to
assume that I had an independent proposal, but to make my refusal a
part of his.

_Feb. 2._--I yesterday also called on Lord Palmerston and read him
my letter to Lord Derby. He said: 'Nothing can be better.'

LORD DERBY'S PROPOSALS

Lord Derby knew that, though he had the country gentlemen behind him,
his own political friends, with the notable and only half-welcome
exception of Mr. Disraeli, were too far below mediocrity in either
capacity or experience to face so angry and dangerous a crisis.
Accordingly he gave up the task. Many years after, Mr. Gladstone
recorded his opinion that here Lord Derby missed his one real chance of
playing a high historic part. 'To a Derby government,' he said, 'now
that the party had been _drubbed_ out of protection, I did not in
principle object; for old ties were with me more operatively strong than
new opinions, and I think that Lord Derby's error in not forming an
administration was palpable and even gross. Such, it has appeared, was
the opinion of Disraeli.[342] Lord Derby had many fine qualities; but
strong parliamentary courage was not among them. When Lord Palmerston
(probably with a sagacious discernment of the immediate future)
declined, he made no separate offer to the Peelites. Had Lord Derby gone
on, he would have been supported by the country, then absorbed in the
consideration of the war. None of the three occasions when he took
office offered him so fine an opportunity as this; but he missed it.'

On the previous day, Mr. Gladstone records: 'Saw Mr. Disraeli in the
House of Lords and put out my hand, which was very kindly accepted.' To
nobody was the hour fraught with more bitter mortification than to Mr.
Disraeli, who beheld a golden chance of bringing a consolidated party
into the possession of real power flung away.

II

ERROR OF REFUSING LORD LANSDOWNE

Next, at the Queen's request, soundings in the whig and Peelite waters
were undertaken by Lord Lansdowne, and he sent for Mr. Gladstone, with a
result that to the latter was ever after matter of regret.

_Feb. 2._--In consequence of a communication from Lord Lansdowne, I
went to him in the forenoon and found him just returned from
Windsor. He trusted I should not mind speaking freely to him, and I
engaged to do it, only premising that in so crude and dark a state
of facts, it was im