"Upon the best consideration which the moment allows, I think it plain that alone, as I must be, I could not render you service worth your having.
"The dissolution of last year excluded from Parliament men with whom I had sympathies, and it in some degree affected the position of those political friends with whom I have now for many years been united, through evil and (much more rarely) good report.
"Those who lament the rupture of old traditions may well desire the reconstruction of a Party; but the reconstitution of a Party can only be effected, if at all, by the return of the old influences to their places, and not by the junction of one isolated person.
"The difficulty is now enhanced in my case by the fact that in your party, reduced as it is at the present moment in numbers, there is a small but active and not unimportant section, who avowedly regard me as the representative of the most dangerous ideas. I should thus, unfortunately, be to you a source of weakness in the heart of your own adherents, while I should bring you no Party or group of friends to make up for their defection or discontent.
"For the reasons which I have thus stated or glanced at, my reply to your letter must be in the negative.
"I must, however, add that a Government formed by you at this time will in my opinion have strong claims upon me, and upon any one situated as I am, for favourable presumptions, and in the absence of conscientious difference on important questions, for support.
"I have had an opportunity of seeing Lord Aberdeen and Sidney Herbert, and they fully concur in the sentiment I have just expressed."
[Footnote 10:] See ante, [p. 148], note 87.
Queen Victoria to the Earl of Derby.
THE CHANCELLORSHIP