If they are obliged to
dispose of him before the country will allow them to proclaim a
republic, they are many of them disposed to propose a union of the
Peninsula under the King of Portugal, as the most inefficient
shadow of royalty that can be set up.

Bobus Smith the other night proposed a caricature of a private
conference between Hume and Vansittart as a dialogue of penny-wise
and pound-foolish.

I see no reason to doubt Canning's going to India. His writ will, I
believe, be moved the last day of the session, and as the K---- is
going for Scotland immediately afterwards, there will be no room
left for intrigue to avert it. The Duke of Wellington is the only
one who has appeared to me at all sensible of the loss we shall
experience in him, and he speaks of him as being nearly useless out
of the walls of the House.

The town was startled in the month of August by a terrible incident.
The Marquis of Londonderry, on the 12th of the month, terminated his
existence by his own hand, at one of his residences, North Cray Farm,
near Bexley, Kent, in the fifty-third year of his age. The elevated
position he had filled for many years in the Government of this great
empire, had made him a prominent mark for the malicious shafts of those
who had, or fancied they had, an interest in opposing his policy.
During his long and most honourable career, no statesman had
accomplished such a series of important services. The Legislative Union
of Great Britain and Ireland, had it been suffered to bear the fruit
which only came to perfection thirty years later, was a measure of such
vital importance to the State, that its successful settlement under the
extraordinary circumstances which attended its discussion, entitled him
to rank with the ablest ministers of his time; but eminently sagacious
and beneficial as was this measure, it was thrown into the shade by the
success of subsequent calculations of Lord Castlereagh, first as
Secretary-at-War, and then as Foreign Secretary, which effected the
overthrow of that brilliant genius by whom his country had so long been
menaced. These services appear to have called into existence hosts of
political enemies, imbued with the vindictive spirit that prevailed at
this period, from whose attacks he was rarely free. They included in
their ranks many of a younger generation of adventurers--quite as
depreciatory in their opinions, if not as mal