The debate on Monday night in the House of Lords was very amusing. It was understood the Duke of Clarence was to speak, and there was a good deal of curiosity to hear him. Lord Bathurst was in a great fright lest he should be violent and foolish. He made a very tolerable speech, of course with a good deal of stuff in it, but such as it was it has exceedingly disconcerted the other party. The three royal Dukes Clarence, Cumberland, and Sussex got up one after another, and attacked each other (that is, Clarence and Sussex attacked Cumberland, and he them) very vehemently, and they used towards each other language that nobody else could have ventured to employ; so it was a very droll scene. The Duke of Clarence said the attacks on the Duke [of Wellington] had been _infamous_; the Duke of Cumberland took this to himself, but when he began to answer it could not recollect the expression, which the Duke of Clarence directly supplied. 'I said "infamous."' The Duke of Sussex said that the Duke of Clarence had not intended to apply the word to the Duke of Cumberland, but if he chose to take it to himself he might. Then the Duke of Clarence said that the Duke of Cumberland had lived so long abroad that he had forgotten there was such a thing as freedom of debate. February 27th, 1829 {p.177} They say Plunket made one of the best speeches he ever delivered last night, and Lord Anglesey spoke very well. There was hardly anybody in the House. Peel's election [Oxford University] is going on ill. The Convocation presents a most disgraceful scene of riot and uproar. I went to the Committee Room last night at twelve, and found nobody there but Dr. Russell, the head-master of the Charterhouse, who was waiting for Hobhouse and amusing himself by correcting his boys' exercises. He knew me, though he had not seen me for nearly twenty years, when I was at school. I shall be sorry if Peel does not come in, not that I care much for him, but because I cannot bear that his opponents should have a triumph. Lady Georgiana Bathurst told me she had had a great scene with the Duke of Cumberland. She told him not to be factious and to go back to Germany; he was very angry, and after much argument and many reproaches they made it up, embraced, and he shed a flood of tears. I met with these lines in 'The Duke of Milan' (Massinger), which are very applicable to the Duke in his dealings with his Cabinet and his old friends the Tories:-- You never heard the motives that induced him To this strange course? No; these are cabinet councils, And not to be communicated but To such as are his own and sure. Alas! We fill up empty places, and in public Are taught to give our suffrages to that Which was before determined. March 1st, 1829 {p.178}