Foreign Office. I rather believe that by Huskisson's assistance he
would discharge the duties of the former office better than the
latter, to which the disinclination of Carlton House and the very
unconciliating style of correspondence in which he indulges himself
(and of which the records of the Board of Control have shown me
some specimens) are great objections. If, indeed, the arrangement
which I chalked out in a former letter for the promotion of Lord
Bathurst, Robinson, Huskisson, and either W. Lambe or C. Grant,
could take place, I should have no doubt that it would be best to
give Canning the Exchequer. But if the result should be, as many
anticipate, to consign the Foreign Seals to your friend the D----
of W----, it is not easy to decide whether the inconvenience of
that appointment would not counterbalance the benefit of removing
Van.

From being in the first coach, I could see little of the behaviour
of the mob at the funeral, but all that I saw or heard was
perfectly proper till the moment of the removal of the _coffin_
from the hearse to enter the Abbey, when a Radical yell was set up
from St. Margaret's churchyard.

Lady Londonderry's wish that he should be interred in Westminster
Abbey, and with the pomp of a private funeral, seems to me
extraordinary, and under the unfortunate circumstances of his
death, very ill-judged. I had myself proposed, in order to obviate
the possibility of any expression of hostile or disrespectful
feeling, that the body should at once have been brought on the
preceding night to the Jerusalem Chamber, instead of to his house
in St. James's-square, and that the procession should be formed
from thence on foot.

Sunday, 25th.

A letter from town this morning tells me that the King is not to
leave Edinburgh till the 28th, which will of course extend my stay
at this place. Everything leads me to believe that the discussion
will rather turn on the particular official situation to be held by
Canning, than on the vesting in him the lead of the House of
Commons, the necessity of which seems to be so generally and
strongly felt, that opposition to it must be ineffectual. At the
same time nothing is yet known of Peel's sentiments, and there will
not be wanting those among his friends who will urge him to refuse
serving _under_ Cann