pers that Lord Stuart de Rothesay is already
gone. The Queen can hardly believe this, as no Ambassador or Minister
_ever_ left England without previously asking for an Audience and
receiving one, as the Queen wishes always to see them before they
repair to their posts. Would Sir Robert be so very good as to ask Lord
Aberdeen whether Lord Stuart de Rothesay is gone or not, and if he
should be, to tell Lord Aberdeen that in future she would wish
him always to inform her when they intend to go, and to ask for an
Audience, which, if the Queen is well, she would always grant. It is
possible that as the Queen said the other day that she did not wish
to give many Audiences after the Council, that Lord Aberdeen may have
misunderstood this and thought the Queen would give none, which was
_not_ her intention. The Queen would be thankful to Sir Robert if he
would undertake to clear up this mistake, which she is certain (should
Lord Stuart be gone) arose entirely from misapprehension.

The Queen also wishes Sir Robert to desire Lord Haddington to send her
some details of the intended reductions in the Fleet which she sees by
a draft of Lord Aberdeen's to Mr Bulwer have taken place.[144]

[Footnote 143: Recently appointed Solicitor-General; Sergeant
J. D. Jackson now succeeded him.]

[Footnote 144: The statement of the Royal Navy in Commission
at the beginning of 1841 sets out 160 vessels carrying 4,277
guns.]

[Pageheading: STOCKMAR AND MELBOURNE]

[Pageheading: STOCKMAR'S ADVICE]

_Memorandum by Baron Stockmar._

_25th October 1841._

... I told [Lord Melbourne] that, as I read the English Constitution,
it meant to assign to _the Sovereign in his functions a deliberative
part_--that I was not sure the Queen had the means within herself to
execute this deliberative part properly, but I was sure that the only
way for her to execute her functions at all was to be strictly honest
to those men who at the time being were her Ministers. That it was
chiefly on this account that I had been so very sorry to have found
now, on my return from the Continent, that on the change of the
Ministry a capital opportunity to read a great Constitutional maxim
to the Queen had not only been lost by Lord Melbourne, but that he had
himself turned an instrument for working great good into an instrument
which must produce mischief and danger. That I was afraid that, from
what Lord Melbourne had been so weak as to have a