The Letters of Queen Victoria Volume Iii Part 72

Whenever the Proclamation is finally printed, the Queen would wish to have a copy sent her. A letter she has received from Lady Canning speaks of Lord Canning's supposed Amnesty in Oudh as a fabrication; she has sent the letter to Lord Derby.

[Footnote 47: The Queen had asked how it was that Sir J.

Melvill's name was not included among those submitted to her for appointments in connection with the new military organisation in India. Sir James had been Financial Secretary, and afterwards Chief Secretary, for the East India Company. He now became the Government Director of Indian railways, and a Member of the Council of India.]

_Memorandum by Queen Victoria._

OSBORNE, _4th September 1858_.

The Queen wishes the practice of the Office[48] with reference to submissions to her to be as nearly as possible a.s.similated to that of the Foreign Office.

All despatches, when received and perused by the Secretary of State, to be sent to the Queen. They may be merely forwarded in boxes from the Office without being accompanied by any letter from the Secretary of State, unless he should think an explanation necessary. No draft of instructions or orders to be sent out without having been previously submitted to the Queen. The label on the boxes of the Office containing such drafts to be marked "For Approval."

In cases of Civil appointments the Secretary of State will himself take the Queen's pleasure before communicating with the gentlemen to be appointed.

Copies or a _precis_ of the Minutes of the Council to be regularly transmitted to the Queen.

The Secretary of State to obtain the Queen's sanction to important measures previously to his bringing them before the Council for discussion.

[Footnote 48: The India Office.]

[Pageheading: LORD PALMERSTON]

_Memorandum by the Prince Albert._

OSBORNE, _4th September 1858_.

The most remarkable feature of the last Session of Parliament has been the extraordinary unpopularity of Lord Palmerston, for which nothing can account; the only direct reproach which is made to him, is to have appointed Lord Clanricarde Privy Seal, and to have been overbearing in his manner. Yet a House of Commons, having been elected solely for the object, and on the ground of supporting Lord Palmerston personally (an instance in our Parliamentary history without parallel), holds him suddenly in such abhorrence, that not satisfied with having upset his Government, which had been successful in all its policy, and thrown him out, it will hardly listen to him when he speaks. He is frequently received with hooting, and throughout the last Session it sufficed that [he] took up any cause for the whole House voting against it, even if contrary to the principles which they had themselves advocated, merely to have the satisfaction of putting him into a minority. How can this be accounted for? The man who was without rhyme or reason stamped the only _English_ statesman, the champion of liberty, the man of the people, etc., etc., now, without his having changed in any one respect, having still the same virtues and the same faults that he always had, young and vigorous in his seventy-fifth year, and having succeeded in his policy, is now considered the head of a clique, the man of intrigue, past his work, etc., etc.--in fact hated! and this throughout the country. I cannot explain the enigma except by supposing that people had before joined in a cry which they thought was popular without themselves believing what they said and wrote, and that they now do the same; that the Radicals used his name to destroy other statesmen and politicians, and are destroying him now in his turn; that they hoped to govern through him, and that they see a better chance now of doing it through a weak and incapable Tory Government which has entered into a secret bargain for their support.

Still the phenomenon remains most curious.[49]

[Footnote 49: Charles Greville, in his Journal (16th June 1858), noted the same circ.u.mstance, and drew the inference that Palmerston's public career was drawing to a close.]

Lord Palmerston himself remains, outwardly at least, quite cheerful, and seems to care very little about his reverses; he speaks on all subjects, bids for the Liberal support as before, even at the expense of his better conviction (as he used to do), and keeps as much as possible before the public; he made an official tour in Ireland, and is gone to visit the Emperor Napoleon at Paris; his Chinese policy upon which the general Dissolution had taken place in 1857 has just been crowned by the most complete success by the advantageous treaty signed at Pekin by Lord Elgin; and yet even for this the public will not allow him any credit. Lady Palmerston, on the contrary, is said to be very unhappy and very much hurt.

ALBERT.

[Pageheading: THE IONIAN ISLANDS]

_Sir E. Bulwer Lytton to Queen Victoria._

COLONIAL OFFICE, _1st November 1858_.

Sir E. B. Lytton, with his humble duty to the Queen, submits to your Majesty's pleasure the appointment of the Right Honourable W. E.

Gladstone, as special High Commissioner to the Ionian Islands.

