r authority contemptible in their eyes, so long
as she is unfavourable to them, and commits herself to other
hands than theirs. Peel is to be pitied for having to lead such
an unruly and unprincipled faction. Everything seems disjointed,
all is confusion; moderate men, desirous of good government,
stability, security, and safe amendment of political evils or
errors, can find no resting-place. The Tories, the professors and
protectors of Conservative principles, the abhorrers of changes,
who would not have so much as a finger laid upon the integrity of
the Constitution, are ready to roll the Crown in the dirt, and
trample it under their feet; and the Government, to whom the
maintenance of the Constitution is entrusted, whose especial duty
it is to uphold the authority of the laws, are openly allied
with, and continually truckling to, those factions, or sections
of factions, which make no secret of their desire and
determination to effect changes which nobody denies to be
equivalent to revolution; and then we have the weight of the
Crown thrown into the scale of this unholy alliance, from the
mere influence of personal predilections and antipathies. To such
a degree is principle dormant, or so entirely is it thrust into
the background by passion, prejudice, or the interest of the
passing hour.

November 13th, 1839 {p.245}

At Holland House for three days last week. Lord Holland told many
stories of Lord Chatham, some of which I had heard before, and
some not. His stories are always excellent, and excellently told,
and those who have heard them before can very well bear to hear
them again. I think I have somewhere inserted the 'Sugar' story,
which Lord Harrowby told me many years ago, but without the
vivacity and good acting of Lord Holland. Another of his sayings
was in the House of Lords, when, on I forget what question, he
was unsupported: 'My Lords, I stand like our First Parents--
alone, naked, but not ashamed.' This was fine. Lord Holland said
there was nothing like real oratory in Parliament before the
American war.

He had received several letters from Brougham in a most strange,
incoherent style, avowedly for the purpose of thanking Lady
Holland for the interest he heard she had shown about him when
his death was reported, and at the same time to explain that he
had no hand in the report, which he did with the utmost solemnity
of asseveration;[10] but he took this opportunity to descant on
the conduct of