The Letters of Queen Victoria Volume Iii Part 107

_24th June 1861._

The Queen approves of Sir R. Beth.e.l.l[18] as Lord Campbell's successor.

Lord Palmerston is aware of the Queen's objections to the appointment; they will have weighed with him as much as with her. If therefore he finally makes this recommendation, the Queen must a.s.sume that under all the circ.u.mstances he considers it the best solution of the difficulty, and that his Colleagues take the same view.

[Footnote 18: Lord Campbell died at the age of eighty-two; his successor was created Lord Westbury.]

[Pageheading: THE d.u.c.h.eSS OF SUTHERLAND]

_The d.u.c.h.ess of Sutherland to Queen Victoria._

STAFFORD HOUSE, _26th June 1861_.

MADAM,--I shall never forget your Majesty and the Prince's kindness.[19]

I am anxious to tell your Majesty as strongly as _it was_, what _his_ feeling was of my service to your Majesty; he approved and delighted in it; dear as it was to me--it could not have been if this had not been so, nor those occasional absences, if he had not had devoted children when I was away; still, when the great parting comes one grudges every hour, and the yearning is terrible.

Even in his last illness he showed an anxious feeling, as if he feared I might resign, saying that I knew what an interest it had been to him, how he had liked hearing of the Queen and her family. He spoke very late in life of your Majesty's constant kindness. This feeling and early a.s.sociations made him take a great interest in the Princess Royal's marriage, which did not leave him. If it ever crossed your Majesty--if your Majesty should ever feel that I might have been devoted, if I had had but one service, pray believe that he took the greatest pleasure and pride in that other great service; and that therefore he really felt it best it should be so.

Since I have written this I have received your Majesty's most kind letter--and the precious gift of the photograph so wonderfully like, and rendering exactly that most kind and loving countenance. I shall like much sending one to your Majesty of my dearest husband.

I repeat to myself the precious word that I am dear to your Majesty again and again; and that my love to your Majesty was returned. How often I shall think of this in my altered life, in my solitude of heart! The admiration I have ever felt for the Prince has been one of the great pleasures of my life; that he should be your Majesty's husband, a constant thankfulness. I feel I owe him much, and that great approbation and admiration are not barren feelings. I have the honour to remain, Madam, your Majesty's devoted Subject,

HARRIET SUTHERLAND.

I fear I have written worse than usual--I can hardly see to do so--weak eyes and tears.

[Footnote 19: The Duke of Sutherland had died in the preceding February.]

[Pageheading: MR LAYARD]

_Viscount Palmerston to Queen Victoria._

PICCADILLY, _8th July 1861_.

Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and begs to state that Lord Elcho[20] this afternoon moved a Resolution that the new Foreign Office should not be built in the Palladian style. Mr Charles Buxton seconded the Motion. Mr Cowper[21] opposed it, stating reasons for preferring the Italian style to the Gothic. Mr Layard was for neither, but seemed to wish that somebody would invent a new style of architecture. Mr t.i.te,[22] the architect, was strongly for the Italian style; Lord John Manners, swayed by erroneous views in religion and taste, was enthusiastic for Gothic;[23] Mr Dudley Fortescue confided in a low voice to a limited range of hearers some weak arguments in favour of Gothic; Mr Osborne seemed to be against everything that anybody had ever proposed, and wanted to put off the building till some plan better suited to his own taste should have been invented. Viscount Palmerston answered the objections made to the Italian plan, and Lord Elcho's Motion was negatived by 188 to 75. The House then went into Committee of Supply, and the first estimate being that for the Foreign Office, some of the Gothic party who had not been able to deliver their speeches on Lord Elcho's Motion, let them off on this estimate....

[Footnote 20: Now Earl of Wemyss.]

[Footnote 21: Mr William Cowper, at this time First Commissioner of Works.]

[Footnote 22: Mr (afterwards Sir) William t.i.te, was now Member for Bath; he had been the architect entrusted with the task of rebuilding the Royal Exchange.]

[Footnote 23: Mr Gilbert Scott had made his first designs for the new Foreign Office in the Gothic style; his appointment as architect for the building was made by the Derby Government, but the scheme which they favoured, for a Gothic building, was opposed by Lord Palmerston, and Scott adopted the Italian style in deference to his views.]

_Queen Victoria to Viscount Palmerston._

OSBORNE, _24th July 1861_.

The Queen is sorry that she cannot alter her determination about Mr Layard.[24] She fully recognises the importance of the Parliamentary exigencies; but the Queen cannot sacrifice to them the higher interests of the country. Neither Mr Layard nor Mr Osborne ought to be proposed as representatives of the Foreign Office in the House of Commons, and therefore of the Crown to foreign countries. If Lord Palmerston can bring Mr Layard into office in some other place, to get his a.s.sistance in the House of Commons, she will not object.

