The Duke of Bedford came to me the other day to tell me Lord John was determined no longer to go on as he now is, and it seems that he is moved principally by pecuniary considerations.[2] He is poor and has a large family. While he is in office he is obliged to incur expenses by giving dinners and parties, and this additional expense is defrayed by the Duke, but in a very unsatisfactory way. Lord John sends him a sort of estimate or account of his extra expenses, and the Duke pays the money. It is not surprising that Lord John dislikes such assistance as this, and though he never complains, he is probably mortified and provoked that his brother does not once for all give him a sum of money or a large annuity. Everybody else is amazed that he does not do this; but though he is much attached to Lord John, admires and is proud of him, his love of money is so great that he cannot bring himself, even for his brother, to do a generous thing on a great scale. His colossal fortune, which goes on increasing every day, and for which he has no use, might well be employed in making his brother easy, and in buying golden opinions for himself; but the passion of avarice and the pleasure of accumulation outweigh all such considerations, and he falls in readily with Lord John's notion of taking an office for the sake of its emoluments. The present idea is to have this matter settled before Easter, to turn out Mr. Strutt from the Duchy of Lancaster, and put Lord John in the place, with an increased salary during his occupation of it. Nothing, however, is settled about it yet. The publication of the secret correspondence with Russia has excited great interest, and does great credit to the Government, but it increases the public indignation against the Emperor, because it exposes the extreme duplicity of his conduct; and as he must have been aware that such would be the inevitable result of publicity, it is difficult to conceive what induced him to provoke it, unless Walewski's conjecture is the true one. He thinks that the Emperor thought it would make bad blood between us and France, fancying that we had not imparted the correspondence to the French Government, in which he was mistaken, as we had done so. [Footnote 1: The indiscretion, such as it was, appears to have been that of Lord Aberdeen himself, and Lord Malmesbury quoted with a good deal of wit and _à propos_, in the House of Lords, Sancho Panza's saying, 'that a cask may leak at the top as well as at the bottom.'] [Footnote 2: Lord John at this time had a seat in the Cabinet and led the House of Commons without any office in the Ministry and without any salary.] WAR IS DECLARED.