n Foreign Secretary)
were disposed to accede; but a different view was taken both by her
Majesty and by the cabinet, and Count Persigny's request was accordingly
declined."[281] On this occasion, it is true, he was yielding to an
overwhelming majority of his colleagues (her Majesty's approval must, of
course, have been expressed subsequently to their decision). But in
another instance we find the same Prime-minister consenting to the
introduction of a bill by one of his colleagues, Mr. Gladstone, then
Chancellor of the Exchequer, of which he disapproved so highly that,
after it had been passed by a very slender majority of the House of
Commons,[282] he expressed to the Queen a hope that the closeness of the
division "might encourage the House of Lords to throw out the bill when
it should come to their House, and that he was bound in duty to say
that, if they should do so, they would perform a good public service;"
and after they had rejected it by a majority of eighty-nine, he
pronounced that "they had done a right and useful thing," reporting to
her Majesty, as a corroboration of this opinion, and as a proof that it
was largely shared by the public out-of-doors, that "the people in the
gallery of the House of Lords are said to have joined in the cheers
which broke out when the numbers of the division were announced."[283]
And on a third occasion also he bore with the same colleague's
opposition to a measure which he and all the rest of the cabinet justly
thought of vital importance to the best interests of the country, the
fortification of our great seaports, allowing him to object for a time
in private, and even to threaten public opposition to it the next year,
since he felt assured that his opposition, if carried out, which he
doubted, would be wholly ineffectual.[284]

The personal interest in politics which this laudable habit of judging
of everything for herself naturally engendered in the Queen's mind led,
however, to the adoption by her Majesty, in more than one instance, of a
course at variance not only with all historical precedent, but, with
deference be it said, with constitutional principle, sanctioned though
it was by more than one ministry. When the First Napoleon, after his
elevation to the head of the French government as First Consul,
proposed, by an autograph letter to George III., to treat with that
sovereign for the conclusion of peace between the two nations, Pitt, to
whom his Majesty communicated