The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. I

Charles Greville

Informations

• Publié par: omme
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 35
• Langue: English

Extrait

Project Gutenberg's The Greville Memoirs, by Charles C. F. Greville
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Greville Memoirs
A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William
IV, Volume 1 (of 3)
Author: Charles C. F. Greville
Editor: Henry Reeve
Release Date: June 5, 2008 [EBook #25700]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREVILLE MEMOIRS ***
Produced by Paul Murray, Eve M. Behr and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber’s Note:
In this work, all spellings and punctuation were reproduced from the
original work except in the very few cases where an obvious typo
occurred. These typos are corrected without comment.
In the original volumes in this set, each even-numbered page had a
header consisting of the page number, the volume title, and the chapter
number. The odd-numbered page header consisted of the year of the
diary entry, a subject phrase, and the page number. In this set of e-
books, the year is included as part of the date (which in the original
volume were in the form reproduced here, minus the year). The subject
phrase has been converted to sidenotes located below the relevant
page number.
In the original book set, consisting of three volumes, the master index
was in Volume 3. In this set of e-books, the index has been duplicated
into each of the other volumes. Navigation links were created to the
entries for the current volume.
THE GREVILLE MEMOIRSA JOURNAL OF THE REIGNS
OF
KING GEORGE IV.
AND
KING WILLIAM IV.
BY THE LATE
CHARLES C. F. GREVILLE, ESQ.
CLERK OF THE COUNCIL TO THOSE SOVEREIGNS
EDITED BY
HENRY REEVE
REGISTRAR OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I.
SECOND EDITION
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1874
CONTENTS.
INDEX.PREFACE
BY THE EDITOR
[v]The Author of these Journals requested me, in January 1865, a few days
before his death, to take charge of them with a view to publication at some
future time. He left that time to my discretion, merely remarking that
Memoirs of this kind ought not, in his opinion, to be locked up until they
had lost their principal interest by the death of all those who had taken any
part in the events they describe. He placed several of the earlier volumes
at once in my hands, and he intimated to his surviving brother and
executor, Mr. Henry Greville, his desire that the remainder should be given
me for this purpose. The injunction was at once complied with after Mr.
Charles Greville’s death, and this interesting deposit has now remained
for nearly ten years in my possession. In my opinion this period of time is
long enough to remove every reasonable objection to the publication of a
contemporary record of events already separated from us by a much
longer interval, for the transactions related in these volumes commence in
1818 and end in 1837. I therefore commit to the press that portion of these
[vi]Memoirs which embraces the Reigns of King George IV. and King William
IV., ending with the Accession of her present Majesty.
In accepting the trust and deposit which Mr. Greville thought fit to
place in my hands, I felt, and still feel, that I undertook a task and a duty of
considerable responsibility; but from the time and the manner in which it
was offered me I could not decline it. I had lived for more than five-and-
twenty years in the daily intercourse of official life and private friendship
with Mr. Greville. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, to whom he had previously
intended to leave these Journals, died before him. After that event, deeply
to be regretted on so many accounts, Mr. Greville did me the honour to
select me for the performance of this duty, which was unexpected by
myself; and my strong attachment and gratitude to him for numberless acts
of kindness and marks of confidence bound me by every consideration to
obey and execute the wishes of my late friend.
In the discharge of this trust I have been guided by no other motive
than the desire to present these Memorials to the world in a manner which
their Author would not have disapproved, and in strict conformity with his
own wishes and injunctions. He himself, it should be said, had frequently
revised them with great care. He had studiously omitted and erased
passages relating to private persons or affairs, which could only serve to
gratify the love of idle gossip and scandal. The Journals contain
absolutely nothing relating to his own family, and but little relating to his
[vii]private life. In a passage (not now published) of his own writings, the
Author remarks:—
‘A journal to be good, true, and interesting, should be written
without the slightest reference to publication, but without any
fear of it: it should be the transcript of a mind that can bear
transcribing. I always contemplate the possibility that hereafter
my journal will be read, and I regard with alarm and dislike the
notion of its containing matters about myself which nobody will
care to know’ (January 2nd, 1838).
These notes were designed chiefly to preserve a record of the less
known causes and details of public events which came under the Author’s
observation, and they are interspersed with the conversations of many ofthe eminent men with whom he associated. But it must be borne in mind
that they are essentially what they profess to be—a contemporary record
of facts and opinions, not altered or made up to square with subsequent
experience. Hence some facts may be inaccurately stated, because they
are given in the shape they assumed at the time they were recorded, and
some opinions and judgments on men and things are at variance (as he
himself acknowledges and points out) with those at which the writer
afterwards arrived on the same persons and subjects. Our impressions of
what is passing around us vary so rapidly and so continually, that a
contemporary record of opinion, honestly preserved, differs very widely
from the final and mature judgment of history: yet the judgment of history
must be based upon contemporary evidence. It was remarked by an acute
observer to Mr. Greville himself, that the nuances in political society are so
[viii]delicate and numerous, the details so nice and varying, that unless caught
at the moment they escape, and it is impossible to collect them again. That
is the charm and the merit of genuine contemporary records.
The two leading qualities in the mind of Mr. Greville were the love of
truth and the love of justice. His natural curiosity, which led him to track out
and analyse the causes of events with great eagerness, was stimulated by
the desire to arrive at their real origin, and to award to everyone, with
judicial impartiality, what appeared to him to be a just share of
responsibility. Without the passions or the motives of a party politician, he
ardently sympathised with the cause of Liberal progress and Conservative
improvement, or, as he himself expresses it, with Conservative principles
on a Liberal basis. He was equally opposed to the prejudices of the old
Tory aristocracy, amongst whom he had been brought up, and to the
impetuous desire of change which achieved in his time so many vast and
various triumphs. His own position, partly from the nature of the permanent
office he held in the Privy Council, and partly from his personal intimacies
with men of very opposite opinions, was a neutral one; but he used that
neutral position with consummate judgment and address to remove
obstacles, to allay irritations, to compose differences, and to promote, as
far as lay in his power, the public welfare. Contented with his own social
position, he was alike free from ambition and from vanity. No man was
more entirely disinterested in his judgments on public affairs, for he had
[ix]long made up his mind that he had nothing to gain or to lose by them, and
in the opinions he formed, and on occasion energetically maintained, he
cared for nothing but their justice and their truth. I trust that I do not deceive
myself in the belief that the impressions of such a man, faithfully rendered
at the time, on the events happening around him, will be thought to
possess a permanent value and interest. But I am aware that opinions
governed by no party standard will appear to a certain extent to be
fluctuating and even inconsistent. I have not thought it consistent with my
duty as the Editor of these papers to suppress or modify any of the
statements or opinions of their Author on public men or public events; nor
do I hold myself in any way responsible for the tenor of them. Some of
these judgments of the writer may be thought harsh and severe, and some
of them were subsequently mitigated by himself. But those who enter
public life submit their conduct and their lives to the judgment of their
contemporaries and of posterity, and this is especially true of those who fill
the most exalted stations in society. Every act, almost every thought, which
is brought home to them leaves its mark, and those w