§ MR. AYSHFORD WISEsaid, he would beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether it was the intention of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, on Mr. Bligh's intended retirement from the mission at Hanover, to act in conformity with the Resolution passed by the House of Commons in 1855, and to adopt the recommendation made in 1850 by the Select Committee on official salaries, with reference to the diplomatic establishment at Hanover?
§ VISCOUNT PALMERSTONsaid, that the recommendation to which the hon. Gentleman referred was that there should 1495 be only one representative of this country stationed at Frankfort, and that our representatives should be withdrawn from Hanover, Stuttgardt, Munich, and Dresden. It was not the intention of Her Majesty's Government to adopt that recommendation. He thought that they were entitled to expect that confidence should be placed in them to this extent—that they who carried on the diplomatic communications of the country must be deemed to be better judges as to what was useful to the public interests than those who had no knowledge whatever of them. With all deference, therefore, to the opinions of the Select Committee, he had to State that Her Majesty's Government were of opinion that it would not be conducive to the public interest to withdraw our diplomatic representatives from the places referred to.