Lord Melbourne sends a letter which he has received from his sister, which may not be unentertaining. Lady Palmerston is struck, as everybody is who goes to Ireland, with the candid warmth and vehement demonstration of feeling. England always appears cold, heartless, and sulky in comparison....
With respect to the questions put to me by your Majesty at the desire of His Royal Highness, Lord Melbourne begs leave to assure your Majesty that he will be at all times most ready and anxious to give any information in his power upon points of this sort, which are very curious, very important, very worthy to be enquired into, and upon which accurate information is not easily to be found. All the political part of the English Constitution is fully understood, and distinctly stated in Blackstone and many other books, but the Ministerial part, the work of conducting the executive government, has rested so much on practice, on usage, on understanding, that there is no publication to which reference can be made for the explanation and description of it. It is to be sought in debates, in protests, in letters, in memoirs, and wherever it can be picked up. It seems to be stupid not to be able to say at once when two Secretaries of State were established; but Lord Melbourne is not able. He apprehends that there was but one until the end of Queen Anne's reign, and that two were instituted by George I., probably because upon his frequent journeys to Hanover he wanted the Secretary of State with him, and at the same time it was necessary that there should be an officer of the same authority left at home to transact the domestic affairs.
Prime Minister is a term belonging to the last century. Lord Melbourne doubts its being to be found in English Parliamentary language previously. Sir Robert Walpole was always accused of having introduced and arrogated to himself an office previously unknown to the Law and Constitution, that of Prime or Sole Minister, and we learn from Lady Charlotte Lindsay's154 accounts of her father, that in his own family Lord North would never suffer himself to be called prime Minister, because it was an office unknown to the Constitution. This was a notion derived from the combined Whig and Tory opposition to Sir Robert Walpole, to which Lord North and his family had belonged.
Lord Melbourne is very sorry to hear that the Princess Royal continues to suffer from some degree of indisposition. From what your Majesty had said more than once before, Lord Melbourne had felt anxiety upon this subject, and he saw the Baron yesterday, who conversed with him much upon it, and informed him of what had taken place. Lord Melbourne hopes that your Majesty will attribute it only to Lord Melbourne's anxious desire for the security and increase of your Majesty's happiness, if he ventures to say that the Baron appears to him to have much reason in what he urges, and in the view which he takes. It is absolutely required that confidence should be reposed in those who are to have the management and bear the responsibility, and that they should not be too much interrupted or interfered with.
Footnote 154: Daughter of Lord North (afterwards Earl of Guilford) and wife of Lieut.-Colonel the Hon. John Lindsay. She lived till 1849—a link with the past.
Viscount Melbourne to Queen Victoria.
SECRETARIES OF STATE
South Street, 5th November 1841.
Lord Melbourne presents his humble duty to your Majesty. Not feeling satisfied of the correctness of the information which he had given to your Majesty respecting the office of Secretary of State, he yesterday evening requested Mr Allen155 to look into the matter, and he has just received from him the enclosed short memorandum, which he has the honour of transmitting to your Majesty. This shows that Lord Melbourne was quite wrong with respect to the period at which two Secretaries of State were first employed, and that it was much earlier than he had imagined.