38 {p.086}

Lord Charles Fitzroy, Vice-Chamberlain, who had voted against
Government on the Negro question, was turned out for his vote,
not angrily and violently, but it was signified to him that he
must go, and yesterday he came to Buckingham House, where there
was a Council, to resign his key. They could not do otherwise,
for Peel had sent a message to Lord John Russell to know whether
Government did mean in earnest to oppose this motion with all
their force and influence, because, if they did, he would support
them with as many of his friends as he could bring to their aid;
and the reply was that such was their intention. After this they
could not pass over such a vote in one of their own household.

[Page Head: VOTE ON LORD DURHAM'S EXPENSES.]

The night before last Government had the narrowest possible
escape of being beaten upon a motion of Lord Chandos's about Lord
Durham's expenses.[21] They carried it by two, and that only
because Lord Villiers (Durham's first cousin, and whose brother
is one of his aides-de-camp) stayed away, together with Dawson
Damer, from motives of personal friendship; Castlereagh, because
Durham and Londonderry are knit together by the closest of all
ties,--a community of _coal_ interest; and one of the Hopes,
because he is going with his regiment to Canada, and did not
choose to incur the personal animosity of the great man there:
but for these secessions the question would have been carried.
Durham would probably have refused to go, and it is not
impossible the Government might have resigned. Nobody expected
this close division, and the Secretary of the Treasury was
greatly to blame in not securing a larger attendance of the
Government people and guarding against all chances. However, in
these days a miss is as good as a mile, and such a division,
which in former times would have been fatal to a Government, does
not signify a straw, except as an additional exhibition of
weakness and proof of their precarious tenure of office.
Melbourne yesterday looked very grave upon it, and he had an
unusually long audience of the Queen before the Council.
Palmerston treated the matter with great levity. As generally
happens, there is much to blame in the conduct of all parties. In
the first place the Colonial Minister should have made some
arrangement upon his own responsibility, and not have produced
the ridiculous correspondence with Durham, and nobody ever before
heard of a Minister asking