ent, Sir Robert Peel, should have been
distasteful to her. The dispute about the removal of her Ladies of the
Bedchamber, and still more the conduct of Sir Robert Peel in
supporting the reduction of the income which the Whigs had proposed
for Prince Albert, must have touched her feelings on the most
sensitive points, and the stiff, formal, somewhat awkward manner of
Peel seemed very little fitted to ingratiate him with a young
Sovereign. Yet when the change of Ministry arrived, Peel found no
trace of resentment in the Queen. She gave him her complete
confidence, and she fully estimated his great qualities. Of all the
Ministers who served her there is indeed none of whom she has written
in warmer terms. When Lord Palmerston became Prime Minister in 1855 it
was contrary to her earnest desire, but when the change was made
Palmerston himself acknowledged that he had 'no reason to complain of
the least want of cordiality or confidence on the part of the Court.'
At the time when she was most opposed to her Ministers, she fully
acquiesced in the principle that she must submit all letters on public
affairs to them and frame her replies upon their advice. There were
constant attempts on the part of foreign Sovereigns who were connected
with her to carry on affairs by correspondence with her without the
knowledge and sanction of her Ministers, but the Queen steadily
resisted them. Anything, indeed, that in any way savoured of intrigue
was in the highest degree repugnant to her nature.

She acted in the same way in internal affairs. Few measures that were
carried in her time were more repugnant to her than Gladstone's
disestablishment of the Irish Church. It abolished an institution of
which she was herself the head and which a special clause in the
Coronation Oath required her to uphold, and she foretold, not without
good reason, that it would not pacify Ireland but would be an
encouragement to further agitation. The question, however, had been
submitted at a general election to the decision of the country, and
after that decision had been unequivocally given in favour of the
policy of Gladstone, she frankly accepted it with the assent of the
Prime Minister. When a great danger of a conflict between the two
Houses of Parliament had arisen, she devoted herself actively in
preventing it. She employed for that service the instrumentality of
Archbishop Tait--a great statesman-prelate, whose promotion to the see
of Canterbury was due