il to be advantageous to your Majesty's service....

_Queen Victoria to Viscount Palmerston._

BUCKINGHAM PALACE, _2nd July 1859_.

The Queen has received Lord Palmerston's letter of to-day. She is
sorry not to be able to give her assent to his proposal with regard
to Mr Bright.[54] Privy Councillors have sometimes exceptionally been
made without office, yet this has been as rewards, even in such cases,
for services rendered to the State. It would be impossible to allege
any service Mr Bright has rendered, and if the honour were looked upon
as a reward for his systematic attacks upon the institutions of the
country, a very erroneous impression might be produced as to the
feeling which the Queen or her Government entertain towards these
institutions. It is moreover very problematical whether such an
honour conferred upon Mr Bright would, as suggested, wean him from his
present line of policy, whilst, if he continued in it, he would only
have obtained additional weight in the country by his propounding his
views as one of the Queen's Privy Councillors.

[Footnote 54: In 1859, Lord Palmerston, in offering Mr Cobden
a seat in the Cabinet, rejected the idea of accepting Mr
Bright as a colleague, on the ground that his public speeches
made it impossible. Mr Bright, later in life, was a welcome
guest at Windsor, and the Queen became warmly attached to him
as one of her Ministers.]

[Pageheading: PACIFICATION OF INDIA]

_Earl Canning to Queen Victoria._

CALCUTTA, _4th July 1859_.

Lord Canning presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and begs
permission to offer to your Majesty his respectful thanks for your
Majesty's most gracious letter of the 18th of May.

Lord Canning ventures to believe that he is well able to figure to
himself the feelings with which your Majesty will have welcomed the
termination of the Mutiny and Rebellion in India, and of the chief
miseries which these have brought in their train. He hopes that your
Majesty will not have thought that there has been remissness in not
marking this happy event by an earlier public acknowledgment and
thanksgiving in India, as has already been done in England.[55] The
truth is, that although this termination has long been steadily and
surely approaching, it is but just now that it can be said to be
complete in the eyes of those who are near to the scene of action. It
is only within the last three weeks that the exertions of