Viscount Palmerston to Queen Victoria

MR SIDNEY HERBERT

Piccadilly, 10th November 1855.

Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and begs to state that in consequence of some things that passed in conversation at Sir Charles Wood's two days ago, when Mr and Mrs Sidney Herbert dined there, Sir Charles Wood is under a strong impression that Mr Herbert would be willing to separate himself from Mr Gladstone and Sir James Graham, and the Peace Party, and to join the present Government. Viscount Palmerston having well considered the matter in concert with Sir Charles Wood and Sir George Grey, is of opinion that it would be advantageous not only for the present, but also with a view to the future, to detach Mr Herbert from the clique with which accidental circumstances have for the moment apparently associated him, and to fix him to better principles of action than those by which Mr Gladstone and Sir James Graham appear to be guided. For this purpose Viscount Palmerston proposes with your Majesty's sanction to offer to Mr Herbert to return to the Colonial Office, which he held on the formation of the present Government.

Mr Herbert is the most promising man of his standing in the House of Commons, and is personally very popular in that House; he is a good and an improving speaker, and his accession to the Government would add a good speaker to the Treasury Bench, and take away a good speaker from ranks that may become hostile.

He would also supply the place of Lord Canning as a kind of link between the Government and some well-disposed members of both Houses who belonged more or less to what is called the Peel Party. It would be necessary, of course, to ascertain clearly that Mr Herbert's views about the war and about conditions of peace are the same as they were when he was a Member of the Government, and not such as those which Mr Gladstone and Sir James Graham have of late adopted.

If Mr Herbert were to accept, Sir George Grey, who has a strong disinclination for the Colonies, would remain at the Home Office; and if Lord Harrowby would take the Post Office, which must be held by a Peer, the Duchy of Lancaster, which may be held by a Commoner, might be offered to Mr Baines with a seat in the Cabinet, and Mr Baines might perhaps, with reference to his health, prefer an office not attended with much departmental business of detail, while he would be thus more free to make himself master of general questions. Such an arrangement would leave the Cabinet, as stated in the accompanying paper, seven and seven; and if afterwards Lord Stanley of Alderley were added in the Lords, and Sir Benjamin Hall in the Commons, which, however, would be a matter entirely for future consideration, the equality of division would still be preserved.

Viscount Palmerston finds that Mr Herbert is gone down to Wilton, and as Viscount Palmerston is going this afternoon to Broadlands to remain there till Tuesday morning, he proposes during the interval to communicate with Mr Herbert, Wilton being not much more than an hour's distance from Broadlands by the Salisbury railway.

Footnote 88: Mr. Matthew Talbot Baines died prematurely in 1860. His abilities were of a solid rather than a brilliant kind.

Footnote 89: Mr. Labouchere became Colonial Secretary. See List of Cabinet as it stood in 1858, post, p. 272.