on
of Peers, that people must be invited, the patents made out, &c.
We then parted. Downstairs was Rothschild the Jew waiting for
him, and the _valet de chambre_ sweeping away a _bonnet_ and a
_shawl_.

On my way from Melbourne called on Lord Harrowby, and read a
variety of letters--answers from different Peers to his letters,
Wharncliffe's correspondence with the Duke of Wellington, and
Peel's answer to Lord Harrowby. Wharncliffe wrote a long and very
conciliatory letter to the Duke, nearly to the effect of Lord
Harrowby's circular, and containing the same arguments, to which
the Duke replied by a long letter, written evidently in a very
ill humour, and such a galimatias as I never read, angry, ill
expressed, and confused, and from which it was difficult to
extract anything intelligible but this, 'that he was aware of the
consequences of the course he should adopt himself,' and wished
the House of Lords to adopt, viz., the same as last year, but
that be those consequences what they might, the responsibility
would not lie on his shoulders, but on those of the Government;
he acknowledged that a creation of Peers would swamp the House of
Lords, and, by so doing, destroy the Constitution, but the
Government would be responsible, not he, for the ruin that would
ensue; that he was aware some Reform was necessary (in so far
departing from his former declaration of the 30th of November),
but he would neither propose anything himself, nor take this
measure, nor try and amend it.' In short, he will do nothing but
talk nonsense, despair, and be obstinate, and then he is hampered
by declarations (from which he now sees himself that he must
dissent), and obliged from causes connected with the Catholic
question and the Test and Corporation Acts to attend more to the
consistency of his own character than to the exigencies of the
country, but with much more personal authority than anybody, and
still blindly obeyed and followed by men many of whom take very
rational and dispassionate views of the subject, but who still
are resolved to sacrifice their own sense to his folly. He really
has accomplished being a prophet in his own country, not from the
sagacity of his predictions, but from the blind worship of his
devotees.

[Page Head: PEEL'S DESPONDENCY.]

Peel's letter, though arriving at the same conclusion, was in a
very different style. It certainly was an able production, well
expressed and plausibly argued, with temper and m