| The Ministry as it stood on the 1st of January 1858. | The Ministry as formed by the Earl of Derby in February 1858. | |||
| Viscount Palmerston | First Lord of the Treasury | Earl of Derby. | ||
| Marquis of Lansdowne | (Without Office). | |||
| Lord Cranworth | Lord Chancellor | Lord Chelmsford. | ||
| Earl Granville | President of the Council | Marquis of Salisbury. | ||
| Marquis of Clanricarde | Lord Privy Seal | Earl of Hardwicke. | ||
| Sir George Grey | Home Secretary | Mr Walpole. | ||
| Earl of Clarendon | Foreign Secretary | Earl of Malmesbury. | ||
| Mr Labouchere (afterwards Lord Taunton) | } | Colonial Secretary | { | Lord Stanley (afterwards Earl of Derby). |
| Lord Panmure (afterwards Earl of Dalhousie) | } | War Secretary | General Peel. | |
| Sir G. C. Lewis | Chancellor of the Exchequer | { | Mr Disraeli (afterwards Earl of Beaconsfield) | |
| Sir Charles Wood (afterwards Viscount Halifax) | } | First Lord of the Admiralty | { | Sir John Pakington (afterwards Lord Hampton). |
| Mr Vernon Smith (afterwards Lord Lyveden) | } | President of the Board of Control | Earl of Ellenborough. | |
| Lord Stanley of Alderley | President of the Board of Trade | Mr Henley. | ||
| Mr M. T. Baines | Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster | (Not in the Cabinet.) | ||
| Duke of Argyll | Postmaster-General | (Not in the Cabinet.) | ||
| (Not in the Cabinet) | First Commissioner of Works and Public Buildings | { | Lord John Manners (afterwards Duke of Rutland). |
The Earl of Malmesbury to Queen Victoria.
THE ORSINI PLOT
Whitehall, 7th March 1858.
The Earl of Malmesbury presents his humble duty to the Queen, and has the honour to thank your Majesty for the interesting letter12 sent to him by your Majesty, and which he returns to your Majesty by this messenger. Lord Malmesbury hopes and believes that much of the excitement that prevailed on the other side the water is subsiding. All his letters from private sources, and the account of Colonel Claremont, agree on this point. In this country, if our differences with France are settled, it is probable that the popular jealousy of foreign interference will be killed; but at least for some time it will show foreign Courts how dangerous it is even to criticise our domestic Institutions. Lord Malmesbury has carefully abstained from giving Lord Cowley or M. de Persigny the slightest hope that we could alter the law, but has confined himself to saying that the law was itself as much on its trial as the prisoners Bernard and Truelove.13 If, therefore, the law should prove to be a phantom of justice, or anomalous in its action, whatever measures your Majesty's Government may hereafter take to reform it, it will be received by France as an unexpected boon and a proof of good faith and amity.
THE EMPEROR AND THE CARBONARI
In attending to the idea referred to by your Majesty that the Emperor took the oath of the Assassins' Society, Lord Malmesbury can almost assure your Majesty that such is not the case.14 Lord Malmesbury first made His Majesty's acquaintance in Italy when they were both very young men (twenty years of age). They were both under the influence of those romantic feelings which the former history and the present degradation of Italy may naturally inspire even at a more advanced time of life—and the Prince Louis Napoleon, to the knowledge of Lord Malmesbury, certainly engaged himself in the conspiracies of the time—but it was with the higher class of the Carbonari, men like General Sercognani and General Pépé. The Prince used to talk to Lord Malmesbury upon these men and their ideas and plans with all the openness that exists between two youths, and Lord Malmesbury has many times heard him condemn with disgust the societies of villains which hung on the flank of the conspirators, and which deterred many of the best families and ablest gentlemen in Romagna from joining them. Lord Malmesbury believes the report therefore to be a fable, and at some future period will, if it should interest your Majesty, relate to your Majesty some details respecting the Emperor's share in the conspiracies of 1828-1829....
Footnote 12: This was a letter from the Prince de Chimay to the King of the Belgians in reference to the Orsini plot.
Footnote 13: Before Lord Palmerston's Government had retired, Simon Bernard, a resident of Bayswater, was committed for trial for complicity in the Orsini attentat. He was committed for conspiracy only, but, at the instance of the new Government, the charge was altered to one of feloniously slaying one of the persons killed by the explosion. As this constructive murder was actually committed on French soil, Bernard's trial had, under the existing law, to be held before a Special Commission, over which Lord Campbell presided. The evidence overwhelmingly established the prisoner's guilt, but, carried away by the eloquent, if irrelevant, speech of Mr Edwin James for the defence, the jury acquitted him. Truelove was charged with criminal libel, for openly approving, in a published pamphlet, Orsini's attempt, and regretting its failure. The Government threw up the prosecution, pusillanimously in the judgment of Lord Campbell, who records that he carefuly studied, with a view to his own hearing of the case, the proceedings against Lord George Gordon for libelling Marie Antoinette, against Vint for libelling the Emperor Paul, and against Peltier for libelling Napoleon I.