principle; but the
extraordinary part of it is that they admit that the principle is
not maintainable, yet declare that they were bound _as
gentlemen_, when the Queen had recourse to them, to support her.
This is strange doctrine in Whig mouths. They have, in my
opinion, abandoned their duty to the country and to the Queen,
and they ought to have been impressed with the paramount
obligation of instructing her in the nature and scope of her
constitutional obligations and duties, and the limits of her
constitutional rights, and to have advised her what she ought to
do, instead of upholding her in doing that which was agreeable to
her taste and inclination.

In the meantime Brougham wrote a violent letter to Lord
Tavistock, imploring him, while it was still time, to arrest the
perilous course on which his friends had entered, and full of
professions of regard for him and his. Tavistock went to him in
the evening, found him in a state of furious excitement, abusing
the Ministry greatly, and many of them by name in the grossest
terms, and pouring forth a torrent of invective against men and
things. After a time he became more cool, and half promised that
he would not speak at all; but when he learnt, what he was not
aware of, that Lord Spencer was come to town and would be in the
House of Lords, he broke out again, and said that if they had
brought him up to support that miserable rotten concern, he must
speak. Lord Spencer was not, however, brought up by them; he knew
nothing of passing events till he read them in the 'Times' on
Saturday, at Barnet, and his reflexion on them was, that if he
should be sent for, he should advise the Queen to send for Peel
again and concede the point. He is now, however, disposed, in
case of need, to defend his friends in the House of Lords; but if
they can secure Brougham's silence as the price of his, the
Ministers will be glad enough to _pair_ them off.

May 19th, 1839 {p.211}

At Mickleham (for Epsom) from Tuesday to Friday, and, of course,
nothing done, written, heard, or thought of, save and except the
Derby. The explanations went off, on the whole, very well,
without acrimony, and as satisfactorily as the case allowed.
Peel's speech was excellent (though Lord Grey did not approve of
it, and regretted not having the power to answer it), and without
any appearance of art or dexterity he contrived to steer through
all the difficult points and to justify himself without saying a
wo