which ought to have been left to the discretion of the Minister, and the ex-Ministers say that the vote made it impossible for them to do anything but resign, and that their opponents must have been fully aware that this would be the consequence of their victory. [Sidenote: DETERMINATION TO RESIGN.] Their conduct is inexplicable to me, for I believe they were very sorry to go out, and yet if they had wished it they might have very well stayed in. According to ancient practice any vote of censure produced resignation as a matter of course, no matter what the subject of it, but it did so because a vote of censure, and indeed any adverse vote on any important measure, implied that the House of Commons had withdrawn its confidence from the Government, the fact of which rendered it impossible for them to carry on the affairs of the country, and obliged them to resign. But it is impossible to pretend that the late vote indicated the withdrawal of the confidence of the House of Commons generally. They had had two immense majorities a few days before, and they would have had another as large a few days after if they had gone on with the bill. If I had been able to advise the Queen, I would have recommended her to refuse Lord Palmerston's resignation, and have insisted on his testing the question of confidence on the Conspiracy Bill, or on some question in which the national passions were not concerned, and he could not have refused to take this course. Even after she had sent for Derby he gave her the opportunity (though not I suppose the advice to do so), for he said she had better take another day for consideration, and then if she decided on wishing him to form a Government, he would undertake it. _February 26th._--I met George Lewis yesterday, and talked over with him the whole affair. He thinks that it has all been fearfully mismanaged, and that the catastrophe might have been avoided in many different ways: first, by answering the despatch; secondly, by doing what I have suggested, producing no papers and asking for confidence; then by the Speaker's declining to allow the amendment to be put, as he well might have done, and as a _strong_ Speaker would have done. Lord Eversley advised him to do this, and gave his strong opinion that the amendment was inadmissible. It is curious that Palmerston's overthrow should be the work of a Parliament elected expressly to support him, and immediately caused by the act of a Speaker whom he insisted upon putting in the chair, contrary to the advice of many others who thought he would prove inefficient.