Aberdeen says it is a real quarrel-not a plot to get rid of us—­the King thoroughly hates Prince Leopold, and he has been made to think the Ministers have slighted him in this matter.  The Duke goes down to him to-morrow.  He can show the King that Leopold was first mentioned by France—­ that he was made acquainted with the proposal or rather suggestion made by France to Leopold on November 9, that he was then told we could not hear of it till our candidates, Prince John of Saxony and Ferdinand of Orange, were disposed of.  The subject was again mentioned on November 24.

In point of fact the earliest day on which it could have been made known to the King that France had distinctly proposed Leopold was Monday, and he was told on the Tuesday.

The King seems to have been violently agitated.  He said sneeringly to Aberdeen, ’If I may be allowed to ask, is Prince Leopold to be married to a daughter of the Duke of Orleans?’ [Footnote:  This marriage took place in August 1832, when Prince Leopold had become King of the Belgians, and the Duke of Orleans King of the French.] Aberdeen said he had seen it in the newspaper and knew nothing more of it.  The King alluded to the possibility of Government going out, admitted the inconvenience just before the meeting of Parliament, but said he was immovable.  Leopold might go to the devil, but he should not carry English money out of the country.  In the morning, talking to the Duchess of Gloucester, he said, ’If they want a Prince of my family, they might have had the Duke of Gloucester,’ upon which the Duchess burst out a-laughing.

The King seems thoroughly out of humour.  He says ’Things seem going on very ill in India.  Do not you mean to recall Lord William?’ He had been made very angry in the morning by the ‘Times’ calling upon him to pay his brother’s debts, and this morning the ‘Morning Journal’ places in juxtaposition the paragraphs in the ‘Times,’ and those for which it was lately prosecuted.

Lady Conyngham is bored to death, and talks and really thinks of removing.  She was to make a grand attack on the King to-day.  I suppose she finds the Duchess of Cumberland gaining influence.  Her note to the Duke the other day, to tell him the Duke of Cumberland had been four hours with the King, was intended to put him upon his guard.

The Duke does not mean to resign to-morrow, but to request, if he should not succeed (which Aberdeen thinks he will not do), that the King will allow the Cabinet to put their opinions in writing-which the King cannot refuse.  We shall then meet on Friday and decide what we shall do.

The Chancellor took me aside and said it would be a foolish thing to go out about Leopold.  So it would; but if we allow ourselves to be beaten in this, we may be beaten round the whole circle of public questions.

When the Duke has proved the proposition was not made by us, that it came from France, the King will say, ’Well, if you did not think it worth while to propose him, why should you not reject him?  Why adhere to him?’