December 22nd, 1829
Dined with Byng yesterday and met Moore, Fitzgerald, and Luttrell. Luttrell is a great lover of conundrums, which taste he acquired from Beresford, the author of the ‘Miseries of Human Life,’ who has invented some very curious but elaborate conundrums. They are not worth repeating. Moore told a story of an Irishman at the play calling out, ‘Now, boys, a clap for Wellington!’ which being complied with, ‘And now silence for the rest of the family!’ He complained that all the humour which used to break out in an Irish audience is extinct.
Fitzgerald told me that the King had been annoying them as much as he could, that he took pleasure in making his Government weak, that the money matter (which the Duke told me of before) had been settled by ‘contrivances,’ or that they must have gone to Parliament for the amount; that he has just ordered plate to the amount of 25,000ℓ. Fitzgerald is so ill that he can scarcely carry on the business of his office, and yet he does not like to give it up, for fear of embarrassing the Government; he complained that the other offices had thrown much of their business on the Board of Trade, a custom which had grown up in Huskisson’s time, who was the most competent man, and who took it all. Probably Huskisson was not sorry, by making himself very useful, to make himself nearly indispensable, and thought that he was so; and so he was de jure, but the Duke would not let him be so de facto.