[12] [Thomas Hyde Villiers, brother of George, afterwards fourth Earl of Clarendon, died in 1832.]
It was expected last night that there would be a great riot, and preparations were made to meet it. Troops were called up to London, and a large body of civil power put in motion. People had come in from the country in the morning, and everything indicated a disturbance. After dinner I walked out to see how things were going on. There was little mob in the west end of the town, and in New Street, Spring Gardens, a large body of the new police was drawn up in three divisions, ready to be employed if wanted. The Duke of Wellington expected Apsley House to be attacked, and made preparations accordingly. He desired my brother to go and dine there, to assist in making any arrangements that might be necessary. In Pall Mall I met Mr. Glyn, the banker, who had been up to Lombard Street to see how matters looked about his house, and he told us (Sir T. Farquhar and me) that everything was quiet in the City. One of the policemen said that there had been a smart brush near Temple Bar, where a body of weavers with iron crows and a banner had been dispersed by the police, and the banner taken. The police, who are a magnificent set of fellows, behave very well, and it seems pretty evident that these troubles are not very serious, and will soon be put an end to. The attack in Downing Street the night before last, of which they made a great affair, turned out to be nothing at all. The mob came there from Carlile's lecture, but the sentry stopped them near the Foreign Office; the police took them in flank, and they all ran away.
I went to Brooks's, but there was hardly anybody there, and nothing occurred in the House of Commons but some interchange of Billingsgate between O'Connell and George Dawson. The Duke talks with confidence, and has no idea of resigning, but he does not inspire his friends with the confidence he feels or affects himself, though they talk of his resignation as an event which is to plunge all Europe into war, and of the impossibility of forming another Administration, all which is mere balderdash, for he proved with many others how easy it is to form a Government that can go on; and as to our Continental relations being altered, I don't believe a word of it. He may have influence abroad, but he owes it not to his own individual character, but to his possession of power in England. If the Ministry who succeed him are firm and moderate, this country will lose nothing of its influence abroad. I have heard these sort of things said fifty times of Ministers and Kings. The death of the late King was to be the greatest of calamities, and the breath was hardly out of his body before everybody discovered that it was the greatest of blessings, and, instead of its being impossible to go on without him, that there would have been no going on with him.
