August 3.

Saw Hardinge.  He has perfected a very excellent system in Ireland by which all the 30,000 pensioners are divided into districts, in each of which is a chief constable who pays them.  If they move from one district to another they have a ticket, so that the residence and the movements of all are known.  Of 30,000 about 10,000 are fit for duty.  Blank orders are ready at the Castle, directing the march of these men upon five central points, where they would be incorporated with the regiments, so that in a few days the army could be reinforced by 10,000 men.  There are others who are not very capable of doing anything but mischief if against us.  These would be ordered to the garrisons.

I wish Hardinge was in Ireland instead of Lord Francis.

August 6.

Chairs at 11.

Astell does not seem to like my letters relative to the delay in answering despatches from India and in communicating events in India; and respecting the amount of military stores sent to India, and the expediency of enquiring whether their amount could not be diminished.  Loch did not say anything.  It was an attempt at bullying on Astell’s part, which I resisted, and successfully.

August 10.

The Russians appear to have passed the defiles on the northern side of the Balkans, and almost without loss.  There is, I conclude, a force near Bourgas, but all that is to be hoped is that the Turks will be wise enough not to fight.  It was an unlucky appointment, that of the Grand Vizier.  Old Hussein never would have committed his fault.

R. Gordon has been magnificently received at Constantinople.

Polignac has been made Prime Minister of France.  De Rigny is made Minister of Marine.  The Government is Tory, and I should think very favourable to English alliance, not Greek, and certainly not Russian.  If it should be able to stand, it must be good for us.  Received letters from Colonel Macdonald from Tabriz.  He says the Russians at Tiflis talk as if they were going to war with us.

August 11.

Received Persian despatches.  The Persians will pay no more.  They wanted to go to war.  No one would go as Envoy to Petersburg but an attache.  They all thought they should be beheaded.  Macdonald seems to have kept them quiet.

Cabinet room.  Met Lord Melville.  Read Gordon’s letters from Constantinople.  The Turks have not above 20,000 men there.  They are not disposed to yield at all.  Gordon thinks if we declared we would fix in any manner the limits of Greece, and maintain them, the Porte would not quarrel with us, and would rather do anything than yield the point of honour by acknowledging the independence of the Greeks.

The Russians mean to pass the Balkans with 60,000 men and march on Adrianople.  They send a large force by sea to Sizeboli to turn Bourgas.

Lord Francis Leveson holds out the apprehension of a long religious contest in Ireland. [Footnote:  Unhappily, like other pessimists, he seems to have judged Ireland correctly.] I believe he looks only at the surface and judges from first appearances.