Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and regrets very much to find that he has not succeeded in removing your Majesty's objections to Mr Layard as Under-Secretary of State for the Foreign Department; but he still hopes that he may be able to do so. If he rightly understands your Majesty's last communication on this subject, he is led to infer that your Majesty's main objection is founded on a dislike that Mr Layard should be the representative and organ of the Foreign Policy of the Crown in the House of Commons.
With regard to his being a subordinate officer in the Foreign Office, your Majesty's sanction to that was obtained in 1851-52, when Mr Layard was Under-Secretary to Lord Granville. His tenure of office at that time was short; not from any fault of his, but because the Government of that day was overthrown by Viscount Palmerston's Motion in the House of Commons in February 1852 about the Militia; and Lord Granville speaks highly of Mr Layard's performance of his official duties at that time. There is no reason, but the reverse, for thinking him less competent now than then; and an Under-Secretary of State is only the instrument and mouthpiece of his principal to say what he is told, and to write what he is bid.
With regard to Mr Layard's position in the House of Commons, he would in no respect be the representative of the Foreign Policy of the country; that function will belong to Viscount Palmerston, now that the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs will be removed to the House of Lords, and it will be Viscount Palmerston's duty and care to see that nobody infringes upon that function. Mr Layard would be useful to answer unimportant questions as to matters of fact, but all questions involving the Foreign Policy of the country will be answered by Viscount Palmerston as head of the Government, as was done when Lord Clarendon was Foreign Secretary and in the House of Lords. But there are not unfrequently great debates on Foreign Affairs in the House of Commons, and there are many members, some of them not perhaps of great weight, who join in attacks on such matters. It is of great importance to your Majesty's Government to have a sufficient number of speakers on such occasions. Lord John Russell and Lord Herbert were ready and powerful. Mr Gladstone is almost the only one on the Treasury Bench who follows up foreign questions close enough to take an active part; it would be of great advantage to Viscount Palmerston to have as assistant on such occasions a man like Mr Layard, knowing the details of matters discussed, able to make a good speech in reply to Mr Fitzgerald, or Mr Baillie Cochrane,25 or Mr Hennessy,26 or Sir G. Bowyer,27 and who would shape his course in strict conformity with the line which might be chalked out for him by Viscount Palmerston. Your Majesty need therefore be under no apprehension that Mr Layard or anybody else, who might in the House of Commons hold the office of Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, would appear to the world as the organ or representative of the Foreign Policy of your Majesty's Government. With respect to giving Mr Layard any other office of the same kind, there is none other in which he could be placed without putting into the Foreign Office somebody far less fit for it, and putting Mr Layard into some office for which he is far less fit. His fitness is for the Foreign Department, and to use the illustration, which was a favourite one of the late Mr Drummond, it would be putting the wrong man into the wrong hole. Viscount Palmerston has, as charged with the conduct of the business of the Government in the House of Commons, sustained a severe loss by the removal of two most able and useful colleagues, Lord Herbert and Lord John Russell, and he earnestly hopes that your Majesty will be graciously pleased to assist him in his endeavours, not indeed to supply their place, but in some degree to lessen the detriment which their removal has occasioned.
Footnote 25: Afterwards Lord Lamington.
Footnote 26: Mr (afterwards Sir) John Pope Hennessy, M.P. for King's County.
Footnote 27: M.P. for Dundalk.
Queen Victoria to Viscount Palmerston.
MR LAYARD
Osborne, 25th July 1861.
The Prince has reported to the Queen all that Lord Palmerston said to him on the subject of Mr Layard; this has not had the effect of altering her opinion as to the disqualifications of that gentleman for the particular office for which Lord Palmerston proposes him. This appointment would, in the Queen's opinion, be a serious evil. If Lord Palmerston on sincere self-examination should consider that without it the difficulty of carrying on his Government was such as to endanger the continuance of its success, the Queen will, of course, have to admit an evil for the country in order to avert a greater. She still trusts, however, that knowing the nature of the Queen's objections, he will not place her in this dilemma.