonels of the militia who had neglected their duty, but whose names he would not expose; that agitators in Ireland and political economists here wished to reduce this force, in order, under the pretext of economy, to leave the country defenceless; but he never would consent to this, and only agreed to the present measure upon a clear understanding that early in the next session the matter was to be brought forward in Parliament with a view to render the militia more efficient; that nothing but the militia justified the smallness of our military establishments as compared with those of other nations; and he finished by saying that the state of our relations with Russia made the maintenance of this force of paramount importance, as it was impossible to say what dangers we might not be menaced with from that quarter, or how soon we might be called upon to face them, and that the advisers of the Crown would incur a deep responsibility if any mischief arose from the undue reduction of this force. He ended a very long speech (of which I can only put down an outline) with this strange denunciation against Russia, and then said, 'One word more. I have spoken thus in the presence of many Lords who are connected with the militia, either immediately or through their friends, because I wish that my sentiments should be thoroughly and extensively promulgated.' This is a very brief outline of his oration, which was delivered with great energy.

At the levee I had some talk with Hobhouse, who expressed himself well satisfied with the termination of the Corporation contest; he said that the King was delighted, and added (in which I think he flatters himself) that he was in high good-humour in consequence, and that though he disliked them politically, he liked them very well personally, and that if the Irish Church question could be arranged, he would be quite content with them, and they should be excellent friends.

Lord Howick, who is the bitterest of all that party, and expresses himself with astonishing acrimony, talked in his usual strain, and I could not refrain from giving him a bit of my mind. He talked of 'the Lords having played their last trump,' of 'the impossibility of their going on, of the hostility towards them in the country, and the manner in which suggestions of reforming the House of Lords were received in the House of Commons,' and expressed his conviction that 'that House as an institution was in imminent danger.' I told him I did not believe that such sentiments pervaded the country, that I had not yet seen sufficient evidence of it, and asked if such a spirit really was in activity, did he not think he was bound to set about resisting and counteracting it? He talked of 'its not being resistible;' he said that 'the Lords must give way or a collision would be the consequence,' and 'he knew who would go to the wall.' I said that 'it was such sentiments as those, uttered by such men as himself, which most contributed to create the danger the existence of which he deplored.' To this he made no answer; but who can feel secure when a Minister of the Crown, in the palace of the King, within three yards of his person, while he is there present exercising the functions of royalty, holds language the most revolutionary, and such as might more naturally be uttered at some low meeting in St. Giles's or St. Pancras' than in such a place? In spite of my disposition to be sanguine, it is impossible to shake off all alarm when I hear the opinions of men of different parties (opinions founded on different data and biassed by opposite wishes) meeting at the same point, and arriving by different roads at the same conclusion.

[Page Head: THE KING AND THE DUCHESS OF KENT.]

Lyndhurst (who called on me the day before yesterday about some business) talked over the Corporation Bill, which he considers to be nearly as important as the Reform Bill. He says it must give them all the corporate boroughs, for he assumes as an undoubted fact that the new councils will be Radical, and that their influence will radicalise the boroughs. He said there was no chance of the House of Lords surviving ten years, that power must reside in the House of Commons, as it always had, and that the House of Commons would not endure the independent authority of the other House; so that Howick and Lyndhurst are not far apart in their calculations. It is certainly true, what Lyndhurst said to me the other day in George Street, that 'they know the Bill accomplishes their purpose.' Melbourne said to me at Court that 'it was a great bouleversement, a great experiment, and we must see how it worked.' I met him in St. James's Park afterwards, and walked with him to the Palace. He told me the King was in a state of great excitement, especially about this militia question, but that the thing which affected him most was the conduct of the Duchess of Kent—her popularity-hunting, her progresses, and above all the addresses which she received and replied to. He told me what the King had said at dinner on his birthday about her. 'I cannot expect to live very long, but I hope that my successor may be of full age when she mounts the throne. I have great respect for the person upon whom, in the event of my death, the Regency would devolve, but I have great distrust of the persons by whom she is surrounded. I know that everything which falls from my lips is reported again, and I say this thus candidly and publicly because it is my desire and intention that these my sentiments should be made known.' Melbourne told me that he believed Lord Durham is not in favour with the Duchess of Kent, who has discovered that he had made use of her for his own ends, and she has now withdrawn her confidence from him. I asked him who her confidants were, but he either did not know or would not tell me.

