Lord John to Lady John Russell
CHESHAM PLACE, December 17, 1845
I want a security that I shall be able to carry a total repeal of the Corn Laws without delay, and that security must consist in an assurance of Sir Robert Peel's support. Unless I get this, I give up the task.
Lady John to Lord John Russell
MINTO, Sunday, December 21, 1845
It is difficult to write while our suspense lasts.... It does not seem unlikely that Lord Grey[25] will have yielded, and all be smooth, or smoother, again. Papa tells me not to wish it even on public grounds. On private ones I certainly do not; but I should be ashamed if at such a time my anxieties were not chiefly for you as a statesman, not as my husband, and for my country more than for myself. If it turns out that the interests of the statesman and the country and the wife agree, why then let us be thankful; if not, why then let us be thankful still that we can make some sacrifice to duty. You see that my "courage mounteth with occasion"; and though I have low and gloomy fits when I think of my ill-health and its probable consequences, I am sure that, on the whole, I shall not disgrace you. Oh, what a week of toil and trouble you have had, and how gladly I would have shared them with you to more purpose than I can do at this terrible distance.... It is so pleasant to write to you. When I have finished my letter I always grow sad, as if I was really saying good-bye to you. How have you been sleeping? and eating? and have you walked every day? ... Good-bye, Heaven bless you, my dearest love. I trust that this has been a day of rest to you, and that God hears and accepts our prayers for one another.
Lord John wrote daily to his wife, and the following three letters to her show what he felt during this anxious time:
CHESHAM PLACE, December 19, 1845
It is all at an end. Howick [Lord Grey] would not serve with Lord Palmerston as Foreign Secretary, and it was impossible for me to go on unless I had both. I am very happy ... at the result. I think that for the present it will tend much to our happiness; and power may come, some day or other, in a less odious shape.
CHESHAM PLACE, December 20, 1845
I write to you with a great sense of relief on public affairs. Lord Grey's objection to sitting in a Cabinet in which Palmerston was to have the Foreign Office was invincible. I could not make a Cabinet without Lord Grey, and I have therefore been to Windsor this morning to resign my hard task. The Queen, as usual, was very gracious.... I have left a paper with her in which I state that we were prepared to advise free trade in corn without gradation and without delay; but that I could support Sir Robert Peel in any measure which he should think more practicable.
CHESHAM PLACE, December 21, 1845
The desponding tone of your letter, yesterday, although I do not believe it was otherwise than the effect of weakness, makes me rejoice at my escape a thousand times more than I should otherwise have done. I reflect on the misery I should have felt with every moment of my time occupied here in details of appointments, while my thoughts were with you.... The Queen and the Prince have behaved beautifully throughout.
Lady John Russell to Lady Mary Abercromby
MINTO, December 24, 1845
You will not be surprised that a great deal of the time which I meant to devote to you this morning has run away in talk to my husband. You will see by the Times what the cause of the failure is: Lord Grey's refusal to belong to the Ministry if Lord Palmerston was at the Foreign Office--a most unfortunate cause, we must all agree, but in the opinion of Papa and many other wise people, a most fortunate occurrence on the whole, as they considered it next to impossible that such a Ministry as John could have formed would have been strong enough to be of use to the country.
My husband, who is no coward, sees it differently, and thinks that with a united Cabinet he might have gone on successfully and carried not only Corn Law Repeal, but other great questions; though the probability was that they would only have carried that and then gone out. But even that would have been something worth doing, and better and more naturally done by Whigs than Tories. One good thing is that John has returned in excellent spirits. All his personal wishes and feelings were so against taking office at present, and the foretaste he had of it in this lonely and most harassing fortnight was so odious to him that his only feeling at first when he gave it all up was pure delight; and he slept, which he had not been able to do before. It certainly was a terrible prospect to us both--one immovable in Edinburgh, the other equally immovable in London--and it required all my patriotism to wish the thing to go on.
If it had gone on, the name of Lord John Russell would be now more often on men's lips. Peel's popular fame rests upon the abolition of the Corn Laws, Lord John's upon the first Reform Bill. It was but an accident--Lord Grey's objection to Palmerston at the Foreign Office--which prevented the name of Lord John Russell from being linked with those of Cobden and Bright, and imperishably associated with both the great measures of the nineteenth century.