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, and the queen watched with delight the safe passage of the bill through both houses of parliament. The sequel, however, disconcerted her. On 26 June, the night that the corn-law bill passed its third reading in the Lords, the protectionists and whigs voted together against the government on the second reading of a coercion bill for Ireland, and Peel was defeated by seventy-three. His resignation followed of necessity, and, at a moment when his services seemed most valuable to her, the queen saw herself deprived of them, as it proved for ever. She wrote of 'her deep concern' at parting with him. 'In whatever position Sir Robert Peel may be,' she concluded, 'we shall ever look on him as a kind and true friend.' Hardly less did she regret the retirement of Lord Aberdeen. 'We felt so safe with them,' she wrote of the two men to her uncle Leopold, who agreed that Peel, almost alone among contemporary English statesmen, could be trusted 'never to let monarchy be robbed of the little strength and power it still may possess' (Peel Papers, iii. 172).

At the queen's request Lord John Russell formed a new government, and with misgivings the queen agreed to Palmerston s return to the foreign office. The ministry lasted nearly five years. Lord John, although awkward and unattractive in manner, and wedded to a narrow view of the queen's constitutional powers, did much to conciliate the royal favour. Closer acquaintance improved his relations with the queen, and she marked the increase of cordiality by giving him for life Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park in March 1847, on the death of the Earl of Erroll, husband of a natural daughter of William IV. Some of Lord John's colleagues greatly interested the queen. Lord Clarendon, who was at first president of the board of trade, and in 1847 lord-lieutenant of Ireland, gained her entire confidence and became an intimate friend. She liked, too, Sir George Grey, the home secretary, and she admired the conversation of Macaulay, the paymaster-general, after he had overcome a feeling of shyness in meeting her. On 9 March 1850, when Macaulay dined at Buckingham Palace, he talked freely of his 'History.' The queen owned that she had nothing to say for her poor ancestor, James II. 'Not your majesty's ancestor, your majesty's predecessor,' Macaulay returned; and the remark, which was intended as a compliment, was well received ( Life of Macaulay, pp. 537-8). On 14 Jan. 1851, when he stayed at Windsor, he 'made her laugh heartily,' he said. 'She talked on for some time most courteously and pleasantly. Nothing could be more sensible than her remarks on German affairs' (ibid. p. 549). But, on the whole, the queen's relations with her third ministry were less amicable than with her first or second, owing to the unaccommodating temper of the most prominent member of it Palmerston, the foreign secretary. Between him and the crown a constant struggle was in progress for the effective supervision of foreign affairs. The constitution did not define the distribution of control between monarch and minister over that or any other department of the state. The minister had it in his power to work quite independently of the crown, and it practically lay with him to admit or reject a claim on the crown's part to suggest even points of procedure, still less points of policy. For the crown to challenge the fact in dealing with a strong-willed and popular minister was to invite, as the queen and prince were to find, a tormenting sense of impotence.

At the outset monarch and minister found themselves in agreement. Although Palmerston realised anticipations by emboiling France and England, the breach was deemed, in the peculiar circumstances, inevitable even by the queen and the prince. A difference had for some years existed between the two countries in regard to the affairs of Spain. The Spanish throne was occupied by a child of sixteen (Queen Isabella), whose position sufficiently resembled that of the queen of England at her accession to excite at the English court interest in her future. It was the known ambition of Louis Philippe or of his ministers to bring the Spanish kingdom under French sway. English politicians of all parties were agreed, however, that an extension of French influence in the Spanish peninsula was undesirable. Perfectly conscious of the strength with which this view was held, Louis Philippe prudently announced in 1843 that his younger son, the Due de Montpensier, was to be affianced, not to the little Spanish queen herself, but to her younger sister. Lord Aberdeen saw no objection to such a match provided that the marriage should be delayed till the Spanish queen had herself both married and had issue, and that no member of the French Bourbon house should become the royal consort of Spain. During each of the visits of Queen Victoria to the Château d'Eu the king of the French gave her a distinct verbal assent to these conditions. The Spanish queen had many suitors, but she was slow