Stanley's motion about
Irish Registration.[2] O'Connell made a most blackguard speech,
alluding with wretched ribaldry to the deathbed of Stanley's
mother-in-law, from which he had come to urge his motion, out of
deference to those whom he had brought up for it. One of the
worst of those disgraceful and stupid brutalities, which will
obliterate (if possible) the fame of the great things O'Connell
has done in the course of his career. What will Government do
upon this? It is impossible for anything to be more embarrassing.
It is humiliating to go on, after another great defeat, and it is
a bad question for them to dissolve upon. Weak in itself, and
with all the moral deformity of its O'Connellism, it will produce
no sympathy in this country, and not even a cry to stand upon at
a general election.

[2] [Lord Stanley's Irish Registration Bill, providing for
an annual revision of the lists by revising barristers,
was carried against the Government by 250 to 234 votes.
The Bill made considerable progress, and was warmly
supported by the Opposition, but eventually Lord
Stanley saw reason to abandon it. See _infra_, August
13, 1840.]

March 29th, 1840 {p.280}

They did not care about this division, but made very light of it.
However, it adds an item to the account against them, and is (say
what they will) a bad thing. It is bad too, to establish as a
principle that no defeats, nor any number of them, signify, as
long as they are not upon vital questions; it produces not only a
laxity of opinion and feeling upon public matters, but an
indifference and _insouciance_ on the part of their supporters,
which may some day prove very mischievous; for if they once are
permitted to assume that defeats do not signify, they will not be
at the trouble of attending when inconvenient, nor will they
encounter unpopularity for the sake of Government, and they will
very soon begin to judge for themselves, or to mistake what are
and what are not vital questions. Upon this occasion, Lord
Charles Russell went away the morning of the division without a
pair.

[Page Head: THE KING OF HANOVER'S APARTMENTS.]

Yesterday, at dinner at Normanby's, I met Lord Duncannon,[3] who
showed me the correspondence between him and the King of Hanover
about the apartments at St. James's. The case is this: When the
Queen was going to be married, the Duchess of Kent told Duncannon
that she m