sions at Paris, and which was approved by the cabinet."[278] The
Prime-minister seems to have taken the same view of the act, and
remonstrated with Lord Palmerston, who treated the matter very lightly,
and justified his right to hold such a conversation, which he
characterized as "unofficial," in such a tone and on such grounds that
Lord John considered he left him no alternative "but to advise the Queen
to place the Foreign Office in other hands."

A careful and generally impartial political critic has recently
expressed an opinion "that Lord Palmerston made good his case;"[279] but
his argument on the transaction seems to overlook the most material
point in it. Lord Palmerston's own defence of his conduct was, that "his
conversation with Walewski was of an unofficial description; that he had
said nothing to him which would in any degree or way fetter the action
of the government; and that, if it was to be held that a Secretary of
State could never express any opinion to a foreign minister on passing
events except as the organ of a previously consulted cabinet, there
would be an end of that easy and familiar intercourse which tends
essentially to promote good understanding between ministers and
government;" and he even added, as a personal justification of himself
as against the Prime-minister, that three days afterward Lord John
Russell himself, Lord Lansdowne (the President of the Council), and Sir
Charles Wood (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) had all discussed the
transaction with M. de Walewski at a dinner-party, "and their opinions
were, if anything, rather more strongly favorable than his had been."

This personal aspect of the case it is impossible to discuss, since
there are no means of knowing whether the ministers mentioned would have
admitted the correctness of this report of their language. If it were
confessed to be accurate, it would only show them to have been guilty of
equal impropriety, and to a great extent justify him as against the
Prime-minister, whose condemnation of his language, if he were conscious
that he had held the same himself, would be inexplicable. But it
certainly does not justify him in respect of her Majesty or the cabinet
collectively, since the Queen's complaint was, not that he held
unofficial conversations as a private individual, and not as "the organ
of a previously consulted cabinet," but that the tenor of the
conversation which he had held was in direct contradiction to the t