usual, and no women on account of the Duchess of Argyll's death;
far better not to have women at a racing party. Tavistock told me
that a man (he did not say who) had been to Lord John, evidently
commissioned, though not avowedly, to tell him on the part of
Peel and Lord Stanley that they would both support him if he
would bring forward a proposition to pay the Irish Catholic
clergy. John, however, 'timet Danaos et dona ferentes,' and
hinted that his own popularity would be sacrificed if he did.
This is curious, however. John also told him that he never saw
Peel laugh so much as during Graham's speech the other night, and
he meant (but forgot it) to ask him why he laughed so. To Peel it
is nuts to see Stanley and Graham drawing down unpopularity on
themselves and every day widening the breach between them and
their old friends; but I was somewhat struck with the apparent
intimacy which was evinced in what John Russell said about Peel,
and asked his brother if they were on very good personal terms.
He said, 'Oh, excellent'--a sort of House of Commons intimacy.
Peel told John all he meant to do in the Committee on the Church
Bill--that he should propose so and so, and when they came to the
appropriation clauses he should make his bow and leave them.
Tavistock remarked (which had escaped me) that Peel had in his
last famous speech (certainly one of extraordinary ability)
omitted all mention of the principle of appropriation, and
confined himself to the proof that there was no surplus; but what
is most remarkable perhaps of all is this: Peel said to John, 'If
you _will_ appropriate, I will show you a much better plan than
your own,' and he accordingly did show him a plan by which there
would be a considerably greater surplus, and John acknowledged
that Peel's plan would be better than his own. I wonder what the
High Tories and the King would think of all this. While he is
quarrelling with Johnny and his friends for Peel's sake, and
undergoing martyrdom in his social relations with them, there
they are hand and glove, and almost concerting together the very
measures which are the cause of all the animosities and all the
political violence which agitate and divide the world. There is
something extremely ludicrous in all this.

I hear to-day that Peel is going into the country for good, and
leaves the Lords to deal with the Bills. He probably expects them
to commit some follies, and fancies he may as well be out of the
way