Viscount Palmerston to Queen Victoria

Brocket, 10th September 1857.

Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty and begs to submit that an impression is beginning to prevail that it would be a proper thing that a day should be set apart for National Prayer and Humiliation with reference to the present calamitous state of affairs in India, upon the same principle on which a similar step was taken during the Crimean War; and if your Majesty should approve, Viscount Palmerston would communicate on the subject with the Archbishop of Canterbury.... It is usual on such occasions that the Archbishop of Canterbury should attend, but in consideration of the distance his attendance might well be dispensed with on the present occasion.

Footnote 37: I.e. at the meeting of the Council which was to be summoned.