ham at
Hayes, and Lord Grenville at Dropmore, neither of them half your
distance, are instances of the loss of political consequence at a
time when from the extreme multiplication of correspondence,
Parliamentary inquiries, &c., every single department was not
over-worked and over-occupied to the degree they now are. There
really now is no time even for communication among the different
members of the Government, each member of which manages his own
department almost without interference from his colleagues, except
when he thinks it necessary to call a Cabinet on any point of
peculiar importance.

Plunket arrived yesterday evening, and I have had a long
conversation with him to-day. He is harassed and fatigued to a
great degree by all he has lately been going through. The
dismissals of Sir C. Vernon, St. George, and Stanhope, have taken
place since he left Dublin, he having dissuaded Lord W----y
strongly from the removal of the former before he went, and as he
thought with success, he being just the good-natured, silly animal
whom everybody would compassionate, and the women in particular.

The particular offence is their presence at the Beef-steak Club,
where the _Chancellor and Commander-in-Chief_ also dined, when the
Lord-Lieutenant was drunk to the tune of "Now Phoebus sinketh in
the west," with dead silence, and Lord Talbot with great applause;
and afterwards the toast, which you will read in the _Courier_.

Now really, as the Dublin paper observes, for poor Charley Vernon
to have got up, and in the presence of the Chancellor and Lord
Combermere to have objected to the toast which they joined in
because the Lord-Lieutenant was clearly the person who wished to
"_subvert the constitution_," would have been rather a strong
measure; and it seems pitiful to resent conduct in the Chamberlain,
because he was part of his household, which the Lord-Lieutenant
dare not notice in the Chancellor.

He [Plunket] has seen Liverpool, who, as is usual with him, dealt
in generals, and avoided any particular conversation on the late
events.

It seems to me that the proposition for extending the Act against
secret and affiliated societies to Ireland (which has not yet been
decided upon by the Cabinet) will probably bring the matter to an
upshot. If that is agreed to, it will be ev