Sir J. Login,33 who holds the same opinion, and has great Indian experience, does not find any fault with the Proclamation, however seemingly it may sound at variance with these opinions, and this on account of the peculiar position of affairs in Oudh. It is a great pity that Lord Ellenborough, with his knowledge, experience, activity, and cleverness, should be so entirely unable to submit to general rules of conduct. The Queen has been for some time much alarmed at his writing letters of his own to all the most important Indian Chiefs and Kings explaining his policy. All this renders the position of a Governor-General almost untenable, and that of the Government at home very hazardous.
Footnote 32: This was a later despatch of Lord Ellenborough's, also in reference to the pacification of Oudh, and not shown to the Cabinet before it was sent.
Footnote 33: See ante, [p. 248], note 41.
Memorandum by Sir Charles Phipps.
LORD ABERDEEN CONSULTED
[Undated. ? 15th May 1858.]
Upon being admitted to Lord Aberdeen, I informed him that the Queen and Prince were anxious to hear his opinion upon the present most unfortunate state of affairs, but that, knowing how easily every event was perverted in such times as the present, Her Majesty and His Royal Highness had thought that it might have been subject to misapprehension had he been known to have been at Buckingham Palace, and that I had been therefore directed to call upon him, with a view of obtaining his opinion and advice upon certain important points.
PREROGATIVE OF DISSOLUTION
The first was the question of a Dissolution of Parliament in the event of the Government being defeated upon the question which was at present pending. I told him that I was permitted to communicate to him in the strictest confidence, that in a late Audience which Lord Derby had with the Queen, he had asked her permission to be allowed to announce that, in the event of an adverse majority, he had Her Majesty's sanction to a Dissolution of Parliament.
That the Queen had declined to give such sanction, or even such a pledge, and equally guarded herself against being supposed to have made up her mind to refuse her sanction to a Dissolution, had told Lord Derby that she could not then make any prospective decision upon the subject. I told him that in point of fact Her Majesty was disinclined to grant to Lord Derby her authority for a Dissolution, but that the Queen had at once refused to grant to Lord Derby her sanction for making the announcement he wished, as she considered that it would be a very unconstitutional threat for him to hold over the head of the Parliament, with her authority, by way of biassing their decision.