that he considers the aspect of the House of
Commons as favourable to the Government.

Lord John alludes for the first time in his letter to a question
on which the Queen has not hitherto expressed her opinion to him
personally, viz., how far the proposed new arrangement of Lord John's
holding the leadership of the House of Commons without office was
constitutional or not?[6] Her opinion perfectly agrees with that
expressed by Mr Walpole to Lord John. If the intended arrangement were
_undoubtedly illegal_ it would clearly never have been contemplated at
all; but it may prove a _dangerous precedent_.

The Queen would have been quite prepared to give the proposition
of the Speaker "that the leadership of the House of Commons was so
laborious, that an Office without other duties ought to be assigned
to it," her fullest and fairest consideration, upon its merits and its
constitutional bearings, which ought to have been distinctly set forth
before her by her constitutional advisers for her final and unfettered
decision.

What the Queen complains of, and, as she believes with justice, is,
that so important an innovation in the construction of the executive
Government should have been practically decided upon by an arrangement
intended to meet personal wants under peculiar and accidental
circumstances, leaving the Queen the embarrassing alternative only,
either to forego the exercise of her own prerogative, or to damage by
her own act the _formation_ or _stability_ of the new Government, both
of paramount importance to the welfare of the Country.

[Footnote 6: See _ante_, pp. 417, 421.]

_Lord John Russell to Queen Victoria._

CHESHAM PLACE, _13th February 1853._

Lord John Russell presents his humble duty to your Majesty. He cannot
forbear from vindicating himself from the charge of forming or
being party to an arrangement "intended to meet personal wants
under peculiar and accidental circumstances, leaving the Queen the
embarrassing alternative only, either to forego the exercise of
her own prerogative, or to damage by her own act the _formation_ or
_stability_ of the new Government--both of paramount importance to the
welfare of the Country."

Lord John Russell has done all in his power to contribute to the
formation of a Ministry in which he himself holds a subordinate
situation, from which nearly all his dearest political friends are
excluded, and which is held by some to extinguish the party which for