y,
his conduct so invariably devoted to the public good, and his life
so perfectly inattackable, that Lord Aberdeen has not the slightest
apprehension of any serious consequences arising from these
contemptible exhibitions of malevolence and faction.

Your Majesty will graciously pardon Lord Aberdeen for writing thus
plainly; but there are occasions on which he almost forgets your
Majesty's station, and only remembers those feelings which are common
to all ranks of mankind.

[Footnote 1: A section of the Press, favourable to Lord
Palmerston, had insinuated that his resignation was due to
"an influence behind the throne." Similar attacks were made
by other journals, and not abandoned upon Lord Palmerston's
re-admission to the Cabinet: the most extravagant charges of
improper interference in State affairs were made against the
Prince, and it was even rumoured that he had been impeached
for high treason and committed to the Tower! The cartoons
in _Punch_ usually present a faithful reflection of current
popular opinion, and in one of them the Prince was depicted as
skating, in defiance of warning, over dangerous ice.]

[Pageheading: PERSIA]

_Queen Victoria to the Earl of Clarendon._

WINDSOR CASTLE, _9th January 1854._

The Queen thanks Lord Clarendon for his letter just received with the
enclosures.

As the proposed answer to the Emperor contains perhaps necessarily
only a repetition of what the Queen wrote in her former letter,[2] she
inclines to the opinion that it will be best to defer any answer for
the present--the more so, as a moment might possibly arrive when
it would be of advantage to be able to write and to refer to the
Emperor's last letter.

With respect to the Persian Expedition[3] the Queen will not object
to it--as the Cabinet appears to have fully considered the matter, but
she must say that she does not much like it in a moral point of view.
We are just putting the Emperor of Russia under the ban for trying
"to bring the Sultan to his senses" by the occupation of part of his
territory after a diplomatic rupture, and are now going to do exactly
the same thing to the Shah of Persia!

[Footnote 2: See _ante_, vol. ii, 18th October-26th November,
1853, notes 30, 31, 32.]

[Footnote 3: Under the belief that Persia had declared war
against Turkey, and that diplomatic relations between England
and Persia were suspended, the C