their resignations, did not throw up the Government, but _very near it_. The King suggested the difficulty of his situation, and Melbourne told him 'he had better send for the Duke of Wellington, and depend upon it he would get him out of it.' 'In fact,' said the Duke, 'Melbourne told him I should do just what I did.' Accordingly the King did send for the Duke, and it is true that Melbourne offered to be the bearer of his Majesty's letter. When some question was asked about the messenger, Melbourne said, 'No messenger will go so quick as I shall; you had better give it to me.' The Duke said that no man could have acted more like a gentleman and a man of honour than Melbourne did, and that his opinion of him was greatly raised. I told him that I thought Melbourne could not have given his colleagues an exact and correct account of what had passed, for that they could not conceive themselves to have been so ill-treated if it was so, and that if he had told them _all_ they would probably have thought he had abandoned their interests. He said that it was evident Melbourne was very happy to disengage himself from the concern. (As all this case will probably be discussed in Parliament, we shall see that the debate will turn principally upon the fact of disunion, and I have little doubt that Rice and Lansdowne will declare that they had no intention of quitting. So much depends upon verbal niceties, and the bounds between truth and falsehood are so narrow, the partition so thin, that they will, I expect, try to back up their party without any absolute breach of veracity.) When the King was reading the papers to him (the Duke), and telling him all that had passed, _he was in a great fright_ lest the Duke should think he had acted imprudently, and should decline to accept the Government. Then the Duke said, 'Sir, I see at once how it all is. Your Majesty has not been left by your Ministers, but something very like it;' and His Majesty was rejoiced when the Duke at once acquiesced in taking office. [2] [Mr. Algernon Greville, brother of Mr. Charles Greville, was private secretary to the Duke of Wellington both in and out of office.] [3] [This statement has certainly not been confirmed by the subsequent publication of papers or by the narrative of the King himself. It is very extraordinary that the Duke of Wellington should have been led to believe it; but this is only another proof of the extreme difficulty of arriving at an exact knowledge of what passes in conversation between two persons, even when both of them are acting in perfect good faith.]