in answer to the 'Quarterly Review,' which has got an
article against his party. I suggested instead that an attempt
should be made by Sandon (who has been in some communication with
the editor about this matter) to induce the 'Morning Herald' to
support us, and make that paper the vehicle of our articles. This
he agreed to, and was to propose it to Sandon last night. We have
no advocate in the press; the Whig and Tory papers are equally
violent against us. Yesterday I saw a letter which has been
circulated among the Tories, written by young Lord Redesdale to
Lord Bathurst, a sort of counter-argument to Lord Harrowby's
letter, although not an answer, as it was written before he had
seen that document; there is very little in it.

March 16th, 1832 {p.269}

[Page Head: IRISH TITHES.]

Lord Grey made an excellent speech in the House of Lords in reply
to Aberdeen's questions about Ancona, and Peel made another in
the House of Commons on Irish Tithes, smashing Sheil, taking high
ground and a strong position, but doing nothing towards settling
the question. He forgets that the system is bad, resting on a
false foundation, and that it has worked ill and been bolstered
up by him and his party till now it can no longer be supported,
and it threatens to carry away with it that which is good in
itself. We owe these things to those who wilfully introduced a
moral confusion of ideas into their political machinery, and, by
destroying the essential distinction between right and wrong,
have deprived the things which are right of the best part of
their security. I have never been able to understand why our
system should be made to rest on artificial props when it did not
require them, nor the meaning of that strange paradox which a
certain school of statesmen have always inculcated, that
institutions of admitted excellence required to be conjoined with
others which were founded in crime and error, and which could
only be supported by power. This has brought about Reform; it
would be easy to prove it. The Ancona affair will blow over.
George Villiers writes me word that it was a little escapade of
Perier's, done in a hurry, a mistake, and yet he is a very able
man. Talleyrand told me 'c'est une betise.' Nothing goes on well;
the world is out of joint.

Fanny Kemble's new tragedy came out last night with complete
success, written when she was seventeen, an odd play for a girl
to write. The heroine is tempted like Isabella in 'Me