a view to place Prussia in an independent national position
than from any particular importance which they attached to the
question itself upon which the rupture was to be effected.

_Viscount Melbourne to Queen Victoria._

_21st March 1838._

Lord Melbourne presents his humble duty to your Majesty. The House
sate until half-past eleven last night. Lord Stanhope[6] made a long
declamatory speech, very violent, but having in it nothing defined
or specific, and was answered by Lord Brougham in a most able and
triumphant defence and maintenance of the late Act for Amending the
Laws for the Relief of the Poor.[7]

Lord Melbourne was very sorry to be prevented from waiting upon your
Majesty. He is very grateful for your Majesty's enquiries, and feels
very well this morning....

Lord Minto[8] told Lord Melbourne last night to acquaint your
Majesty that Lord Amelius Beauclerck,[9] your Majesty's first Naval
Aide-de-Camp, intended to ask an Audience to-day of your Majesty,
and that the object of it was to request that he and the other
Aides-de-Camp might wear sashes. This was always refused by the
late King as being absurd and ridiculous--as it is, particularly
considering Lord Amelius's figure--and your Majesty had perhaps better
say that you can make no change.

Lord Melbourne will be at St James's twenty minutes before ten.

[Footnote 6: Philip Henry, fourth Earl.]

[Footnote 7: Before 1834 a great source of public abuse was
the out-door relief given to able-bodied paupers, either in
kind or money. The Act of that year was based on the
principle that no one must perish through the want of the bare
necessities of life. Poor Law Commissioners were established,
England was divided into Districts, and the Districts into
Unions. Out-door relief was to be given, on the order of
two justices, to poor persons wholly unable, from age or
infirmity, to work. But there was much opposition to the
new law; it was considered a grievance that old couples were
refused relief at home, and that the sexes must be separated
at the workhouse, to which the name of "Bastille" began to be
attached. In Devonshire it was even believed that the bread
distributed by the relieving officers was mixed with poisonous
ingredients.]

[Footnote 8: The First Lord of the Admiralty.]

[Footnote 9: A son of the eighth Duke of St Albans.]

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