EDINBURGH, March 23, 1846

Thanks for your precious letter of Saturday.  You need not grieve at having brought cares and anxieties ... upon me.  You have given me a love that repays them all; and such words as you write in that letter strengthen me for all that our “splendida via” may entail upon us, however contrary to my natural tastes or trying to my natural feelings.  What a delightful hope you give of your getting away on the 2nd—­but I am too wise to build upon it.

    Lady John to Lord John Russell

    EDINBURGH, March 25, 1846

....  There is a calmness and fairness and depth in conversation here which one seldom meets with in London, where people are too much taken up by the present to dwell upon the past, or look forward to the future—­and where consequently passion and prejudice are mixed up with most that one hears.  Dante, and Milton, and Shakespeare, etc., have little chance amid the hubbub of the great city—­but with all its faults, the great city is the place in the world I most wish to see again....  At poor Lady Holland’s one did hear the sort of conversation I find here, and surely you must miss not only her but her house very much.

    Lord John to Lady John Russell

    April 3, 1846

At all events pray do not distress yourself with the reflexion that you will not be a companion to me during my political trials.  You have been feeling strong, ... that strength will, I trust, return.  I see no reason why it should not—­and there is no one in existence who can think so well with my thoughts and feel so truly with my feelings as yourself.  So in sickness and in sorrow, so in joy and prosperity, we must rely on each other and let no discouraging apprehensions shake our courage.

Meanwhile in Parliament the Irish Coercion Bill was dragging on.  Lord Bessborough and other Whig peers had changed their mind about its value, and Lord John, instead of proposing an amendment, definitely opposed it.  The Protectionists, eager to revenge themselves upon Peel, who, they felt, had betrayed them, caught at the opportunity and voted with the Whigs.  The Government was defeated by a large majority on the very day the Repeal of the Corn Laws passed the House of Lords, and the Queen sent for Lord John, who became Prime Minister in July, 1846.

This time, beyond the usual troubles in the distribution of offices, he had no difficulty in forming a Ministry; but when formed it was in an unusually difficult position.  They were in power only because the Protectionists had chosen to send Peel about his business, and the Irish problem was growing more and more acute.  The potato crop of 1846 was even worse than that of 1845, and Peel’s system of public works had proved an expensive failure, more pauperising than almsgiving.  The Irish population fell from eight millions to five, and those who survived handed down an intensified hatred of England, which lives in some of their descendants to this day.