s were
sometimes made by him when they had been neither suggested nor
approved by the Crown.

Such proceedings caused England, in the Queen's own words, to be
"generally detested, mistrusted, and treated with indignity by even
the smallest Powers."

In the Memorandum the Queen requires:

"(1) That he will distinctly state what he proposes in a given case,
in order that the Queen may know as distinctly to what she has given
her royal sanction.

"(2) Having once given her sanction to a measure, that it be not
arbitrarily altered or modified by the Minister. Such an act she must
consider as a failure in sincerity towards the Crown, and justly to
be visited by the exercise of her Constitutional right of dismissing
that Minister. She expects to be kept informed of what passes between
him and the Foreign Ministers, before important decisions are taken,
based upon that intercourse; to receive the Foreign dispatches in
good time and to have the drafts for her approval sent to her in
sufficient time to make herself acquainted with their contents
before they must be sent off. The Queen thinks it best that Lord John
Russell should show this letter to Lord Palmerston."

More than once the alteration of a dispatch by the Queen prevented
what might easily have plunged this country into a disastrous war.

After the Mutiny in India a proclamation was issued to the native
races, and the Queen insisted upon alterations which would clearly
show that their religious beliefs should in no way be interfered with,
thus preventing a fresh mutiny.

On rare occasions her indignation got the better of her--once,
notably, when, owing to careless delay on the part of the Ministry,
General Gordon perished at Khartoum, a rescue party failing to reach
him in time. In a letter to his sisters she spoke of this as "a stain
left upon England," and as a wrong which she felt very keenly.

Her style of writing was as simple as possible, yet she always said
the right thing at the right moment, and her letters of sympathy or
congratulation were models of their kind and never failed in their
effect.

Few, if any, reigns in history have been so blameless as hers, and
her domestic life was perfect in its harmony and the devotion of the
members of her family to one another. She possessed the 'eye of the
mistress' for every detail, however small, which concerned
housekeeping matters, and though her style of entertaining was
naturally often magnificent,