Victoria R.
You will receive a small parcel for my dear Charlotte for Christmas Eve, and I have directed some prize Christmas beef to be forwarded to Leo, which I hope he will approve of.
The Earl of Derby to Queen Victoria.
LORD DERBY'S JUSTIFICATION
St James's Square, 22nd December 1852.
Lord Derby, with his humble duty, learns with the deepest regret, by the note which he has just had the honour of receiving, that the statement which he felt it his duty to make in the House of Lords has appeared to your Majesty not calculated to render easier the difficult task which has been thrown upon your Majesty by the resignation of himself and his colleagues. Lord Derby begs humbly, but most sincerely, to assure your Majesty that nothing could have been farther from his intention than to let fall a single word which could increase the difficulties of the present position. He feels the full extent of those difficulties, and he may perhaps be forgiven if he entertains a strong opinion that a due appreciation of their magnitude might have been expected to have some weight with those Conservative statesmen, whose opposition thrown into the adverse scale turned the balance against your Majesty's servants, and rendered their retirement from office inevitable. Lord Derby does not affect to deny that he thinks he has some reason, personally and politically, to find fault with the course which they have pursued: but to suffer any such consideration to influence his public conduct, with regard to the Government now in process of formation, would be entirely at variance with his sense of public duty, and inconsistent with the deep gratitude which he must ever feel for the confidence with which your Majesty has honoured him. Lord Derby confesses himself at a loss to understand in what manner Lord Aberdeen can be enabled to reconcile the many and serious discrepancies, in matters both of Church and State, which would appear to exist among his presumed future colleagues; but it will give him unfeigned satisfaction to see these difficulties surmounted in such a sense as to enable him to give to the Government his independent support; and in the meantime it is his determination honestly to undertake the task, difficult as it must be, of keeping together a powerful Party, without the excitement of opposition to a Government by which their own leaders have been superseded, and of some members of which they think they have reason to complain; and even to induce that Party to give it their support, whenever they can do so consistently, with their own conscientious convictions.
Memorandum by the Prince Albert.
THE NEW GOVERNMENT
Windsor Castle, 22nd December 1852.
We arrived here from Osborne at half-past one, and saw Lord Aberdeen at half-past five, who reported the progress he had made in the formation of his Government.