arge dose of laudanum and was asleep. The
Chancellor was told he would not wake for two or three hours, and would
then be in a state of excessive irritation, so that he might just as well
not see him.

_May 12._

The East Retford question was last night deferred till next session, so we
may, I think, finish all our business by about June 10; that is really
allowing full time.

O'Connell published yesterday an argument on his right to sit in the House
of Commons in the shape of a letter to the members. At first Lord Grey
thought it unanswerable (as founded on the provisions of the Relief Bill);
but at night he told me he had looked into the Bill and found it certainly
excluded him. A large portion of the letter is quite absurd, that in which
he assumes a right to have his claim decided in a court of law. Parliament
alone is by common law the court in which the privileges of its own members
can be decided.

_May 12._

House. Lord Lansdowne put a pompously worded question as to our intentions
with respect to the course of proceeding on Indian affairs.

I answered simply that we were as sensible as he was of the extreme
importance of the question. That for my own part my mind was never absent
from it, and that I had not been many days in office before I took measures
for procuring the most extensive information, which would be laid before
the House at the proper time. That the Government was desirous of forming
its own opinion on the fullest information and with the greatest
consideration; and that we wished the House to have the same opportunities.
That I was not then prepared to inform him in what precise form we should
propose that the enquiry should be made.

The Chancellor introduced the Bill for appointing a new Equity Judge, and
separating the Equity Jurisdiction from the Court of Exchequer. The latter
object, by-the-bye, is not to be accomplished immediately, but it is part
of the plan opened. He soothed Lord Eldon by high compliments to his
judicial administration and to the correctness of his judgments. The wonder
of the day is that Lord Eldon should have lived to hear a Chancellor so
expose the errors of the Court of Chancery as they were exposed by Lord
Lyndhurst to-day.

_May 13._

Recorder's report. The King not well. He has a slight stricture, of which
he makes a great deal, and a bad cold. He seemed somnolent; but I have seen
him worse.

Before the Council there was a chapter of the Garter