1909] on The Letters of Queen Victoria. 513 



old, she is found suggesting to Sir Robert Peel that, "for the 

 future it would be best in all appointments of importance that 

 before a direct communication was entered into with the individual 

 intended to be proposed, The Queen should be informed of it, 

 so that she might talk to her Ministers fully about it " ; and she 

 tells Sir Robert that " she feels it her duty to state freely and 

 at all times her opinion," and begs him to do the same. It is 

 clear that, young as she was, the Queen's expression of opinion was 

 welcomed by Peel and Melbourne, as a support against pretensions 

 which they found difficult to resist, but it is also clearer that they 

 both welcomed the clarifying process of having to explain and argue 

 the claims of candidates for high appointments before so unbiassed a 

 tribunal. In the process the patience of a Minister may often have 

 been tried, but the value to the service of the people, of a system 

 which rendered joljbery difficult and imposture unlikely, cannot well 

 be over-estimated. 



KiNGT Leopold's Advice. 



The advice of King Leopold to the Queen on her accession had 

 been never to decide a question of importance on the day when it 

 was submitted to her. He, wise ruler as he was, had made it a prac- 

 tice not to let any question be forced upon him for immediate 

 decision. Even, he writes to the Queen, when he was disposed to 

 accede he always kept the papers with him some while before he 

 returned them. He urged her to get every proposal laid before her 

 in writing, though it had been made in the first instance verbally by 

 a Minister. 



This golden rule, reiterated by Stockmar and enforced by the 

 Prince Consort, was invariably adhered to by Queen Victoria to the 

 end of her life, and we may safely attribute to the habit thus formed 

 the avoidance of many mistakes, not only by her, but by her Ministers. 

 In the year 1(S41, a year of momentous change for the Queen, when 

 she lost Lord Melbourne, her first Prime Minister, we find him, after 

 his resignation, urging vSir Robert Peel to write fully to her Majesty, 

 and elementarily ; and he again lays stress on the necessity for caution 

 in giving verbal decisions. It was similar advice to that offered by 

 King Leopold, but from a wholly different quarter, not from the 

 point of view of a Monarch, but of a Minister. The underlying 

 reason was the same. It was to ensure the clarifying process, and the 

 avoidance of avoidable error by Minister and Sovereign. 



COERESPONDENCE WITH PrIME MINISTERS. 



If the remarkable correspondence between Lord Beaconsfield and 

 the Queen is ever published, nothing will be found to be more striking 

 than the minute care with which he, notwithstanding his perspicacity 