Doncaster, September 15th, 1835 {p.314}

Left London on Saturday morning with Matuscewitz; I had a good deal of conversation with him about the state and prospects of this country, in the course of which he told me that Louis Philippe had consulted Talleyrand about the maintenance of his intimate connection with England, and that Talleyrand had replied, 'When you came to the throne four years ago, I advised you to cultivate your relations with England as the best security you could obtain. I now advise you to relinquish that connection, for in the present state of English politics it can only be productive of danger or embarrassment to you.' Having omitted to put it down at the time, I can't recollect the exact words, but this was the sense, and I think Matuscewitz said that Louis Philippe had told him this himself.

[Page Head: PRINCESS VICTORIA AT BURGHLEY.]

We dined at Burghley on the way, and got here at two on Sunday; read Mackintosh's Life in the carriage, which made me dreadfully disgusted with my racing metier. What a life as compared with mine!—passed among great and wise men, and intent on high thoughts and honourable aspirations, existing amidst interests far more pungent even than those which engage me, and of the futility of which I am for ever reminded. I am struck with the coincidence of the tastes and dispositions of Burke and Mackintosh, and of something in the mind of the one which bears an affinity to that of the other; but their characters—how different! their abilities—how unequal! yet both, how superior, even the weakest of the two, to almost all other men, and the success of each so little corresponding with his powers, neither having ever attained any object of ambition beyond that of fame. All their talents, therefore, and all their requirements, did not procure them content, and probably Burke was a very unhappy, and Mackintosh not a very happy, man. The suavity, the indolent temperament, the 'mitis sapientia' of Mackintosh may have warded off sorrow and mitigated disappointment, but the stern and vindictive energies of Burke must have kept up a storm of conflicting passions in his breast. But I turn from Mackintosh and Burke to all that is vilest and foolishest on earth, and among such I now pass my unprofitable hours. There seems to me less gaiety and bustle here than formerly, but as much villany as ever. From want of money or of enterprise, or from greater distrust and a paucity of spectators, there is very little betting, and what there is, spiritless and dull. There are vast crowds of people to see the Princess Victoria, who comes over from Wentworth to-day, and the Due de Nemours is here. I am going to run for the St. Leger, which I shall probably not win, and though I am nervous and excited, I shall not care much if I lose, and I doubt whether I should care very much if I won; but this latter sensation will probably be for ever doubtful. There is something in it all which displeases me, and I often wish I was well out of it.

Burghley, September 21st, 1835 {p.315}

I did lose the St. Leger, and did not care; idled on at Doncaster to the end of the week, and came here on Saturday to meet the Duchess of Kent. They arrived from Belvoir at three o'clock in a heavy rain, the civic authorities having turned out at Stamford to escort them, and a procession of different people all very loyal. When they had lunched, and the Mayor and his brethren had got dry, the Duchess received the address, which was read by Lord Exeter as Recorder. It talked of the Princess as 'destined to mount the throne of these realms.' Conroy handed the answer, just as the Prime Minister does to the King. They are splendidly lodged, and great preparations have been made for their reception.

London, September 27th, 1835 {p.315}

The dinner at Burghley was very handsome; hall well lit; and all went off well, except that a pail of ice was landed in the Duchess's lap, which made a great bustle. Three hundred people at the ball, which was opened by Lord Exeter and the Princess, who, after dancing one dance, went to bed. They appeared at breakfast the next morning at nine o'clock, and at ten set off to Holkham. Went to Newmarket on Tuesday and came to town on Wednesday; found it very empty and no news. Lord Chatham died the day before yesterday, which is of no other importance than that of giving some honours and emoluments to Melbourne to distribute.

The papers are full of nothing but O'Connell's progress in Scotland, where he is received with unbounded enthusiasm by enormous crowds, but by no people of rank, property, or character. It is a rabble triumph altogether, but it is made the most of by all the Ministerial papers. The Opposition papers pour torrents of invective upon him, and he in his speeches is not behindhand with the most virulent and scurrilous of them; he is exalted to the bad eminence at which he has arrived more by the assaults of his enemies than by the efforts of his friends. It is the Tories who are ever insisting upon the immensity of his power, and whose excess of hatred and fear make him of such vast account that 'he draws the rabble after him as a monster makes a show.' However mean may be his audiences in Scotland, he has numbers to boast of, and that will serve his purpose; he will no doubt render this reception instrumental to the increase of his authority in Ireland. He now avows that he has abandoned Repeal, and all other projects, in order to devote himself to the great task of reforming the House of Lords.

[Page Head: SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH.]

