On January 27, 1855, the Coalition Government of Lord Aberdeen and Lord John Russell resigned, being defeated on a vote of censure charging them with mismanagement of the Crimean War. Lord Palmerston received the commands of Queen Victoria to form an Administration. He, too, desired to have a Ministry of both Liberals and Conservatives. On February 7th he wrote to Ashley—now the Earl of Shaftesbury and a Conservative—offering him the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster with a seat in the Cabinet. That was in the morning. In the afternoon Shaftesbury received a brief note from Palmerston requesting him to “consider the offer as suspended,” in consequence of unforeseen difficulties, which, it subsequently transpired, were the claims of the Liberals for a greater share of place and power in the new Government. This explanation came to Shaftesbury from Lady Palmerston. “Palmerston is distracted with all the worry he has to go through,” she wrote. In a P.S. she added: “It is no pleasure to form a Government when there are so many unreasonable people to please, and so many interested people pressing for their own gratification and vanity, without any regard to the public good or the interests of the Government and country.” Shaftesbury thus poured out his virtuously indignant soul on the subject to his son: “The selfishness, the meanness, the love of place and salary, the oblivion of the country, of man’s welfare and God’s honour, have never been more striking and terrible than in this crisis. These, added to the singular conceit of all the candidates for office (and all have aspired to the highest), have thrown stumbling-blocks in Palmerston’s path at every step. The greediness and vanity of our place-hunters have combined to make each one of them a union of the vulture and the peacock.”