I met the Duke yesterday at dinner and had much talk with him. He is very desponding about the state of the country and the condition in which the Government have placed it. He complains of its defenceless situation from their carrying on a war (Canada) with a peace establishment; consequently that the few troops we have are harassed to death with duty, and in case of a serious outbreak that there is no disposable force to quell it; that the Government are ruled by factions, political and religious. On Saturday they had been beaten on a question relating to the Poor Laws[5] of great importance; and he said that they must be supported in this, and extricated from the difficulty. I was glad to meet him and see (for it is some time since I have talked to him) whether there was any perceptible change in his manner or any symptom indicative of decay. Without there being anything tangible or very remarkable, I received the impression that there was not exactly the same vigour of mind which I have been used to admire in him, and what he said did not appear to me indicative of the strong sense and acuteness which characterise him. If he has no attack, I dare say he will be able to continue to act his part with efficacy for a long time to come. I asked him in what manner Government would prosecute the inquiry they had promised into the conduct of the Birmingham magistrates? He said what they ought to do was to order the Attorney-General to prosecute them for a corrupt neglect of their duty, a thing they would as soon put their hands in the fire as do. Such is their position, so dependent upon bad men, that they are compelled to treat with the utmost tenderness all the enemies of the Constitution. There can be no doubt that the appointments to the magistracy have been fraught with danger, and made on a very monstrous principle. When Lord John Russell resolved and avowed his resolution to neutralise the provision of the Act which gave the appointment of magistrates to the Crown instead of to the Town Council (as they had proposed) by taking the recommendations of the Council, he incurred the deepest responsibility that any Minister ever did, for he took on himself to adopt a course practically inconsistent with the law, for the express purpose of placing political power in particular hands, to which the law intended it should not be confided; and on him, therefore, rested all the responsibility of such power being wisely and safely exercised by the hands to which he determined to entrust it; and when he appoints such a man as Muntz,[6] ex-Chartist and ex-Delegate, what must be the impression produced on all denominations of men as to his bias, and of what use is it to make professions, and deliver speeches condemnatory of the principles and conduct of Chartists and associators, if his acts and appointments are not in conformity with those professions? Mr. Muntz, he says, has abandoned Chartism, and is no longer the man he was: but who knows that?