Viscount Melbourne to Queen Victoria.
South Street, 1st June 1842.
Lord Melbourne presents his humble duty to your Majesty. He was much shocked at learning, which he did not do until six o'clock yesterday evening, the event which took place on Monday. After what took place on Sunday, it must have been a trial to your Majesty's nerves, and still more to those of the Prince, to go out on Monday; but it appears to Lord Melbourne that your Majesty judged quite correctly in doing so. Lord Melbourne hardly knows what to say of this repeated attempt. It is a depravity and a malice as unintelligible as it is atrocious. Lord Melbourne is at least as grateful as any one of your Majesty's subjects, and the gratitude is universal and fervent for your Majesty's safety.
Lord Melbourne had ridden over in the morning to visit Lord and Lady Uxbridge in their rural retirement, and upon his return to Brocket Hall, about six o'clock, found the morning newspaper with the accounts of what had happened. If they had sent him down a messenger on Monday night, which it would have been better to have done, he would have been yesterday in his place in the House of Lords.
Lord Melbourne found Uxbridge enveloped in parcels and boxes, which he was busy unpacking, Lady Uxbridge reclining by the stream under the shade of a plane-tree, and the two young ladies somewhat pensive. The place looked beautiful, but Lord Melbourne fears that all its beauty will not be a compensation to them for London at this time of the year.
Sir James Graham to Queen Victoria.
THE ADDRESS
Whitehall, 1st June 1842.
Sir James Graham, with humble duty to your Majesty, submits a copy of the Answer to the Address; and an alteration has been made in the Answer which Sir James Graham hopes may render it conformable to the tender and generous feelings which your Majesty has deigned to express with reference to the Prince.
The two Houses of Parliament followed the exact precedent which has been established in Oxford's case; and although the life of the Prince, so dear to your Majesty, is highly valued by all your loving subjects, yet the crime of treason attaches only to an attack on the sacred person of your Majesty; and the expressions used by Parliament with reference to these atrocious crimes, when directed against the Sovereign, are necessarily inapplicable to any other person, and could not be used with propriety. Hence the omission in the former case of all allusion to the Prince; and the silence of Parliament on the present occasion is to be ascribed to the same cause—not to any cold indifference, which the general feeling of attachment to the Prince entirely forbids.