I have finished Mackintosh's Life with great delight, and many painful sensations, together with wonder and amazement. His account of his reading is utterly incomprehensible to me; he must have been endowed with some superhuman faculty of transferring the contents of books to his own mind. He talks in his journals of reading volumes in a few hours which would seem to demand many days even from the most rapid reader. I have heard of Southey, who would read a book through as he stood in a bookseller's shop; that is, his eye would glance down the page, and by a process partly mechanical, partly intellectual, formed by long habit, he would extract in his synoptical passage all that he required to know. (Macaulay was, and George Lewis is, just as wonderful in this respect.) Some of the books that Mackintosh talks of, philosophical and metaphysical works, could not be so disposed of, and I should like much to know what his system or his secret was. I met Sydney Smith yesterday, and asked him why more of the journals had not been given. He said because the editors had been ill advised, but that in another edition more should be given; that Mackintosh was the most agreeable man he had ever known, that he had been shamefully used by his friends, and by none more than by Brougham. So, I said, it would appear by what you say in your letter. 'Oh no,' he said, laughing and chuckling, and shaking his great belly, 'you don't really think I meant to allude to Brougham?' 'Mackintosh's son,' he said 'is a man of no talents, the composition (what there is of it) belongs to Erskine, his son-in-law, a sensible man.' To be sure there are some strange things said by Mackintosh here and there; among others, that Lord Holland only wanted voice—not to be impeded in his utterance—to be a greater orator than Canning or Brougham! If he had not been a man 'whom no sense of wrongs could rouse to vengeance,' he would have flung the India Board in Lord Grey's face when he was insulted with the offer of it.[3] What are we to think of the necessary connection between intellectual superiority and official eminence, when we have seen the Duke of Richmond invited to be a member of the Cabinet, while Mackintosh was thrust into an obscure and subordinate office—Mackintosh placed under the orders of Charles Grant! Well might he regret that he had not been a professor, and, 'with safer pride content,' adorned with unusual glory some academical chair. Then while he was instructing and delighting the world, there would have been many regrets and lamentations that such mighty talents were confined to such a narrow sphere, and innumerable speculations of the greatness he would have achieved in political life, and how the irresistible force of his genius and his eloquence must have raised him to the pinnacle of Parliamentary fame and political power. Perhaps he would have partaken in this delusion, and have bitterly lamented the success which had deprived him of a more brilliant fortune and a loftier fame; for it may reasonably be doubted whether all his laborious investigations of the deepest recesses of the human mind, and his extensive acquaintance with the theory of mental phenomena, would have enabled him accurately to ascertain the practical capabilities of his own mind, and to arrive at those just conclusions which should indicate to him that path of life on which it was most expedient for him to travel, with reference to the strength of his understanding, and the softness, not to say feebleness, of his character.

[3] Sir James Mackintosh was a member of the Board of Control under Lord Grey's Government. He never held any other office in England.



CHAPTER XXX.

Emperor Nicholas's Speech at Warsaw—His respect for opinion in England—Burdett proposes the expulsion of O'Connell from Brookes's—Club law—George Villiers at Madrid—Lord Segrave Lord-Lieutenant of Gloucestershire—Dispute between France and America—Allen's account of Mackintosh and Melbourne— Prolongation of a Patent—Should Dr. Arnold be made a Bishop?— Frederic Elliot—O'Connell's mischievous influence—Bretby— Chesterfield MSS.—The Portfolio—Lord Cottenham and Lord Langdale—Opening of Parliament—The Judicial Committee— Poulett Thomson at the Board of Trade—Mr. Perceval's interviews with the Ministers—Prospects of the Tories—Lord Stanley's relations to them—Holland House Anecdotes— Mischievous Effects of the division on his Address—The youth of Macaulay—Brougham and Macaulay—Lord William Bentinck— Review of Sir R. Peel's conduct—Dr. Hampden's appointment—The Orange Lodges.

November 17th, 1835 {p.319}

Since I have been in London, on my return from the Newmarket meetings, I have had nothing to note. The O'Connell and Raphael wrangle goes on, and will probably come before Parliament. It appears to make a greater sensation at Paris than here; there, however, all other sensations are absorbed in that which the Emperor of Russia's speech at Warsaw has produced, and which indicates an excitement, or ferocity, very like insanity.[1] Melbourne mentioned at dinner on Sunday that it was not only quite correctly reported—rather understated—but that after he had so delivered himself, he met the English Consul in the street, took him by the arm, walked about with him for an hour, and begged him not to be too hard upon him in his report to his Government. I was not present, but Henry de Ros was, who told it me. I am thus particular from, as it seems to me, the exceeding curiosity of the anecdote, evincing on the part of the autocrat, in the midst of the insolence of unbridled power, a sort of consciousness of responsibility to European opinion, and a deferential dread of that of England in particular.

