, which was
singularly free under the government of Sir Robert Peel, from the opposite
but sometimes associated extremes of wantonness and fear. I am glad to
think that his administration of his department earned a decided public
approval. So just a man will, I think, rarely attain in that department to
the same measure of popularity, while a less just man might easily obtain
one far greater.

To fall short of perfect candour would deprive all I have said of the
little value it can possess, as that little value is all summed up in its
sincerity. On one subject to which my mind has been directed for the last
twelve or fourteen years, I had the misfortune to differ from your father.
I mean the state of Italy and its relation to Austria in particular. I
will not pretend to say that his view of the case of Italy appeared to me
to harmonize with his general mode of estimating human action and
political affairs. It seemed to me as if, called in early youth to deal
with a particular combination of questions which were truly gigantic, his
mind had received from their weight and force at an impressible period, a
fixed form in relation to them, while it ever remained open and elastic in
a peculiar degree upon all others. But my mode of solution for what
appeared to me an anomaly is immaterial. I thankfully record that the
Italian question was almost the only one within my recollection, quite the
only one of practical importance, on which during the twenty-six years I
have named, I was unable to accept his judgment. I bear witness with yet
greater pleasure that, when I returned from Naples in 1851 deeply
impressed with the horrible system that I had witnessed, his opinions on
Italian politics did not prevent his readily undertaking to read the
statement I had drawn, nor his using, when he had read it, more strong
words on the subject, which came from lips like his with such peculiar
force. As readily did he undertake to invoke the aid of the court of
Vienna; to which, if I remember right, he transmitted the statement in
manuscript.

Though I feel that I cannot by any effort do justice to what I have termed
his finely-shaded character, I also feel that I might be drawn onwards to
great length on the subject. I must resist the impulse, but I cannot stop
without saying a word on the quality which I regard as beyond all others
his own, I mean the absence from his nature of all tendency to suspicion.
Those who have read his state pape