Queen Victoria to Viscount Palmerston.
GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
Windsor Castle, 24th December 1857.
The Queen only now returns to Lord Palmerston the Memorandum containing the Heads of an arrangement for the future Government of India, which the Committee of Cabinet have agreed to recommend. She will have an opportunity of seeing Lord Palmerston before the Cabinet meet again, and to hear a little more in detail the reasons which influenced the Committee in their several decisions. She wishes only to recommend two points to Lord Palmerston's consideration: 1st, the mode of communication between the Queen and the new Government which it is intended to establish. As long as the Government was that of the Company, the Sovereign was generally left quite ignorant of decisions and despatches; now that the Government is to be that of the Sovereign, and the direction will, she presumes, be given in her name, a direct official responsibility to her will have to be established. She doubts whether any one but a Secretary of State could speak in the Queen's name, like the Foreign Secretary to Foreign Courts, the Colonial Secretary to the Governors of the Colonies, and the Home Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and the Lieutenants of the Counties of Great Britain, the Judges, Convocations, Mayors, etc., etc. On the other hand, would the position of a Secretary of State be compatible with his being President of a Council? The Treasury and Admiralty act as "My Lords," but they only administer special departments, and do not direct the policy of a country in the Queen's name. The mixture of supreme direction, and also of the conduct of the administration of the department to be directed, has in practice been found as inconvenient in the War Department as it is wrong in principle.
The other point is the importance of having only one Army, whether native, local, or general, with one discipline and one command, that of the Commander-in-Chief. This is quite compatible with first appointments to the native Army, being vested as a point of patronage in the members of the Council, but it ought to be distinctly recognised in order to do away with those miserable jealousies between the different military services, which have done more harm to us in India than, perhaps, any other circumstance.
Perhaps Lord Palmerston would circulate this letter amongst the members of the Committee who agreed upon the proposed scheme?
Viscount Canning to Queen Victoria.
DEATH OF HAVELOCK
Government House, Calcutta, 24th December 1857.
Lord Canning presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and begs permission to express to your Majesty at the earliest opportunity the respectful gratitude with which he has received your Majesty's most gracious letter of the 9th of November.