SPENCER

    Lady John Russell to Lord Minto,

    PEMBROKE LODGE, April 24, 1854

MY DEAREST PAPA,—...  I must dash at once into my subject, having only a quarter of an hour to spend on it.  It is that of John’s position; he has, I believe, raised his character in the country by the withdrawal of the Reform Bill.  His motives are above suspicion and unsuspected; whereas, owing to the singular state of the public mind, it seems pretty sure that they would have been, though most unjustly, suspected, had he persisted in his resignation.  But in the Cabinet I do not think his position improved, rather the reverse.  The policy of the timid and the shabby and the ambitious and the cunning and the illiberal triumphed; and all experience teaches me that John, having made a great sacrifice, will be expected to make every other that apparent expediency may induce his colleagues to require.  He will always be pressed and urged and taunted with obstinacy, etc., and told that he will ruin his reputation, if for the sake of one question on which he may happen to differ with them, he exposed his country to the awful danger of a change of Ministry....  It is for the avowed purpose of carrying on the war with vigour that Reform and other things are thrown aside.  The Ministry has not asked the House of Commons or the country to declare, but has declared itself indispensable to the country, and the only possible Ministry competent to carry on the war.  But if it has already proved, and if it daily goes on to prove, itself incompetent in time of peace to carry on measures of domestic improvement, and more specially incompetent either to prepare for or prosecute a great war, has John done right, has he done what the welfare of the country requires, in lending himself so long as its indispensable prop?  It is not incompetent from want of ability, but of unity....  He is considered by them to have wedded himself to them for better for worse more closely than ever by the withdrawal of Reform....  The wretched fears and delays and doubts which have, I firmly believe, first produced this war, and then made its beginning of so little promise, have had no effect as warnings for the future....  There will probably soon be great pressure put upon him to take office....  Nothing but the fact of his having no office, of his only part in the Government being work, has made him struggle along a very dangerous way unattacked and unhurt....  With his opinion of Lord Aberdeen’s Ministry he would be doing wrong, though from no worse motives than excess of deference to those with whom he acts, were he, after giving up Reform, to give up the degree of independence which he now has....  You can now partly conceive how doubtful I feel (and he does too) whether the withdrawal of Reform will ultimately be an advantage, though it is obvious that a break-up on that was more to be deprecated than on almost any other