The Duke said he had received very satisfactory letters from all (or many) of the Peers to whom he had written--from the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Mansfield, the most violent of the Tories. I said, 'Are they ready to place themselves in your hands, and agree to whatever you may think it necessary to do?' He said, 'I think they are; I think they will do anything.' He told me that affairs were left in a wretched state in the Treasury, that the late Ministers were no men of business, and minutes had been proposed to him finding fault with various things; but he had refused to do any such thing, and he would repair any error he could without casting any blame on others. On the whole he thought everything looked well, and that he should, when Peel arrived, put the concern into his hands in a satisfactory state. It is perfectly clear, in the midst of assertion on one side and contradiction on the other, that in the first instance there was neither plot nor plan on the part of the King or anybody else. The death of Lord Spencer really did create an enormous embarrassment, which Melbourne felt much more than any of his colleagues; and though he told the King 'that he was ready to go on with the Government if such was his pleasure,' he felt no desire to be taken at his word, and no confidence or expectation that the arrangements he proposed would be palatable to the King or of a permanent nature. He seems to have been candid and straightforward in all that he said, and to have contemplated his dismissal as a very probable result of his correspondence and conversations with his Majesty. The Irish Church has evidently caused _the split_; the intended reforms in it and the elevation of Lord John Russell to the post of leader were more than the King could digest. I wish I had seen the papers, for the sake of knowing what it is they proposed to the King, and how far he was disposed to go. November 29th, 1834 {p.165} [Page Head: LORD STANLEY'S POSITION.] I told the Duke yesterday what I had learnt from George Bentinck (and he from the Duke of Richmond) of Lord Stanley's[4] disposition. He is not at all desirous to be mixed up in the new concern, but has no objection to take office under Peel, and he is ready to _listen_ to any proposition that may be made to him; but he is very much afraid of being accused of dereliction of principle by his old colleagues and friends. It is clear, therefore, that he would reject any overture unless it included an agreement that the Government should be conducted upon Liberal principles, and unless his friends were invited to join the Government with him. The Duke took very little notice of this. [4] [Edward, 12th Earl of Derby, died on October 21, 1834, from which date his grandson, afterwards 14th Earl of Derby, assumed the courtesy title of Lord Stanley.] December 1st, 1834 {p.166}