Queen Victoria to Mr Disraeli.
Windsor Castle, 14th November 1852.
The Queen has received with much satisfaction Mr Disraeli's letter of this day's date, in which he informs her of his readiness to provide efficiently for the defence of the country, the call for which is very urgent. Lord Malmesbury, with whom the Prince has talked very fully over this subject, will communicate further with Mr Disraeli and Lord Derby on his return to Town to-morrow.
The Marquis of Dalhousie to Queen Victoria.
LORD DALHOUSIE
Government House, 23rd November 1852.
The Governor-General still retains some hope of seeing general peace restored in India before he quits it finally, as your Majesty's Ministers and the Court of Directors have some time since requested him not to retire from its administration in January next, as he had intended to do.
Many private considerations combined to draw him homewards, even though the honour and the advantages of retaining this Office were willingly recognised. But the gracious approbation with which his services here have been viewed was a sufficient motive for continuing them for some time longer, if they were thought profitable to the State.
Your Majesty has very recently been pleased to bestow upon him a still further distinction, which calls not merely for the expression of his deep and humble gratitude to your Majesty, but for a further devotion to your Majesty's service of whatever power he may possess for promoting its interests.
That your Majesty should prefer him at all to an Office of such traditional distinction as the Wardenship was an honour to which the Governor-General would never at any time have dreamt of aspiring. But by conferring it upon him thus—during his absence—and above all, by conferring it upon him in immediate succession to one whom he must all his life regard with reverence, affection, and gratitude—your Majesty has surrounded this honour with so much of honourable circumstance that the Governor-General is wholly unable to give full expression to the feelings with which he has received your Majesty's goodness.