[1] [This was the first time the Emperor Nicholas had visited Poland since the Revolution of 1830, and he took the opportunity to express himself in language of excessive severity to the municipality of Warsaw, threatening to lay the city in ruins if the Poles rebelled again.]

November 22nd, 1835 {p.320}

My brother Algy showed me a few days ago a letter from the Duke of Wellington to the Duke of Cumberland—a gossiping letter about nothing, but in which there was this which struck me as odd. He said that he was informed that the English who had been to the reviews at Kalisch had been very ill received, and that even those to whom he had given letters of introduction had experienced nothing but incivility, and that he regretted having had the presumption to imagine that any recommendation of his would be attended to by the Sovereigns or their Ministers—a curious exhibition of pique, for what I believe to be an imaginary incivility. It is a strange thing that he is very sensitive, and yet has no strong feelings; but this is after all only one of the forms of selfishness.

[Page Head: SOCIAL LAW.]

Burdett has written a letter to the managers of Brooks's, to propose the expulsion of O'Connell. It will do no good; these abortive attempts do nothing towards plucking him down from his bad eminence, and their failure gives him a triumph. So it was in Alvanley's case; there a great deal of very proper indignation was thrown away, and O'Connell had the satisfaction of baffling his antagonists, and obtaining a sort of recognition of his assumed right to act as he does. It is a case which admits of a good argument either way. On the one side is the perilous example of any club taking cognizance of acts of its members, private or political, which do not concern the club, or have no local reference to it—a principle, if once admitted, of which it would be next to impossible to regulate and control the application, and probably be productive of greater evils than those it would be intended to remedy. On the other hand, the case of O'Connell is altogether peculiar; it is such a one as can hardly ever occur again, and therefore may be treated as deserving an exception from ordinary rules, because it not only cannot be drawn into a precedent, but the very circumstance of its being so treated must prevent the possibility of its recurrence. There exists a code of social law, which is universally subscribed to, as necessary and indispensable for the preservation of social harmony and decorum. One man has given public notice that he is self-emancipated from its obligations; that he acknowledges none of the restraints, and will submit to none of the penalties, by which the intercourse of society is regulated and kept in order; and having thus surrounded himself with all the immunities of irresponsibility, 'out of the reach of danger he is bold, out of the reach of shame he is confident.' Instead of feeling that he is specially bound to guard his language with the most scrupulous care, and to abstain religiously from every offensive expression, he mounts into regions of scurrility and abuse inaccessible to all other men, and he riots in invective and insult with a scornful and ostentatious exhibition of his invulnerability, which renders him an object of execration to all those who cherish the principles and the feelings of honour.

November 29th, 1835 {p.321}

There are gloomy letters from George Villiers at Madrid; he attributes the Spanish difficulties more to the conduct of Louis Philippe than anything else, who, he says, is playing false diabolically. Mendizabal is very able, but ill surrounded; no other public man of any merit. Parties are violent and individuals foolish, mischievous, and corrupt; the country poor, depopulated, ignorant—out of such elements what good can come? His letters (to his mother and brothers) are very interesting, very well written, clever, lively; he seems a little carried away by the vanity and the excitement of the part he plays, and I observe a want of steadiness in his opinions and a disposition to waver in his views from day to day; whereas it does not appear to me as if the state of Spain depended upon diurnal circumstances and events, but more upon the workings of great causes interwoven with, and deeply seated in, the positive state of society and the moral and political condition of the nation.

December 4th, 1835 {p.322}

A letter I wrote the other day about O'Connell appeared on Tuesday in the 'Times.' It rather took, for the evening (Tory) papers all copied it, and I heard it was talked of. Yesterday there appeared an answer of O'Connell's to Burdett's letter—very short, but very clever; and those who know Burdett say, well calculated to mortify and annoy him. I called on Stanley yesterday, who said that he thought the Raphael case ought to and would be made something of in the House of Commons, and that Spring Rice, whom he had lately seen, had told him he thought it a clear case of bribery. Lord Segrave has got the Gloucestershire Lieutenancy, and this appointment, disgraceful in itself, exhibits all the most objectionable features of the old boroughmongering system, which was supposed to be swept away. (He turned out a good Lord-Lieutenant.) He was in London as soon as the breath was out of the Duke of Beaufort's body, went to Melbourne, and claimed this appointment on the score of having three members, which was more than any other man in England now returned. 'My brothers,' he said, 'the electors do not know by sight; it is my influence which returns them.' The appeal was irresistible, and 'We are three' was as imperative with Melbourne as 'We are seven' was with the Duke of Newcastle. The scarcity of the commodity enhances its value, and now that nominations are swept away, the few who are still fortunate enough to possess some remnants are great men; and Segrave's three brothers, thrown (as they would without scruple have been) into the opposite scale, would have nearly turned it. There is a very respectable Whig (Lord Ducie) in the county, whom everybody pointed out as the fittest successor to the late Duke; but he has not three members, and if he had, he would not shake them in terrorem over Melbourne's head.

