ioner by the first mail.

[Pageheading: LORD STANLEY AND MR DISRAELI]

[Pageheading: SUGGESTED RESIGNATION]

_Mr Disraeli to the Prince Albert._

GROSVENOR GATE, _18th November 1858_.
(_Wednesday night._)

SIR,--After the Committee of the Cabinet on the Reform Bill, which
sat this morning for five hours, Lord Stanley expressed a wish to have
some private conversation with me.

Although I would willingly have deferred the interview till a moment
when I was less exhausted, I did not think it wise, with a person of
his temperament, to baulk an occasion, and therefore assented at once.

I give your Royal Highness faithfully, but feebly, and not completely,
the results of our conversation.

1. With respect to the relations between his office and Her Majesty,
he said he was conscious that they had been conducted with great
deficiency of form, and, in many respects, in an unsatisfactory
manner; but he attributed all this to the inexperience and "sheer
ignorance" of a Department which had not been accustomed to direct
communication with the Crown. Some portion of this, he said, he had
already remedied, and he wished to remedy all, though he experienced
difficulties, on some of which he consulted me.

He accepted, without reserve, and cordially, my position, that he must
act always as the Minister of the Queen, and not of the Council, but
he said I took an exaggerated view of his relations with that body;
that he thoroughly knew their respective places, and should be
vigilant that they did [? not] overstep their limits; that he had
never been, of which he reminded me, an admirer of the East India
Company, and had no intention of reviving their system; that the
incident of submitting the legal case to the Council, etc., had
originated in a demand on the part of the Commander-in-Chief, which
involved, if complied with, a grant of money, and that, under these
circumstances, an appeal to the Council was inevitable.

2. He agreed with me, that, on all military matters, he would
habitually communicate with the Commander-in-Chief, and take His Royal
Highness's advice on all such points; and that copies of all military
papers, as I understood Lord Stanley, should be furnished to His Royal
Highness.

3. Having arrived at this point, I laid before him the views
respecting _military unity_, which formed the subject matter of
recent conversations. Lord Stanley assented to the principles which
I attempted to enforce; a