[Footnote 24: In the course of July, Lord John Russell, who had entered Parliament for the first time in 1813, was raised to the Peerage as Earl Russell and Viscount Amberley. To supply the loss to the Government of two such powerful debaters as Lord Russell and Lord Herbert, Lord Palmerston had suggested Mr Layard as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, mentioning also the claims of Mr Bernal Osborne.]

[Pageheading: MR LAYARD]

_Viscount Palmerston to Queen Victoria._

94 PICCADILLY, _24th July 1861_.

Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and regrets very much to find that he has not succeeded in removing your Majesty's objections to Mr Layard as Under-Secretary of State for the Foreign Department; but he still hopes that he may be able to do so.

If he rightly understands your Majesty's last communication on this subject, he is led to infer that your Majesty's main objection is founded on a dislike that Mr Layard should be the representative and organ of the Foreign Policy of the Crown in the House of Commons.

With regard to his being a subordinate officer in the Foreign Office, your Majesty's sanction to that was obtained in 1851-52, when Mr Layard was Under-Secretary to Lord Granville. His tenure of office at that time was short; not from any fault of his, but because the Government of that day was overthrown by Viscount Palmerston's Motion in the House of Commons in February 1852 about the Militia; and Lord Granville speaks highly of Mr Layard's performance of his official duties at that time. There is no reason, but the reverse, for thinking him less competent now than then; and an Under-Secretary of State is only the instrument and mouthpiece of his princ.i.p.al to say what he is told, and to write what he is bid.

With regard to Mr Layard's position in the House of Commons, he would in no respect be the representative of the Foreign Policy of the country; that function will belong to Viscount Palmerston, now that the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs will be removed to the House of Lords, and it will be Viscount Palmerston's duty and care to see that n.o.body infringes upon that function. Mr Layard would be useful to answer unimportant questions as to matters of fact, but all questions involving the Foreign Policy of the country will be answered by Viscount Palmerston as head of the Government, as was done when Lord Clarendon was Foreign Secretary and in the House of Lords. But there are not unfrequently great debates on Foreign Affairs in the House of Commons, and there are many members, some of them not perhaps of great weight, who join in attacks on such matters. It is of great importance to your Majesty's Government to have a sufficient number of speakers on such occasions. Lord John Russell and Lord Herbert were ready and powerful. Mr Gladstone is almost the only one on the Treasury Bench who follows up foreign questions close enough to take an active part; it would be of great advantage to Viscount Palmerston to have as a.s.sistant on such occasions a man like Mr Layard, knowing the details of matters discussed, able to make a good speech in reply to Mr Fitzgerald, or Mr Baillie Cochrane,[25] or Mr Hennessy,[26] or Sir G. Bowyer,[27] and who would shape his course in strict conformity with the line which might be chalked out for him by Viscount Palmerston. Your Majesty need therefore be under no apprehension that Mr Layard or anybody else, who might in the House of Commons hold the office of Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, would appear to the world as the organ or representative of the Foreign Policy of your Majesty's Government. With respect to giving Mr Layard any other office of the same kind, there is none other in which he could be placed without putting into the Foreign Office somebody far less fit for it, and putting Mr Layard into some office for which he is far less fit. His fitness is for the Foreign Department, and to use the ill.u.s.tration, which was a favourite one of the late Mr Drummond, it would be putting the wrong man into the wrong hole. Viscount Palmerston has, as charged with the conduct of the business of the Government in the House of Commons, sustained a severe loss by the removal of two most able and useful colleagues, Lord Herbert and Lord John Russell, and he earnestly hopes that your Majesty will be graciously pleased to a.s.sist him in his endeavours, not indeed to supply their place, but in some degree to lessen the detriment which their removal has occasioned.

[Footnote 25: Afterwards Lord Lamington.]

[Footnote 26: Mr (afterwards Sir) John Pope Hennessy, M.P. for King's County.]

[Footnote 27: M.P. for Dundalk.]

[Pageheading: MR LAYARD]

_Queen Victoria to Viscount Palmerston._

OSBORNE, _25th July 1861_.

The Prince has reported to the Queen all that Lord Palmerston said to him on the subject of Mr Layard; this has not had the effect of altering her opinion as to the disqualifications of that gentleman for the particular office for which Lord Palmerston proposes him. This appointment would, in the Queen's opinion, be a serious evil. If Lord Palmerston on sincere self-examination should consider that without it the difficulty of carrying on his Government was such as to endanger the continuance of its success, the Queen will, of course, have to admit an evil for the country in order to avert a greater. She still trusts, however, that knowing the nature of the Queen's objections, he will not place her in this dilemma.