The night before last Brougham came down to the House of Lords and announced a bill which he is going to bring in to _amend!_ the working of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, or, as he called it, to 'remedy its imperfections.' Yesterday Wharncliffe gave me the history of this transaction, which, if he is allowed successfully to carry on, will be one of the most impudent jobs that ever was perpetrated, and assuredly the Government must be strong which can afford to be a consenting party to it. In the state of incessant activity he has long been in he has, it seems, an ardent longing to do something for _himself_. Money I do not believe he cares about, though probably not averse to be well furnished with the means of feasting his numerous clients, and the noble, honourable, learned and fashionable friends with whom he cultivates or affects intimacies in all ranks and all parties; but he wants some distinction, and something which at least may give him the air of having authority somewhere and a kind of official right to be still more meddling and intrusive and dictatorial than he already is. Who knows, too, whether his excursive mind does not look to the possibility of his making any official or quasi-official situation a stepping-stone to the Woolsack, under certain circumstances or contingencies, which may glimmer to his mind's eye in the distant future? Be this as it may he has been pestering the Chancellor to make him Vice-President of the Judicial Committee. The Chancellor, who is very anxious to retain him in his service, has already committed himself to an opinion expressed in the House of Lords that it would be a good thing to give the Judicial Committee a vice-president (_i. e._ a judicial head), and he has also said that those who come and work there ought to be paid for their services, and without such pay nobody ought to be required or expected to attend. This last _dictum_ was purely selfish and to excuse himself from giving his own services during the many years he was out of office and doing nothing. When the Judicial Committee was first constituted Brougham intended to make a job of it, and framed several provisions accordingly; but meeting with some resistance (which I contrived to spirit up Lord Lansdowne to make), and finding that if there was any patronage the disposal of it would not be allotted to him (then Chancellor), he became indifferent on that score, and no provision was made for the payment of any members of the committee not deriving emoluments from other sources. For many years accordingly the clause which empowered the Queen to appoint certain persons who had not held judicial offices in England to be members was not acted upon at all. By arrangements made from time to time a quorum was always secured consisting of persons either in office or holding judicial pensions. These arrangements were not free from difficulties and objections, still with a little trouble and occasional obstacles the