ase _exactly_ in point. However, they decided,
after much enquiry and examination into precedent, that it should
not be.[8]

[7] [On April 7 Sir James Graham moved a Vote of Censure on
Ministers for the measures which had plunged the
country in hostilities with China. Mr. Macaulay
followed him, and made an able speech. The Resolution
was rejected after three nights' debate by 271 to 261
votes.]

[8] [Orders in Council for Reprisals and Capture of Ships
constitute a Declaration of War, and are signed by all
the Privy Councillors present. This course was taken in
1854 on the Declaration of War against Russia.]

May 15th, 1840 {p.284}

A month, and nothing written here, or written, read, or done,
elsewhere. Went to Newmarket for the Craven meeting, then to
Bretby for a week, then Newmarket again, and back to London on
Friday.

Just after I got back to Newmarket, the intelligence arrived of
the extraordinary murder of Lord William Russell, which has
excited a prodigious interest, and frightened all London out of
its wits. Visionary servants and air-drawn razors or carving-
knives dance before everybody's imagination, and half the world
go to sleep expecting to have their throats cut before morning.
The circumstances of the case are certainly most extraordinary,
and though every day produces some fresh cause for suspecting the
man Courvoisier, both the fact and the motives are still
enveloped in great mystery. People are always ready to jump to a
conclusion, and having made up their minds, as most have, that he
must have done the deed, they would willingly hang him up at
once. I had the curiosity to go the day before yesterday to
Tothill Fields Prison to see the man, who had just been sent
there. He is rather ill-looking, a baddish countenance, but his
manner was calm though dejected, and he was civil and respectful,
and not sulky. The people there said he was very restless, and
had not slept, and that he was a man of great bodily strength. I
did not converse with him.

May 17th, 1840 {p.284}

Just after writing the above, I went to the house in Norfolk
Street, to look at the premises, and the places where the watch
and other things were found hidden. It was impossible not to be
morally convinced that the house had not been broken into, that
the indications of such violence were fabricated, and that the
goods must hav