Sir Robert Peel, with his humble duty to your Majesty, begs leave to acquaint your Majesty that a leading paragraph in the Times of to-day, asserting that your Majesty's servants had unanimously agreed to an immediate and total repeal of the Corn Laws, is quite without foundation.28
Footnote 28: See Memoirs of the Life of Henry Reeve, vol. i. p. 175, for Lord Dufferin's refutation of the story that Sidney Herbert confided the secret to Mrs Norton, and that she sold it to the Times. The story has obtained a wide currency through Mr Meredith's Diana of the Crossways. Lord Stanmore, in his Life of Sidney Herbert, substantially attributes the communication to Lord Aberdeen, but does not give the details.
Sir Robert Peel to Queen Victoria.29
Whitehall, 5th December 1845.
(Friday evening.)
Sir Robert Peel presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and will wait upon your Majesty to-morrow evening, leaving London by the half-past twelve train.
Sir Robert Peel will avail himself of your Majesty's kind proposal to remain at Osborne until Monday morning.
He will come to Osborne with a heart full of gratitude and devotion to your Majesty, but with a strong conviction (all the grounds for which he will, with your Majesty's permission, explain to your Majesty) that in the present state of affairs, he can render more service to your Majesty and to the country in a private than in a public station.
Footnote 29: Peel reported to the Queen the Cabinet discussions on the Corn Law question. The Queen wrote that the news caused her much uneasiness, and that she felt certain that her Minister would not leave her at a moment of such difficulty, and when a crisis was impending.