He is a very good speaker, he has not naturally much industry, and his health is bad, which will probably disable him from a very close and assiduous attention to business.

It is, however, upon the whole an adequate appointment, and he is perhaps more likely to go on smoothly with the Court of Directors, which is a great matter, than Lord Ellenborough.
[Footnote 124: On Lord Ellenborough becoming Governor-General, Lord Fitzgerald and Vesci, an ex-M.P., and former Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, succeeded him at the Board of Control.] [Pageheading: FRANCE AND SPAIN] _The Earl of Aberdeen to Queen Victoria._ FOREIGN OFFICE, _16th October 1841._ Lord Aberdeen, with his most humble duty, begs to lay before your Majesty a private letter from M.Guizot, which has just been communicated to him by M.de Ste-Aulaire, on the recent attempt in favour of Queen Christina in Spain.

Your Majesty will see that although M.Guizot denies, with every appearance of sincerity, all participation of the French Government in this attempt, he does not conceal that it has their cordial good wishes for its success.

These feelings, on the part of such a Government as that of France, will probably be connected with practical assistance of some kind, although M.Guizot's declarations may perhaps be literally true.
_Queen Victoria to the Earl of Aberdeen._ The Queen must say that she fears the French are at the bottom of it, for their jealousy of our influence in Spain is such, that the Queen fears they would not be indisposed to see civil war to a certain degree restored rather than that Spain should go on quietly supported by us.[125] The Queen, however, hopes that, as far as it is possible, the English Government will support the present Regent, who is thoroughly attached to England, and who, from all that the Queen hears of him, is the fittest man they have in Spain for the post he occupies; and indeed matters till now had gone on much more quietly than they had for some time previous, since Espartero is at the head of the Government.

The French intrigues should really be frustrated.
The Queen certainly thinks that M.Guizot's veracity is generally not to be doubted, but the conduct of France regarding Spain has always been very equivocal.
[Footnote 125: See _post_, p.349.