resentation
to your Majesty, Mr. Gladstone's wish is to point out the
difficulty in which he would find himself placed were he to ask
your Majesty for authority to inquire from his late colleagues
whether they or any of them were prepared, if your Majesty should
call on them, to resume their offices; for they would certainly,
he is persuaded, call on him, for their own honour, and in order
to the usefulness of their further service if it should be
rendered, to prove to them that according to usage every means had
been exhausted on the part of the opposition for providing for the
government of the country, or at least that nothing more was to be
expected from that quarter.

This statement, prepared after dinner, Mr. Gladstone took to Lord
Granville that night (March 14). The next morning he again saw Lord
Granville and Colonel Ponsonby, and despatched his statement to the Queen.
"At 2.45," he writes to Granville:--

I saw the Queen, not for any distinct object, but partly to fill
the blank before the public. H.M. was in perfect humour. She will
use the whole or part of my long letter by sending it to Disraeli.
She seemed quite to understand our point of view, and told me
plainly what shows that the artful man _did_ say, if it came back
to him again at this juncture, he would not be bound by his
present refusal. I said, "But, ma'am, that is not before me." "But
he told it to me," she said.

(M148) The Queen sent Mr. Gladstone's long letter to Mr. Disraeli, and he
replied in a tolerably long letter of his own. He considered Mr.
Gladstone's observations under two heads: first, as an impeachment of the
opposition for contributing to the vote against the bill, when they were
not prepared to take office; second, as a charge against Mr. Disraeli
himself that he summarily refused to take office without exhausting all
practicable means of aiding the country in the exigency. On the first
article of charge, he described the doctrine advanced by Mr. Gladstone as
being "undoubtedly sound so far as this: that for an opposition to use its
strength for the express purpose of throwing out a government which it is
at the time aware that it cannot replace--having that object in view and no
other--would be an act of recklessness and faction that could not be too
strongly condemned." But this, he contended, could not be imputed to the
conservative opposition