Tavistock told me a day or two ago that his Majesty's Ministers are intolerably disgusted at his behaviour to them and his studied incivility to everybody connected with them. The other day the Speaker was treated by him with shocking rudeness at the drawing-room. He not only took no notice of him, but studiously overlooked him while he was standing opposite, and called up Manners Sutton and somebody else to mark the difference by extreme graciousness to the latter. Seymour, who was with him as Serjeant-at-Arms, said he had never seen a Speaker so used in the five-and-twenty years he had been there, and that it was most painful. The Speaker asked him if he had ever seen a man in his situation so received at Court. Since he has been Speaker the King has never taken the slightest notice of him. It is monstrous, equally undignified and foolish. July 18th, 1835 {p.279} [Page Head: DECISION OF THE WEST INDIA COMMITTEE.] Yesterday I sat all day at my office wondering why I heard nothing of the Committee, till at half-past four o'clock Graham and Lord Lincoln came in with smiling countenances, that announced good news. They had had an angry debate of three hours' duration. Baring moved that my holding the office of Secretary of Jamaica was against the spirit of the Act of Parliament. Graham moved that holding it with the leave of absence was in accordance with the Act, and the division was nine to seven. A teller on each side and Baring, who as chairman did not vote, made the numbers ten to nine. They told me that Baring and Vernon Smith were furious. The former endeavoured to turn off his defeat by proposing that the question should be reopened on framing the report; but even Grote opposed that, and he was forced to own that he was wrong in proposing it. I must say that Gladstone told me that Baring behaved very well after the division. I will not conceal the truth, much as I have reason to complain of the man. I owe this victory to the zealous assistance of the Conservatives, for not one Whig or Radical voted with me; some of the former stayed away, whether designedly or not I don't know, except Stanley, Secretary to the Treasury, who told me he could not make up his mind to go and vote against me. The majority consisted of Herries, Fremantle (Sir Thomas), Gladstone, Nicholl, Graham, Lord Lincoln, Bethell, Fector, Bramstone, and Pringle; the minority, Baring, Vernon Smith, Pendarves, Ruthven, Scholefield, Evans, Grote, Hume, R. Stewart. I never had any intimacy with any one of those who supported me except with Graham, and we were friends, and very intimate friends, twenty years ago. He dropped me all of a sudden from caprice or calculation, and we have been on very decent but scarcely cordial terms ever since. On this occasion I whipped up the old friendship, and with great effect, for he has served me very zealously throughout the business. I scarcely knew any of the other before, Lord Lincoln and Gladstone only on this occasion,