Royal Highness, Lord Melbourne begs leave to assure your
Majesty that he will be at all times most ready and anxious to give
any information in his power upon points of this sort, which are very
curious, very important, very worthy to be enquired into, and
upon which accurate information is not easily to be found. All the
political part of the English Constitution is fully understood,
and distinctly stated in Blackstone and many other books, but the
Ministerial part, the work of conducting the executive government, has
rested so much on practice, on usage, on understanding, that there is
no publication to which reference can be made for the explanation
and description of it. It is to be sought in debates, in protests, in
letters, in memoirs, and wherever it can be picked up. It seems to
be stupid not to be able to say at once when two Secretaries of State
were established; but Lord Melbourne is not able. He apprehends that
there was but one until the end of Queen Anne's reign, and that two
were instituted by George I., probably because upon his frequent
journeys to Hanover he wanted the Secretary of State with him, and at
the same time it was necessary that there should be an officer of the
same authority left at home to transact the domestic affairs.

_Prime Minister_ is a term belonging to the last century. Lord
Melbourne doubts its being to be found in English Parliamentary
language previously. Sir Robert Walpole was always accused of having
introduced and arrogated to himself an office previously unknown to
the Law and Constitution, that of Prime or Sole Minister, and we learn
from Lady Charlotte Lindsay's[154] accounts of her father, that in his
own family Lord North would never suffer himself to be called _prime_
Minister, because it was an office unknown to the Constitution. This
was a notion derived from the combined Whig and Tory opposition to Sir
Robert Walpole, to which Lord North and his family had belonged.

Lord Melbourne is very sorry to hear that the Princess Royal continues
to suffer from some degree of indisposition. From what your Majesty
had said more than once before, Lord Melbourne had felt anxiety upon
this subject, and he saw the Baron yesterday, who conversed with him
much upon it, and informed him of what had taken place. Lord Melbourne
hopes that your Majesty will attribute it only to Lord Melbourne's
anxious desire for the security and increase of your Majesty's
happiness, if he ventures to