ell's, during the
crisis. This morning I had a conversation with Bonham [the party
whipper-in] upon the general merits, but without telling him
precisely what the proposal made to me was. Upon the whole my mind,
though I felt the weight of the question, was clear. I had to
decide what was best to be done _now_. I arrived speedily at the
conviction that _now_, at any rate, it is best that the question
should be finally settled; that Peel ought and is bound now to try
it; that I ought to support it in parliament; that if, in deciding
the mode, he endeavours to include the most favourable terms for
the agricultural body that it is in his power to obtain, I ought
not only to support it, by which I mean vote for it in parliament,
but likewise not to refuse to be a party to the proposal. I found
from him that he entirely recognised this view, and did feel
himself bound to make the best terms that he believed attainable,
while, on the other hand, I am convinced that we are now in a
position that requires provision to be made for the final abolition
of the corn law. Such being the state of matters, with a clear
conscience, but with a heavy heart, I accepted office. He was
exceedingly warm and kind. But it _was_ with a heavy heart.... I
have seen Lord Stanley. 'I am extremely glad to hear you have taken
office,' said he. We go to Windsor to-morrow to a council--he to
resign the seals, and I to receive them.

In the diary he enters:--

Saw Sir R. Peel at 3, and accepted office--in opposition, as I have
the consolation of feeling, to my leanings and desires, and with
the most precarious prospects. Peel was most kind, nay fatherly. We
_held_ hands instinctively, and I could not but reciprocate with
emphasis his 'God bless you.'

I well remember, Mr. Gladstone wrote in a memorandum of Oct. 4,
1851, Peel's using language to me in the Duke of Newcastle's house
on Sunday, Dec. 21, 1845, which, as I conceive, distinctly
intimated his belief that he would be able to carry his measure,
and at the same time hold his party together. He spoke with a kind
of glee and complacency in his tone when he said, making up his
meaning by signs, 'I have not lived near forty years in public life
to find myself wholly without the power of foreseeing the course of
events in t