e close of the Parliamentary business of each day,
and will do so without fail on the reassembling of Parliament.

I am, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours,

ROBERT PEEL.

[Pageheading: DIPLOMATIC APPOINTMENTS]

_Viscount Melbourne to Queen Victoria._

SOUTH STREET, _10th September 1841._

... Lord Melbourne has no doubt that Sir Robert Peel has the most
anxious wish to do everything that can be agreeable to your Majesty.

Your Majesty should not omit to speak fully and seriously to him upon
the disposal of great appointments. Their Diplomatic Corps, from which
Ambassadors and Governors are generally taken, is the weakest part of
their establishment. They have amongst them men of moderate abilities
and of doubtful integrity, who yet have held high offices and
have strong claims upon them. The public service may suffer most
essentially by the employment of such men. Lord Melbourne would say
to Peel that "affairs depend more upon the hands to which they are
entrusted than upon any other cause, and that you hope he will well
consider those whose appointment to high and important situations
he sanctions, and that he will not suffer claims of connection or of
support to overbalance a due regard for your Majesty's service and the
welfare of the country." Such an expression of your Majesty's opinion
may possibly be a support to Sir Robert Peel against pretensions which
he would be otherwise unable to resist; but this is entirely submitted
to your Majesty's judgment, seeing that your Majesty, from an exact
knowledge of all that is passing, must be able to form a much more
correct opinion of the propriety and discretion of any step than Lord
Melbourne can do....

Lord Melbourne has a letter from Lord John Russell, rather eager for
active opposition; but Lord Melbourne will write to your Majesty more
fully upon these subjects from Woburn.

[Pageheading: CANADA]

_Viscount Melbourne to Queen Victoria._

WOBURN ABBEY, _12th September 1841._

Lord Melbourne has this morning received your Majesty's letter of
yesterday. Lord Melbourne entirely agrees with your Majesty about
appointments. He knows, as your Majesty does from experience,
that with all the claims which there are to satisfy, with all the
prejudices which are to be encountered, and with all the interests
which require to be reconciled, it is impossible to select the best
men, or even always those properly qualified. He is the last man who
wou