Up to the latest returns the Tories make out that they have a majority, or at least an equality; the Whigs, that they have a majority of about seventy. The latter calculation is nearer to the truth, and it only remains to be seen how many of their people will refuse to support extreme measures. Last night at Holland House Mulgrave was perfectly furious with Charles Fox for saying he would not oppose Manners Sutton being put in the chair. It has been asserted all along by some of the opposite party that Peel's measures have been influenced (especially in the composition of his Government) by a desire to keep the Tories together, and prepare a strong Opposition. I suspect there is some truth in this, for I can account in no other way for the strange appointments he makes, and the undiluted Toryism of his Government. He goes on the old aristocratic principle of taking high birth and connection as substitutes for other qualifications, and he never seems to consider the former avowed sentiments of any man in weighing his fitness for office. He has just made Sydney Herbert Secretary to the Board of Control, an office of great labour and involving considerable business in the House of Commons.[5] He is about twenty-two or twenty three years old, unpractised in business, and never spoke but once in the House of Commons, when he made one of those pretty first speeches which prove little or nothing, and that was in opposition to the Dissenters. He may be very fit for this place, but it remains to be proved, and I am surprised he did not make him begin with a Lordship of the Treasury or some such thing, and put Gladstone, who is a very clever man, in that post. Praed is First Secretary to the Board of Control, and will do the business. [5] [The injustice of this remark has since become very obvious, for no man was better qualified to enter upon official life, or to run a great career in it, than Sydney Herbert. It must also be said of Sir Robert Peel that he was ever on the watch for the young and rising statesmen who, he said, were hereafter to govern the country; and a very large proportion of the men who have since played a most conspicuous and useful part were introduced by Sir Robert Peel to public life--Sydney Herbert, the Duke of Newcastle, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Cardwell, and others.] I very much incline to believe that, although Peel says he is satisfied with the returns, he does not expect the thing will last, and that upon this conviction he is determined to secure a retreat with such a force as shall make him formidable hereafter. Such as the appointments are at home, so are they abroad: Londonderry to St. Petersburg, Stuart to Vienna, and in all probability Strangford to Constantinople--the three men who are considered the great upholders of the Anti-Liberal system. (Stuart told everybody he had the offer, but it was not true.)