imself, of whom he had spoken in the early
part of the same night in such terms as these: 'The honourable
gentleman, with his usual disregard of veracity, ...' and again
'he attacked him, but took care how he attacked others, who he
knew were not restrained by obligations such as he was under to
bear with his language;' in other words, calling him a liar and a
coward; and after this Stanley condescended to flatter him and
applaud his speech. He said that he had expected better things of
Stanley, and was really distressed to hear it.

[Page Head: DUKE OF WELLINGTON AND THE WHIGS.]

I dined with the Duke of Wellington on Saturday. Arbuthnot was
there, and he said the Duke is in a state of unutterable disgust
with the present Government and their proceedings, particularly
with their foreign policy, which he fancies they shape in
systematic and wilful opposition to his own. This, of course, is
merely his imagination, and rather a preposterous notion. He says
the Duke does not think well of the state of the country, but
that he grasps with eagerness at any symptoms of returning or
increasing prosperity, and (what is rather inconsistent with his
bad opinion of affairs) he is always telling the foreigners (i.e.
the Ambassadors) who talk to him that they will fall into a great
error if they think the power or resources of England in any way
impaired. His antipathy to the Whigs, is, however, invincible,
and of very ancient date, as this proves. Arbuthnot said that he
was looking over a box of papers the other day, and hit upon the
copy of a letter he had written to Lord Liverpool, by desire of
some of his principal colleagues, to dissuade him from quitting
office, which, he thought of doing at the time of the first Lady
Liverpool's death. With it there was a scrap on which was
written, 'Taken down from the Duke of Wellington's own lips;' and
this was an argument that, in the event of his refusing, he (the
Duke) should think himself at liberty to join any other party or
set of men, but that his great object was to keep the Whigs out
of power, as he was convinced that whenever they got in they
would ruin the country. Lord Liverpool said that they (The
Tories) had been too long in possession of the Government.

May 23rd, 1834 {p.083}

Newmarket, Epsom, and so forth. Nothing remarkably new. In the
House of Commons the Poor Law Bill has been going on smoothly; in
the House of Lords little of note but one of Brougham's
exhibi