hrough such an Augean stable.

February 14th, 1832 {p.259}

[Page Head: INTERVIEW OF LORD HARROWBY AND LORD GREY.]

Dined with Lord Harrowby, and communicated conversation with
Palmerston and Melbourne. He has not been able to decide the
Archbishop, who is on and off, and can't make up his mind. Lord
Harrowby is going to Lord Grey to talk with him. The Tories
obstinate as mules. The Duke of Buccleuch, who had got Harrowby's
letter, and copied it himself that he might know it by heart, has
made up his mind to vote the other way, as he did before; Lord
Wallace (after a long correspondence) the same. There can be
little doubt that they animate one another, and their cry is 'to
stick to the Duke of Wellington.' The cholera is established, and
yesterday formal communications were made to the Lord Mayor and
to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs that London was no
longer healthy.

February 17th, 1832 {p.259}

Wharncliffe came to town the night before last, it having been
settled that Harrowby was to go to Lord Grey yesterday morning.
After consultation we agreed he had better go alone, that it
would be less formal, and that Lord Grey would be more disposed
to open himself. The same evening, at Madame de Lieven's ball,
Melbourne and Palmerston both told me that Grey was in an
excellent disposition. However, yesterday morning Harrowby had
such a headache that he was not fit to go alone, so the two went.
Nothing could be more polite than Grey, and on the whole the
interview was satisfactory. Nothing was agreed upon, all left
_dans le vague_; but a disposition to mutual confidence was
evinced, and I should think it pretty safe that no Peers will be
made. Lord Grey told them that if they could relieve him from the
necessity of creating Peers he should be sincerely obliged to
them, showed them a letter from the King containing the most
unlimited power for the purpose, and said that, armed with that
authority, if the Bill could be passed in no other way, it must
be so. A minute was drawn up to this effect, of which Wharncliffe
showed me a copy last night.

'Lords Harrowby and Wharncliffe cannot give any names, or pledge
themselves to any particular persons or numbers who will support
their views, but they have no doubt in their own minds that there
will be, _in the event of no creation of Peers_, a sufficient
number to carry the second reading of the Bill. In voting
themselves for the second reading, their inten