March 8th, 1829
Yesterday the list came out of those who had voted on the Catholic question, by which it appeared that several people had voted against the Government (particularly all the Lowthers) who were expected to vote with them, and of course this will be a test by which the Duke’s strength and absoluteness may be tried, so much so that it is very generally thought that if he permits them to vote with impunity he will lose the question. It was said in the evening that Lowther and Birkett had resigned, but Lord Aberdeen, whom I met at dinner, said they had not at five o’clock yesterday evening. It is, I think, impossible for the Duke to excuse anybody who votes against him or stays away. Dined at Agar Ellis’s and met Harrowbys, Stanleys, Aberdeen, &c. Lord Harrowby thought Peel’s speech extremely able and judicious. He said that Lord Eldon had asserted that Mr. Pitt’s opinions had been changed on this question, which was entirely false, for he had been much more intimate with Mr. Pitt than Lord Eldon ever was, and had repeatedly discussed the question with him, and had never found the slightest alteration in his sentiments. He had deprecated bringing it on because at that moment he was convinced that it would have driven the King mad and raised a prodigious ferment in England. He talked a great deal of Fox and Pitt, and said that the natural disposition of the former was to arbitrary power and that of the latter to be a reformer, so that circumstances drove each into the course the other was intended for by nature. Lord North’s letter to Fox when he dismissed him in 1776 was, ‘The King has ordered a new commission of the Treasury to be made out, in which I do not see your name.’ How dear this cost him and what an influence that note may have had on the affairs of the country and on Fox’s subsequent life! They afterwards talked of the ‘Cateatonenses’ written by Canning, Frere, and G. Ellis. Lady Morley has a copy, which I am to see.[4]
Notes
4 [The ‘Musæ Cateatonenses,’ a burlesque narrative of a supposed expedition of Mr. George Legge to Cateaton Street in search of a Swiss chapel. Nothing can be more droll. The only copy I have seen is still at Saltram. This jeu d’esprit (which fills a volume) was composed by Canning and his friends one Easter recess they spent at Ashbourne.]