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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2009
Called at Hardys. He tells me that there is a real move in Lancashire to put Derby at the head of the Party, that it was discussed at Burghley before the meeting, that it was declared to be necessary to tell Disraeli but that every one shrunk from doing this and that he refused.343 That he doubts whether Disraeli knows it, that he believes Derby does not wish it, only wishes to return to the Foreign Office. Derby's late speech,344 when I was ill, brought him thus forward. On leaving Hardy the first person I met in the Park was Disraeli with whom I stopped to say a few amiable nothings as to weather etc.
343 At a meeting at Burghley House, Stamford, home of Lord Exeter, on 1 February, attended by Hardy and members of the Opposition Front Bench, there were only two dissenters to the view that Derby would make a more effective leader. The Chief Whip, Gerard Noel, believed that Derby's name alone would be worth 40 or 50 seats (R. Blake, Disraeli (London, 1966), p. 521). Carnarvon, who was unwell after the Scott Russell fiasco, did not attend.
344 Address at the meeting of the Liverpool Conservative Working Men's Association on 9 January.
345 This entry should be for Sunday 21 April.
346 Col. John Wilson Patten (1802–1892), Con. MP for Lancashire North (1832–1874), Chief Secretary for Ireland (1868).
347 The Thames Embankment (Land) Bill was introduced in the Commons by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Robert Lowe, on 8 March 1872 (Hansard, CCIX, col. 1742).
348 Richard Assheton Cross (1823–1914), MP for Lancashire South-west, was a frequent visitor to Knowsley. When he called on Lady Derby in June 1872, she had used him to spread the word that there was no lack of communication between her husband and Disraeli. See Mitchell, D.J., Cross and Tory Democracy (New York and London, 1991), p. 48Google Scholar.