December 10th and 11th, 1835 {p.322}

[Page Head: AMERICA AND FRANCE.]

Our Government are in a great alarm lest this dispute between the French and Americans should produce a war, and the way in which we should be affected by it is this:[2]—Our immense manufacturing population is dependent upon America for a supply of cotton, and in case of any obstruction to that supply, multitudes would be thrown out of employment, and incalculable distress would follow. They think that the French would blockade the American ports, and then such obstruction would be inevitable. A system like ours, which resembles a vast piece of machinery, no part of which can be disordered without danger to the whole, must be always liable to interruption or injury from causes over which we have no control; and this danger must always attend the extension of our manufacturing system to the prejudice of other interests; so that in case of a stoppage or serious interruption to the current in which it flows the consequences would be appalling; nor is there in all probability a nation on the Continent (our good ally Louis Philippe included) that would not gladly contribute to the humiliation of the power and diminution of the wealth of this country.

[2] [This dispute arose from the detention of American ships by the Emperor Napoleon under the Continental system. The Americans claimed large damages, and the negotiation lasted twenty years. At length General Jackson, the American President, insisted on payment, and the French Government settled the matter for twenty-five millions of francs; but the question led to a change in the French Ministry.]

December 16th, 1835 {p.323}

Dined with Sefton the day before yesterday to meet the Hollands; sat between Allen and Luttrell. Melbourne was there in roaring spirits; met me very cordially, and after dinner said, 'Well, how are you? I had a great deal to say to you, but I forget what it was now.' To which I replied, 'Oh, never mind now; we are here to amuse ourselves, and we won't talk of other things.' I could not have settled anything with him there, so there was no use in beginning; and this put him at his ease, instead of making him hate the sight of me, and fancying wherever he met me that I should begin badgering him about my affairs.[3] In the world men must be dealt with according to what they are, and not to what they ought to be; and the great art of life is to find out what they are, and act with them accordingly.

[3] [This referred to some private affairs of Mr. Greville's which were then under discussion, and on which Lord Melbourne's influence was important.]

Allen talked of Mackintosh, and of his declaration of religious belief on his deathbed, when he had never believed at all during his life. He said that Mackintosh was not very deeply read in theology. Melbourne, on the contrary, is, and being a very good Greek scholar (which Mackintosh was not), has compared the Evidences and all modern theological works with the writings of the Fathers. He did not believe that Melbourne entertained any doubts, or that his mind was at all distracted and perplexed with much thinking and much reading on the subject, but that his studies and reflections have led him to a perfect conviction of unbelief.[4] He thought if Mackintosh had lived much with Christians he would have been one too. We talked of Middleton, and Allen said that he believed he really died a Christian, but that he was rapidly ceasing to be one, and if he had lived would probably have continued the argument of his free enquiry up to the Apostles themselves. He urged me to read Lardner; said he had never read Paley nor the more recent Evidences, the materials of all of which are, however, taken from Lardner's work. Luttrell was talking of Moore and Rogers—the poetry of the former so licentious, that of the latter so pure; much of its popularity owing to its being so carefully weeded of everything approaching to indelicacy; and the contrast between the lives and the works of the two men—the former a pattern of conjugal and domestic regularity, the latter of all the men he had ever known the greatest sensualist.

[4] [John Allen was himself so fierce an unbeliever, and so bitter an enemy to the Christian religion, that he was very fond of asserting that other men believed as little as himself. It was almost always Allen who gave an irreligious turn to the conversation at Holland House when these subjects were discussed there.]

Yesterday Lyndhurst and Brougham both came to the Council Office to hear the first application for the renewal of a patent, and though there was no opposition, they scrutinised the petition and evidence with the utmost jealousy, which they did in order to intimate that the granting a prolongation of the patent, even when unopposed, was not to be a matter of course. It was a pianoforte invention, and the instrument was introduced into the Council Chamber, and played upon by Madame Duelcken for the edification of their Lordships.