The sealed orders with which the ships have sailed from Plymouth, were orders to prevent the Portuguese (who have been sent away) from landing at Terceira.
Lady Westmeath was the woman meant in the article in the 'Times' from Ireland about the pension to which Lord Anglesey would not agree. The story is very true. There was £700 disposable on the Pension Fund, and the Duke of Wellington desired £400 might be given to Lady Westmeath, which Lord Anglesey and the Secretary both protested against, and were resolved to resign rather than agree to it. They wrote to the Duke such strong remonstrances that he appears to have desisted from the design, for they heard no more of it. It is therefore false that this had anything to do with the recall, though it is by no means improbable that it served to alienate the Duke from the Marquis and to make him desire the more to get rid of him. This happened as long ago as last August, I think.
Yesterday the Duke dined with us, in very good spirits, and agreeable as he always is, though not so communicative and free as he used to be. He had never told Francis Leveson about the Duke of Northumberland[26] till Sunday, when he wrote to announce the appointment. His Grace seems mightily pleased with it, and fancies that his figure and his fortune are more than enough to make him a very good Lord-Lieutenant. He says he was obliged to coax him a little to get him to accept it.
[26] [Hugh, third Duke of Northumberland, was declared Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland on the recall of Lord Anglesey.]
He said that he was on the best terms with France, talked of Russia and her losses in the war, adding that the notion of her power was at an end. He believed that the Russians were numerically as strong as the Turks in the last campaign, and they were much more numerous than they said: first, _because_ they said they were not so; and secondly, that he had other reasons for believing it; he thought they had begun the campaign with 160,000 men and had lost 120,000.[27] They were talking of St. Petersburg and its palaces. The Duke said that the fortunes of the great Russian nobles--the Tolstoys, &c.--were so diminished that they lived in corners of their great palaces; but this was owing to the division of property and the great military colonies, by which the Crown lands were absorbed, and the Emperors had no longer the means of enriching the nobles by enormous donations as formerly. When to these circumstances are added the amelioration of the condition of the serfs, and the spirit of general improvement, and the growth of Liberal ideas, generated by intercommunication with the rest of Europe, it is impossible to doubt that a revolution must overtake Russia within a short period, and probably the Emperor has undertaken this war in order to give vent to the restless humours which are beginning to work. I said so to Lord Bathurst, and he replied that 'he thought so too, but that the present Emperor was a man of great firmness,' as if any individual authority or character could stem the torrent of determined action impelled by universal revolution of feeling and opinion. He said the late Emperor was so well aware of this that he died of the vexation it had caused him, which was aggravated by the reflection that he was in great measure himself the cause of it. He was so bit by Liberal opinions, and so delighted with the effects he saw in other countries flowing from the diffusion of intelligence and freedom, that he wished to engraft these dangerous exotics upon the rude and unprepared soil of his own slavish community. When he went to Oxford he was so captivated with the venerable grandeur of that University that he declared he would build one when he got home, and it is equally true that he said he 'would have an Opposition.' These follies were engendered in the brain of a very intelligent man by the mixture of such crudities with an unbounded volition, and the whole fermented by a lively imagination and a sincere desire to confer great benefits on his country.