Differences of long standing between the Executive and Legislative branches of the Ionian Const.i.tution, aggravated by recent dissensions between the Senate and Munic.i.p.al Magistrature, render it very expedient to obtain the opinion of a statesman of eminence, formed upon the spot, as to any improvements in the workings and results of the Const.i.tution which it might be in the power of the protecting Sovereign to effect. And Sir Edward thinks it fortunate for the public service that a person so distinguished and able as Mr Gladstone should be induced to undertake this mission.

Sir Edward ventures to add that, should Her Majesty be graciously pleased to approve this appointment, it is extremely desirable that Mr Gladstone should depart at the earliest possible day, and that Sir Edward may be enabled to make the requisite announcement to the Lord High Commissioner by the first mail.

[Pageheading: LORD STANLEY AND MR DISRAELI]

[Pageheading: SUGGESTED RESIGNATION]

_Mr Disraeli to the Prince Albert._

GROSVENOR GATE, _18th November 1858_.

(_Wednesday night._)

SIR,--After the Committee of the Cabinet on the Reform Bill, which sat this morning for five hours, Lord Stanley expressed a wish to have some private conversation with me.

Although I would willingly have deferred the interview till a moment when I was less exhausted, I did not think it wise, with a person of his temperament, to baulk an occasion, and therefore a.s.sented at once.

I give your Royal Highness faithfully, but feebly, and not completely, the results of our conversation.

1. With respect to the relations between his office and Her Majesty, he said he was conscious that they had been conducted with great deficiency of form, and, in many respects, in an unsatisfactory manner; but he attributed all this to the inexperience and "sheer ignorance" of a Department which had not been accustomed to direct communication with the Crown. Some portion of this, he said, he had already remedied, and he wished to remedy all, though he experienced difficulties, on some of which he consulted me.

He accepted, without reserve, and cordially, my position, that he must act always as the Minister of the Queen, and not of the Council, but he said I took an exaggerated view of his relations with that body; that he thoroughly knew their respective places, and should be vigilant that they did [? not] overstep their limits; that he had never been, of which he reminded me, an admirer of the East India Company, and had no intention of reviving their system; that the incident of submitting the legal case to the Council, etc., had originated in a demand on the part of the Commander-in-Chief, which involved, if complied with, a grant of money, and that, under these circ.u.mstances, an appeal to the Council was inevitable.

2. He agreed with me, that, on all military matters, he would habitually communicate with the Commander-in-Chief, and take His Royal Highness's advice on all such points; and that copies of all military papers, as I understood Lord Stanley, should be furnished to His Royal Highness.

3. Having arrived at this point, I laid before him the views respecting _military unity_, which formed the subject matter of recent conversations. Lord Stanley a.s.sented to the principles which I attempted to enforce; and in reply to my reminding him that the old military system of India had entirely broken down, he said he contemplated terminating the independent authority of the Commander-in-Chief at the inferior Presidencies, and of establis.h.i.+ng the absolute and complete authority of Her Majesty's Commander-in-Chief in India. He did not seem to see his way to any further step at present, and I did not think it judicious on this occasion to press the subject further.

Throughout this interview, Lord Stanley's manner was candid, very conciliatory, and, for him, even soft. He was pleased to say that it was a source of great satisfaction to him that your Royal Highness had deigned to confer confidentially with me on the subject, and make me, as it were, a "Mediator" on matters which, he a.s.sured me with great emphasis, had occasioned him an amount of anxiety almost intolerable.

He had recurred, in the course of this interview, to a suggestion which he had thrown out on Tuesday, viz. that the difficulties of the position might be removed, or greatly mitigated, by his retirement from the office, and accepting, if his continuance in the Government was desirable, another post. I therefore thought it best at once to point out to him that such a course of proceeding would only aggravate all the inconveniences and annoyances at present existing; that his retirement would be the signal for exaggerated rumours and factious machinations, and would have the most baneful effect on the discussion in Parliament generally of all those military topics with which we were threatened; that, far from being satisfactory to Her Majesty and your Royal Highness, I was convinced that the Queen and yourself would hear of such an intention with regret.

Lord Stanley ultimately adopted entirely this view of his position, and he parted from me with an earnest expression of his hope that the painful misconceptions which had prevailed might at once, or at least in due course, entirely disappear.

This, Sir, is a very imperfect report of an important interview, but, as I collected from Lord Stanley, that nothing was really settled in his conference on Tuesday with Lord Derby and the Lord Chancellor, I have thought it my duty, without loss of time, to forward it to your Royal Highness, and have the honour to remain, ever, Sir, your most obedient and sincerely obliged Servant,

B. DISRAELI.