it will always be
believed that he was aware of the intended measure, and that his
speech was made with the Duke's concurrence. It is curious enough
that his opinion had been long changed, and that he had intended
to pronounce his recantation when Brownlow did, but as Brownlow
got the start of him he would not. For two years after this he
persevered in the old course, and when Canning came in, and the
Catholic question was the great field on which he was to be
fought, Dawson reverted vigorously to his old opinions, and spoke
vehemently against emancipation. Such is party!

The circumstances that Vesey talked of are in fact pretty well
known or guessed at, nor has there ever been any secret as to the
main fact of the King's opposition and dislike to the measure. He
told me that after Eldon's visit of four hours the Duke
remonstrated, and told the King what great umbrage it gave his
Ministers to see and hear of these long and numerous interviews
with their opponents. The King declared that he said nothing and
that nothing passed calculated to annoy them, which they none of
them believed, but of course could make no reply to.

April 8th, 1829 {p.200}

I have mentioned above (March 4th[14]), p. 180, the Chancellor,
the Duke, and Peel going to the King, and the alarm that
prevailed here. That day the Catholic question was in great
jeopardy. They went to tell the King that unless he would give
them his real, efficient support, and not throw his indirect
influence into the opposite scale, they would resign. He refused
to give them that support; they placed their resignations in his
hands and came away. The King then sent to Eldon, and asked him
if he would undertake to form a Government. He deliberated (then
it was that it was question of the Duke of Richmond being First
Lord or Lord-Lieutenant), but eventually said he could not
undertake it. On his refusal the King yielded, and the Bill went
on; but if Eldon had accepted, the Duke and his colleagues would
have been out, and God knows what would have happened. It was, of
course, of all these matters that the King talked to Eldon in the
long interview they had the other day. He is very sulky at the
great majority in the House of Lords, as I knew he would be.

[14] [It was on the 3rd of March that this interview took
place, as related by Sir R. Peel himself in his
'Memoir' (vol. i. p. 343). The King asked his Ministers
to explain the d