now they are mightily shocked and
disgusted at the majority of the House of Commons taking their
revenge, though certainly the latter do it with much more rage
and factious violence, but with them it is a system of tactics
for a specific and attainable object. The Lords really had no
intelligible object but to embarrass a Government they could not
demolish, and gratify their own spite. If the most violent
Radical had been permitted to chalk out the most suicidal course
for the House of Lords to follow, he could have devised nothing
more ingenious and well contrived than what they have actually
done, taking care to keep up their character in the nation for
intolerance, and inculcating a belief in their adherence to the
most illiberal maxims of foreign and domestic policy, instead of
devoting all their energies to the recovery of the ground they
had lost in popular estimation, and strengthening themselves for
the contest, which anybody might have seen was not very remote.

April 3rd, 1835 {p.240}

They divided at I know not what hour this morning--321 to 289,[6]
a smaller majority than I was led to expect when I heard that 18
or 19 of Stanley's (so-called) party meant to go against him.
Anybody who records from day to day the shifting appearances of
the political sky must constantly recant one day the opinion and
expectation of the preceding. Stanley's speech the night before
last may very likely make an important difference in the result
of this extraordinary contest, for he has, as it seems to me, put
a final end to any possibility of junction with the great body of
the Whigs now arrayed under John Russell; he attacked Lord John
himself--his Whig and Radical alliance and the inconsistency of
his present conduct--with the utmost vehemence and scornful
reprobation, and he poured forth a torrent of sarcasm and
ridicule upon the prospective Government that he concludes they
meditate. This is so conclusive that it paves the way to his
junction with Peel, or if the latter goes out and John Russell
does come in, it is clear that he will have both Peel and Stanley
in opposition to him, against whom in the nearly balanced state
of parties he could not struggle on for a month. He was miserably
feeble in this debate (in his opening speech), and though he may
just do to lead an Opposition which wants no leading, and merely
sticks him up as a nominal chief, he could no more lead a
Government in the House of Commons than he cou