ber_ 23, 1841

Fanny's own letters will have given you the best insight into her
feelings since we came here. It has been the most fortunate thing
for us all. Fanny herself, Addy, Georgy, Miss Lister, and indeed
all of us, have had means of fitting and _cementing_ here,
which no London or visiting life could have given us. I never can
be sufficiently grateful for such a blessing as Fanny is to me; and
I only feel the more grateful that she reconciles herself so well
to the loss of the home she loved so well. Nor is this by loving
you or any one she has left at all the less--far from it, every day
proves her devotion to you and her anxiety for your happiness.

They could not take a long holiday, although Lord John was now in
Opposition. Early in February the great Anti-Corn Law League bazaar was
held at Manchester, and a few days later Peel carried his sliding scale:
20s. duty when corn was 57s., 12s. when the price was 60s., and 1s. when it
reached 73s. Lord John proposed an amendment in favour of a fixed duty of
8s.

CHESHAM PLACE, [23] _February_ 14, 1842

Beginning of Corn Law debate. Went to hear Lord John. He
began--excellent speech--attacked the measure as founded on the
same bad principle as the present corn laws; showed the absurdity
of any corn laws to make us independent of foreign countries; the
cruelty of doing nothing to relieve the distress of the
manufacturing districts; the different results of a sliding scale
and a fixed duty; the advantages of free trade, even with all
countries, especially with the United States, etc., etc.; was much
cheered. Answered by Mr. Gladstone, beside whose wife I was
sitting.

[23] Lord John had built a house, 37, Chesham Place, which was henceforward
their London home.

Lord John's amendment was lost by 123 votes; Villiers' and Brougham's
amendments in favour of total repeal by over three hundred. This measure of
the sliding scale did not embody Peel's real conviction at the time; its
object was to discover how much the agricultural party would stand.
Gladstone himself was in favour of a more liberal reduction in the sliding
scale; and it appears from his journal that he very nearly resigned the
Presidency of the Board of Trade in consequence of Peel's measure. Peel
asked Gladstone to reply to Lord John Russell. "This I did," he says, "and
with all my heart, for I did not yet fully und