ssible 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]

[4] [The 'Musae 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.]

March 9th, 1829 {p.186}

It was reported last night that there had been a compromise with
Lowther, who is to retain his seat and to vote for the Bill in
all its other stages. But he dined at Crockford's, and told
somebody there that he had tendered his resignation and had
received no answer. I do not understand this indecision; they
must deprive those who will not support them thoroughly.
'Thorough,' as Laud and Strafford used to say, must be their
word.

_Evening._--I asked Lord Bathurst to-day if Lowther, &c., were
out, and he said nothing had been done about it, that there was
plenty of time. Afterwards met Mrs. Arbuthnot in the Park, and
turned back with her. She was all agains