cket
Hall on Saturday last; returned the day before yesterday. Nothing
can exceed the interest, the excitement, the consternation which
prevail here. On Saturday last the funds suddenly fell near three
per cent.; no cause apparent, a thousand reports, and a panic on
the Stock Exchange. At last on Monday it appeared that the Emperor
of Russia had, on the first intelligence of the revolution in
France, prohibited the tricoloured cockade and ordered all Russian
subjects to quit France. As we went down on Saturday Henry told me
that there had been alarming accounts from the manufacturing
districts of a disposition to rise on the part of the workmen,
which had kept Lord Hill in town; and this I fancied was the cause
of the fall, but it was the Russian business. They have since,
however, rallied to nearly what they were before. At Brocket I had
a long conversation with my brother-in-law,[4] who is never very
communicative or talkative, but he takes a gloomy view of
everything, not a little perhaps tinctured by the impending ruin
which he foresees to his own property from the Liverpool Railroad,
which is to be opened with great ceremony on the 15th; moreover he
thinks the Government so weak that it cannot stand, and expects
the Duke will be compelled to resign. He has already offered him
his place, to dispose of in any way that may be useful to him. I
said that I thought one of the Duke's greatest misfortunes was his
having no wise head to consult with in all emergencies; this he
said was very true, for there was nobody who would even speak to
him about anything; that Peel, who was the man who might naturally
be expected to put himself forward, never would; and that
repeatedly he had got him (Francis) to go to or write to the Duke
about some matter or other on which it was necessary to refer to
him. In the business of Huskisson, Huskisson himself was most
anxious to have it made up, and wished Peel to speak to the Duke;
but Peel would not stir, nor would Dudley, and it ended in
Francis' being charged with the negotiation, the result of which
everybody knows.

[4] [Lord Francis Egerton, afterwards First Earl of
Ellesmere, proprietor of the Bridgewater Estates and
Canal, which was threatened by the competition of the
newly-made Liverpool and Manchester Railway. Lord
Francis held the office of Secretary at War in 1830 for
a very short time, having previously been Irish