h without
going to a positive conclusion. I referred to my conversation of
Wednesday, Jan. 31, in favour of a homogeneous government at this
juncture.

At half-past eleven I went to Lord Aberdeen's and stayed about an
hour. His being in the Palmerston cabinet which had been proposed,
was, he said, out of the question; but his _velleities_ seemed to
lean rather to _our_ joining, which surprised me. He was afraid of
the position we should occupy in the public eye if we declined....

_Feb. 5._--The most irksome and painful of the days; beginning with
many hours of anxious consultation to the best of our power, and
ending amidst a storm of disapproval almost unanimous, not only
from the generality, but from our own immediate political friends.

At 10.30 I went to Sir James Graham, who is still in bed, and told
him the point to which by hard struggles I had come. The case with
me was briefly this. I was ready to make the sacrifice of personal
feeling; ready to see him (Lord Aberdeen) expelled from the
premiership by a censure equally applicable to myself, and yet to
remain in my office; ready to overlook not merely the inferior
fitness, but the real and manifest unfitness, of Palmerston for
that office; ready to enter upon a new venture with him, although
in my opinion without any reasonable prospect of parliamentary
support, such as is absolutely necessary for the credit and
stability of a government--upon the one sole and all-embracing
ground that the prosecution of the war with vigour, and the
prosecution of it to and for peace, was now the question of the day
to which every other must give way. But then it was absolutely
necessary that if we joined a cabinet after our overlooking all
this and more, it should be a cabinet in which confidence should be
placed with reference to war and peace. Was the Aberdeen cabinet
without Lord Aberdeen one in which I could place confidence? I
answer, No. He was vital to it; his love of peace was necessary to
its right and steady pursuit of that great end; if, then, _he_
could belong to a Palmerston cabinet, I might; but without him I
could not.

In all this, Sir J. Graham concurred. Herbert came full of doubts
and fears, but on the whole adopted the same conclusion. Lord
Aberdeen sent to say he would n