Note Footnote 35: — Chapter XXVI

Lord Derby, with his humble duty, gratefully acknowledges your Majesty's gracious letter just received, and the telegraphic message with which he was honoured in answer to his on Friday night. Your Majesty can hardly be expected to estimate, at a distance from the immediate scene of action, the effect of the event of that evening. It was the utter explosion of a well-constructed mine, under the feet, not of the assailed, but of the assailants; and the effect has been the greater from the immense attendance in London of Members of the House of Commons. No effort had been spared. Lord Castlerosse, only just married, had been sent for from Italy—but Lord Derby hopes that he had not been induced to come—for nothing. It is said that of the 654 Members of whom the House is composed, 626 were actually in London. The Government could rely on 304 to 308, and the whole question turned on the absence, or the conversion, of a small number of "Liberal" Members. The result is to be attributed to two causes; first, and principally, to the fear of a Dissolution, and to the growing conviction that in case of necessity your Majesty would sanction such a course, which had been strenuously denied by Lord Palmerston—and in which Lord Derby hopes that your Majesty will have seen that your Majesty's name has never, for a moment, been brought in question; and secondly, to the effect produced by the correspondence between the Governor-General and Sir James Outram.35 And here Lord Derby may perhaps be allowed the opportunity of removing a misconception from your Majesty's mind, as to any secret intelligence or underhand intrigue between Lord Ellenborough and Sir James Outram, to the detriment of Lord Canning. Lord Derby is in the position to know that if there is one person in the world to whom Lord Ellenborough has an utter aversion, and with whom he has no personal or private correspondence, it is Sir James Outram. Anything therefore in common in their opinions must be the result of circumstances wholly irrespective of private concert. Lord Derby has written fully to Lord Canning, privately, by the mail which will go out on Tuesday; and while he has not concealed from him the opinion of your Majesty's servants that the Proclamation, of which so much has been said, conveyed too sweeping an Edict of Confiscation against the landowners, great and small, of Oudh, he has not hesitated to express also his conviction that Lord Canning's real intentions, in execution, would not be found widely to differ from the views of your Majesty's servants. He has expressed to Lord Canning his regret at the premature publication of the Draft Proclamation, at the same time that he has pointed out the injustice done both to your Majesty's Government and to the Governor-General by the (Lord Derby will hardly call it fraudulent) suppression of the private letters addressed to the President of the Board of Control, and deprecating judgment on the text of the Proclamation, until explanation should be received. Lord Derby cannot but be of opinion that this suppression, of which Lord Palmerston was fully cognisant, was an act which no political or party interests were sufficient to justify.