Manchester and its neighbourhood more quiet.

Had some conversation with Peel about the next member for the direction.  He inclines to Marryatt.  Hardinge reported a communication from E. Ellice, who canvasses for his brother, Russell Ellice.  E. Ellice offers some votes in the House of Commons if we will support his brother.

I believe E. Ellice would be a good man, but the brother is a nonentity.  I said we must strike at the mass and not at individuals.  We must gain the city by assisting a fit man on public grounds.  Peel agreed in this sentiment.  I am sure it is the only wise course for any Government to pursue.

Monday, May 11.

The King has got the habit of taking large doses of laudanum.  He sent for the Chancellor yesterday, as usual, at two o’clock.  When he got to the palace the King had taken a large dose of laudanum and was asleep.  The Chancellor was told he would not wake for two or three hours, and would then be in a state of excessive irritation, so that he might just as well not see him.

May 12.

The East Retford question was last night deferred till next session, so we may, I think, finish all our business by about June 10; that is really allowing full time.

O’Connell published yesterday an argument on his right to sit in the House of Commons in the shape of a letter to the members.  At first Lord Grey thought it unanswerable (as founded on the provisions of the Relief Bill); but at night he told me he had looked into the Bill and found it certainly excluded him.  A large portion of the letter is quite absurd, that in which he assumes a right to have his claim decided in a court of law.  Parliament alone is by common law the court in which the privileges of its own members can be decided.

May 12.

House.  Lord Lansdowne put a pompously worded question as to our intentions with respect to the course of proceeding on Indian affairs.

I answered simply that we were as sensible as he was of the extreme importance of the question.  That for my own part my mind was never absent from it, and that I had not been many days in office before I took measures for procuring the most extensive information, which would be laid before the House at the proper time.  That the Government was desirous of forming its own opinion on the fullest information and with the greatest consideration; and that we wished the House to have the same opportunities.  That I was not then prepared to inform him in what precise form we should propose that the enquiry should be made.

The Chancellor introduced the Bill for appointing a new Equity Judge, and separating the Equity Jurisdiction from the Court of Exchequer.  The latter object, by-the-bye, is not to be accomplished immediately, but it is part of the plan opened.  He soothed Lord Eldon by high compliments to his judicial administration and to the correctness of his judgments.  The wonder of the day is that Lord Eldon should have lived to hear a Chancellor so expose the errors of the Court of Chancery as they were exposed by Lord Lyndhurst to-day.