Last night Charles Buller told me he did not think Peel's Government would last, because he did not go the way to make it last, but that he thought Peel himself had done admirably well in every respect; and he must own the Government, as far as they had gone, had behaved properly and handsomely, especially about the Poor Laws and Canada--better than the late would have done as to the last. It is remarkable that the very people belonging to the late Government had no respect for it and no confidence in it. He owned to me that it was time such a miserable apology for a Government as the late Cabinet was (these were my words, not his) should come to an end: a government of departments, absolutely without a chief, hating, distrusting, despising one another, having no principles and no plans, living from hand to mouth, able to do nothing, and indifferent whether they did anything or not, proposing measures without the hope or expectation of carrying them, and clinging to their places for no other reason than because they had bound themselves to the Queen, who insisted on their continuance in spite of their feelings of conscious humiliation and admitted impotence, merely because she loved to have Melbourne domesticated at Windsor Castle, and she could not have him there on any other terms. _November 8th._--Above a month since I have written anything in this book. I left London the second week in October; went to Burghley, thence to Newmarket, to Thornhill's; Newmarket again, Charles Drummond's, and London this day week. In this interval my history is very brief and uninteresting. The principal events consist of the affair at Canton, and the failure of the Spanish Christina plot, the Exchequer Bill business, the burning of the Tower, and now we are occupied with the approaching delivery of the Queen, and the probable death of the Queen Dowager. Elliot[11] is expected home any day. There is a mighty clamour against him, but he confidently asserts, and his friends fondly hope, that he will be able to make his case good. The Government will treat him impartially, for Lord Wharncliffe said to me the other day that he was not at all sure it would not turn out that Elliot was quite right in what he had done at Canton; but the disappointment, and disapprobation of the General and the Admiral have naturally damaged him in public opinion here, and people are so sick of this silly, inglorious, but mischievous war, that they are exasperated at any opportunity having been lost of terminating it by a decisive blow.