for Reform. 'Well, but you don't
know what it is, and you might have waited till it came on, for it
probably will not be carried;' and this he repeated twice. Lord
Durham has volunteered to give up his salary as Privy Seal, which
is no great sacrifice, considering how long he is likely to enjoy
it, and everybody gives him credit for having suggested the relief
to coals for his own interest. Lady Holland, who has got a West
Indian estate, attacked him about the sugar duties, and asked him
if they would not reduce them. He said 'No.' She retorted, 'That
is because you have no West Indian estate; you have got your own
job about coals done, and you don't care about us.' In the House
of Lords they have it all their own way. The other night, on Lord
Strangford's motion about the Methuen treaty, Brougham exhibited
his wonderful powers in his very best style. Without any
preparation for the question, and after it had been exhausted in a
very good speech of Goderich's, he got up, and in answer to
Strangford and Ellenborough banged their heads together, and
displayed all his power of ridicule, sarcasm, and argument in a
manner which they could not themselves help admiring. The next
night he brought forward his Chancery Reform measure in a speech
of three hours, which, however luminous, was too long for their
Lordships, and before the end of it the House had melted away to
nothing. But, notwithstanding this success, he must inwardly chafe
at being removed from his natural element and proper sphere of
action, and he must burn with vexation at seeing Peel riot and
revel in his unopposed power, like Hector when Achilles would not
fight, though this Achilles can never fight again, but he would
give a great deal to go back to the field, and would require much
less persuasion than Achilles did.

February 25th, 1831 {p.119}

[Page Head: LADY JERSEY AND LORD DURHAM.]

A drawing-room yesterday, at which the Princess Victoria made her
first appearance. I was not there. Lady Jersey made a scene with
Lord Durham. She got up and crossed the room to him and said,
'Lord Durham, I hear that you have said things about me which are
not true, and I desire that you will call upon me to-morrow with
a witness to hear my positive denial, and I beg that you will not
repeat any such things about me,' or, as the Irishman said,
'words to that effect.' She was in a fury, and he, I suppose, in
a still greater. He muttered that he should never set foot