Page:The Letters Of Queen Victoria, vol. 3 (1908).djvu/114

160 MR SIDNEY HERBERT [CHAP. XXIV with Clarendon on the subject, and I am entirely satisfied with his disposition and intentions. I am sanguine in the belief that he will give effect to his present views.

A perseverance in the refusal to join Palmerston will produce very serious effects, and will never be attributed to its true cause. The public feeling will be strongly pronounced against you, and you will greatly suffer in reputation, if you persevere at such a moment as this in refusing to continue in the Cabinet.

In addition to the public necessity, I think you owe much to our late Whig colleagues, who behaved so nobly and generously towards us after Lord John’s resignation. They have some right to expect this sacrifice.

Although your arguments do not apply to me, for I yesterday adopted them all, you conclude your letter by pressing me to enter the Cabinet. Now there is really no sense in this, and I cannot imagine how you can seriously propose it. You would expose me to a gratuitous indignity, to which no one ought to expect me to submit. I say gratuitous, because I could not be of the slightest use in such a situation for the purpose you require.

I can retire with perfect equanimity from the Government in consequence of the vote of the House of Commons; but to be stigmatised as the Head and tolerated as the subordinate member I cannot endure.

If at any future time my presence should be required in a Cabinet, I should feel no objection to accept any office, or to enter it without office. But to be the Head of a Cabinet to-day, and to become a subordinate member of the very same Cabinet to-morrow, would be a degradation to which I could never submit, that I would rather die than do so—and indeed the sense of it would go far to kill me.

If you tell me that your retaining your present offices, without the slightest sacrifice, but on the contrary with the approbation of all, is in any degree to depend on my taking such a course, I can only say that, as friends, I cannot believe it possible that you should be guilty of such wanton cruelty without any national object.

I must, then, again earnestly exhort you to reconsider the decision of yesterday, and to continue to form part of the Government. I will do anything in my power to facilitate this. If you like, I will go to Palmerston and promote any explanation between him and Gladstone on the subject of peace and war. Or I will tell him that you have yielded to my strong recommendation. In short, I am ready to do anything in my power.

I wish you to show this letter to Gladstone and to Graham, to whom, as you will see, it is addressed as much as to yourself.

I hope to meet you this morning, and Gladstone will also come to the Admiralty. Yours, etc. ABERDEEN.

The Prince Albert to the Earl of Aberdeen. BUCKINGHAM PALACE, 6th February 1855. My dear Lord Aberdeen,—We are just returning to Windsor. Lord Palmerston kissed hands after having announced