inguished from Granville as well as from me.

Hartington, in reply to her Majesty, made becoming
acknowledgments, and proceeded to say that he did not think a
government could be satisfactorily formed without me; he had not
had any direct communication with me; but he had reason to believe
that I would not take any office or post in the government except
that of first minister. Under those circumstances he advised her
Majesty to place the matter in my hands. The Queen continued to
urge upon him the obligations arising out of his position, and
desired him to ascertain whether he was right in his belief that I
would not act in a ministry unless as first minister. This, he
said, is a question which I should not have put to you, except
when desired by the Queen.

I said her Majesty was quite justified, I thought, in requiring
positive information, and he, therefore, in putting the question
to me. Of my action he was already in substantial possession, as
it had been read to him (he had told me) by Wolverton. I am not
asked, I said, for reasons, but only for Aye or No, and
consequently I have only to say that I adhere to my reply as you
have already conveyed it to the Queen.

In making such a reply, it was my duty to add that in case a
government should be formed by him, or by Granville with him, whom
the Queen seemed to me wrongly to have passed by--it was to
Granville that I had resigned my trust, and he, Hartington, was
subsequently elected by the party to the leadership in the House
of Commons--my duty would be plain. It would be to give them all
the support in my power, both negatively, as by absence or
non-interference, and positively. Promises of this kind, I said,
stood on slippery ground, and must always be understood with the
limits which might be prescribed by conviction. I referred to the
extreme caution, almost costiveness, of Peel's replies to Lord
Russell, when he was endeavouring to form a government in December
1845 for the purpose of carrying the repeal of the Corn Law. In
this case, however, I felt a tolerable degree of confidence,
because I was not aware of any substantive divergence of ideas
between us, and I had observed with great satisfaction, when his
address to North-East Lancashire came into my hands, after the
writing but before the publication of mi