"I would waive every pretension to office, I declare to God! sooner than that my acceptance of it should be attended with any personal humiliation to the Queen."
He thought that giving in the names of those Ladies whom he considered obnoxious was an offensive course towards the Queen.
For the sake of office, which he did not covet, he could not concede any constitutional principle, but it was not necessary that that principle should be mooted.
"It would be repulsive to my feelings that Her Majesty should part with any of her Ladies, as the result of a forced stipulation on my part; in a party sense it would doubtless be advantageous to me to say that I had demanded from the Queen, and the Queen had conceded to me the appointments of these three Ladies."
The mode he would like, and which he considered as least objectionable for Her Majesty, was for Her Majesty to say to him, "There is no occasion to revive this constitutional question, as those ladies immediately connected with prominent members of the Administration have sent in their resignation."
The vacancies existing before Sir Robert Peel sees Her Majesty, there is no necessity for discussion.
On the one hand, by this means, there was less appearance of insult to the Queen, and on the other, there was no appearance of concession of principle upon his.
Sir Robert was ready to make any personal sacrifice for Her Majesty's comfort, except that of his honour. "Can the Queen for an instant suppose that I would permit my party to urge me on to insist upon anything incompatible with Her Majesty's dignity, which it would be my great aim and honour to defend?"
[This was his indignant reply to my remark upon the rumours that his party would press him to coerce and subdue Her Majesty.]
Sir Robert thinks it better for the Queen to avoid anything in the shape of a stipulation. He would like what he would have done upon a former occasion (and upon which, on the honour of a gentleman, his views had undergone no change) to be taken as a test of what he would be ready to concede to.