The fall of the Whigs would mean a sad upset for Lord M.
But it would have a still more terrible consequence: Lord M.would have to leave her; and the daily, the hourly, presence of Lord M.had become an integral part of her life.

Six months after her accession she had noted in her diary "I shall be very sorry to lose him even for one night;" and this feeling of personal dependence on her Minister steadily increased.

In these circumstances it was natural that she should have become a Whig partisan.

Of the wider significance of political questions she knew nothing; all she saw was that her friends were in office and about her, and that it would be dreadful if they ceased to be so.

"I cannot say," she wrote when a critical division was impending, "(though I feel confident of our success) how low, how sad I feel, when I think of the possibility of this excellent and truly kind man not remaining my Minister! Yet I trust fervently that He who has so wonderfully protected me through such manifold difficulties will not now desert me! I should have liked to have expressed to Lord M.my anxiety, but the tears were nearer than words throughout the time I saw him, and I felt I should have choked, had I attempted to say anything." Lord Melbourne realised clearly enough how undesirable was such a state of mind in a constitutional sovereign who might be called upon at any moment to receive as her Ministers the leaders of the opposite party; he did what he could to cool her ardour; but in vain.
With considerable lack of foresight, too, he had himself helped to bring about this unfortunate condition of affairs.