bsence from Sir R. Peel's speech of any
acknowledgment towards his supporters and his colleagues. These
last, however, are named. Jocelyn said the new government were much
divided.... Jocelyn believes that Lord Palmerston will not be very
long in union with this cabinet.

With Sir J. Graham I had much interesting conversation. I told him,
I thought it but fair to mention to him the regret and blame which
I found to have been elicited from all persons whom I saw and
conversed with, by the passage relating to Cobden. He said he
believed it was the same on all hands; and that the new government
in particular were most indignant at it. He feared that it was
deliberately preconceived and for the purpose; and went on to
repeat what Lord Aberdeen had told me, that Sir R. Peel had been
within an ace of quitting parliament, and was determined to abjure
party and stand aloof for ever, and never resume office. I replied
as before, that in the House of Commons it was impossible. He went
on to sketch the same kind of future for himself. He was weary of
labour at thirteen or fourteen hours a day, and of the intolerable
abuse to which he was obliged to submit; but his habits were formed
in the House of Commons and for it, and he was desirous to continue
there as an independent gentleman, taking part from time to time in
public business as he might find occasion, and giving his leisure
to his family and to books. I said, 'Are you not building houses of
cards? Do you conceive that men who have played a great part, who
have swayed the great moving forces of the state, who have led the
House of Commons and given the tone to public policy, can at their
will remain there, but renounce the consequences of their
remaining, and refuse to fulfil what must fall to them in some
contingency of public affairs? The country will demand that they
who are the ablest shall not stand by inactive.' He said Sir Robert
Peel had all but given up his seat. I answered that would at any
rate have made his resolution a practicable one.

He said, 'You can have no conception of what the virulence is
against Peel and me.' I said, No; that from having been out of
parliament during these debates my sense of these things was less
lively and my position in some respects different. He replied,