Viscount Palmerston to Queen Victoria

BUSINESS STILL TRANSACTED

Piccadilly, 30th December 1861.

Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and has read with deep emotion your Majesty's letter of the 26th, every word of which went straight to the heart. Viscount Palmerston would, however, humbly express a hope that the intensity of your Majesty's grief may not lead your Majesty to neglect your health, the preservation of which is so important for the welfare of your Majesty's children, and for that of your Majesty's devotedly attached and affectionate subjects; and which is so essentially necessary to enable your Majesty to perform those duties which it will be the object of your Majesty's life to fulfil.

Lord Granville has communicated to Viscount Palmerston your Majesty's wish that Mr Dilke should be made a Baronet, and that Mr Bowring should be made a Companion of the Bath, and both of these things will be done accordingly. But there are three other persons whose names Viscount Palmerston has for some time wished to submit to your Majesty for the dignity of Baronet, and if your Majesty should be graciously pleased to approve of them, the list would stand as follows:

Mr Dilke.

Mr William Brown, of Liverpool, a very wealthy and distinguished merchant, who lately made a magnificent present of a public library to his fellow-citizens.

Mr Thomas Davies Lloyd, a rich and highly respectable gentleman of the county of Carnarvon.

Mr Rich, to whom the Government is under great obligation, for having of his own accord and without any condition vacated last year his seat for Richmond in Yorkshire, and having thus enabled the Government to obtain the valuable services of Mr Roundell Palmer as your Majesty's Solicitor-General.

Viscount Palmerston has put into this box some private letters which Lord Russell thinks your Majesty might perhaps like to look at.

Footnote 66: Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke was on the Executive Committee of the Exhibition of 1851, and on the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1862. He died in 1869.

Footnote 67: Mr Edgar Bowring's Companionship was conferred on him for services in connection with the earlier Exhibition. He was afterwards M.P. for Exeter, 1868-1874.

Footnote 68: Mr Brown became a baronet in 1863.