h it entails.

However, this cannot now be helped, and it is the duty of every one to
fulfil all that they are called upon to do, in whatever situation they
may be!

Mme. van de Weyer thinks your children so grown and improved, and
Charlotte as lovely as ever. With Albert's love, ever your devoted
Niece,

VICTORIA R.

[Footnote 12: See _ante_, pp. 294, 324.]

[Pageheading: THE MILITIA BILL]

_Lord John Russell to Queen Victoria._

CHESHAM PLACE, _20th February 1852._
(9.15 P.M.)

Lord John Russell presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and has
the honour to report that Lord Palmerston has just carried his Motion
for leaving out the word "Local" in the title of the Bill for the
Militia.[13]

Lord John Russell then declared that he could no longer take charge of
the Bill. Lord Palmerston said he was astonished at the Government for
giving up the Bill for so slight a cause.

Lord John Russell then said that he considered the vote as tantamount
to a resolution of want of confidence, which remark was loudly cheered
on the other side.

Sir Benjamin Hall said he wondered the Government did not resign, on
which Lord John again explained that when confidence was withdrawn,
the consequence was obvious.

[Footnote 13: Events in France had revived anxiety as to the
national defences, and the Government brought in a Bill for
raising a local Militia. To this scheme the Duke of Wellington
had been unfavourable, and Lord Palmerston, by a majority of
eleven, carried an Amendment in favour of re-organising the
"regular" instead of raising a "local" Militia.]

[Pageheading: THE MINISTRY DEFEATED]

[Pageheading: RESIGNATION OF THE MINISTRY]

_Memorandum by the Prince Albert._

BUCKINGHAM PALACE, _21st February 1852._

Lord John Russell came this morning at twelve o'clock to explain that
after the vote of yesterday[14] it was impossible for him to go on any
longer with the Government. He considered it a vote of censure, and an
entirely unprecedented case not to allow a Minister of the Crown even
to lay his measure on the Table of the House; that he had expected to
the last that the respectable part of the House would see all this,
but there seemed to have been a pre-arranged determination between
Lord Palmerston and the Protectionists to defeat the Government; that
the Peelites also had agreed to vote against them. Sir James Graham
and Mr Cardwell had stayed away, but M