Yesterday morning the Duke of Wellington came here upon some private business, after discussing which he entered upon the state of the country. I told him my view of the condition of the Government and of the House of Commons, and he said, 'You have hit the two points that I have myself always felt so strongly about. I told Lord Grey so long ago, and asked him at the time how he expected to be able to carry on the Government of the country, to which he never could give any answer, except that it would all do very well. However, things are not a bit worse than I always thought they would be. As they are, I mean to support the Government--support them in every way. The first thing I have to look to is to keep my house over my head, and the alternative is between this Government and none at all. I am therefore for supporting the Government, but then there is so much passion, and prejudice, and folly, and vindictive feeling, that it is very difficult to get others to do the same. I hear Peel had only fifty people with him the other night on some question, though they say that there are 150 of that party in the House of Commons. He thinks as ill of the whole thing as possible. [While I am writing Poodle Byng is come in, who tells me what happened last night. Althorp made a very bad speech and a wretched statement; other people spoke, pert and disagreeable, and the debate looked ill till Stanley rose and made one of the finest speeches that were ever heard, pounding O'Connell to dust and attacking him for his 'six hundred scoundrels,' from which he endeavoured to escape by a miserable and abortive explanation. Stanley seems to have set the whole thing to rights, like a great man.] I told the Duke what Macaulay had said to Denison: 'that if he had had to legislate, he would, instead of this Bill, have suspended the laws for five years in Ireland, given the Lord-Lieutenant's proclamation the force of law, and got the Duke of Wellington to go there.' He seemed very well pleased at this, and said, 'Well, that is the way I governed the provinces on the Garonne in the south of France. I desired the mayors to go on administering the law of the land, and when they asked me in whose name criminal suits should be carried on (which were ordinarily in the name of the Emperor), and if they should be in the name of the King, I said no, that we were treating with the Emperor at Chatillon, and if they put forth the King they would be in a scrape; neither should it be in the Emperor's name, because we did not acknowledge him, but in that of the Allied Powers.' In this I think he was wrong (_par parenthese_), for Napoleon was acknowledged by all the Powers but us, and we were treating with him, and if he permitted the civil authorities to administer the law as usual, he should have allowed them to administer it in the usual legal form. Their civil administration could not affect any political questions in the slightest degree. March 4th, 1833 {p.364}