e.]

[Pageheading: LORD ELLENBOROUGH]

_The Earl of Ellenborough to Queen Victoria._

_22nd June 1844._

Lord Ellenborough, with his most humble duty to your Majesty, humbly
acquaints your Majesty that on the 15th of June he received
the announcement of his having been removed from the office of
Governor-General of India by the Court of Directors. By Lord
Ellenborough's advice, letters were immediately despatched by express
to every important native Court to assure the native Princes that this
change in the person at the head of the Government would effect no
change in its policy, and Lord Ellenborough himself wrote in similar
terms to the British Representatives at the several Courts.... Lord
Ellenborough has written a letter to the Earl of Ripon with reference
to the reasons alleged by the Court of Directors for his removal
from office, to which letter he most humbly solicits your Majesty's
favourable and attentive consideration. It treats of matters deeply
affecting the good government of India.

Amidst all the difficulties with which he has had to contend in India,
aggravated as they have been by the constant hostility of the Court of
Directors, Lord Ellenborough has ever been sustained by the knowledge
that he was serving a most gracious Mistress, who would place the most
favourable construction upon his conduct, and he now humbly tenders to
your Majesty the expression of his gratitude, not only for those marks
of Royal favour with which it has been intimated to him that it is
your Majesty's intention to reward his services, but yet more for that
constant support which has animated all his exertions, and has mainly
enabled him to place India in the hands of his successor in a state
of universal peace, the result of two years of victories, and in a
condition of prosperity heretofore unknown.

[Pageheading: ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND RUSSIA]

_The King of the Belgians to Queen Victoria._

LAEKEN, _28th June 1844._

MY BELOVED VICTORIA,--I have again to offer my warmest and best thanks
for a very long and kind letter. I am truly and sincerely happy that
a Ministerial crisis has been spared you; it is in all constitutional
concerns an _awful_ business; but in such a colossal machinery as the
British Empire, it shakes the whole globe. For your sake, for the
good of England, and for the quiet of the whole earth, we must most
devoutly pray that _Sir Robert may remain for many, many years your
trusty