Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/442

 of Schleswig-Holstein, which opened in 1848, Palmerston inclined to the claim of Denmark against that of the confederation of German states with Prussia at its head, whose triumph the English royal family hopefully anticipated.

In point of practice Palmerston was equally offensive to the prince and the queen. He frequently caused them intense irritation or alarm by involving the government in acute international crises without warning the queen of their approach. In 1848, before consulting her, he peremptorily ordered the reactionary Spanish government to liberalise its institutions, with the result that the English ambassador, Sir Henry Bulwer, was promptly expelled from Madrid. In January 1850, to the queen's consternation, Palmerston coerced Greece into compliance with English demands for the compensation of Don Pacifico and other English subjects who had claims against the Greek government. Thereupon France, who was trying to mediate, and regarded Palinerston's precipitate action as insulting, withdrew her ambassador from London, and for the third time in the queen's reign—on this occasion almost before she had an opportunity of learning the cause—Palmerston brought France and England to the brink of war.

The queen's embarrassments were aggravated by the habit of foreign sovereigns, who believed her power to be far greater than it was, of writing autograph appeals to her personally on political affairs and of seeking privately to influence the foreign policy of the country. She was wise enough to avoid the snares that were thus laid for her, and frankly consulted Palmerston before replying. He invariably derided the notion of conciliating the good opinion of foreign courts, where his name was a word of loathing. The experience was often mortifying for the queen. In 1847, when the queen of Portugal, the queen's early playmate, was threatened by her revolutionary subjects, she appealed directly to Queen Victoria for protection. Palmerston treated the Portuguese difficulty as a 'Coburg family affair.' He attributed the queen's peril to her reliance on the absolutist advice of one Dietz, a native of Coburg, who stood towards the Portuguese queen and her husband, Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, in a relation resembling that of Stockmar to Prince Albert and the queen. Palmerston insisted on Dietz's dismissal a proceeding that was highly offensive to the queen and to her Saxe-Coburg kinsmen (, Memoirs, i. 288 sq.) Afterwards he dictated a solemn letter of constitutional advice for his royal mistress to copy in her own hand and forward to her unhappy correspondent at Lisbon (, Lord John Russell). Later in the year the king of Prussia, in a private letter which his ambassador at St. James's, Baron Bunsen, was directed to deliver to the queen in private audience, invited her encouragement of the feeble efforts of Prussia to dominate the German federation. Palmerston learned from Bunsen of the missive, and told him that it was irregular for the English sovereign to correspond with foreign monarchs unless they were her relatives (, Memoirs, ii. 149). In concert with Prince Albert he sketched a colourless draft reply, which the queen copied out ; it 'began and ended in German, though the body of it was in English.' Prince Albert, in frequent private correspondence with the king of Prussia, had sought to stimulate the king to more active assertion of Prussian power in Germany, and the apparent discrepancy between the prince's ardour and the coolness which Palmerston imposed on his wife was peculiarly repugnant to both her and her husband. Expostulation with Palmerston seemed vain. In June 1848 Prince Albert bade Lord John remind him that every one of the ten thousand despatches which were received annually at the foreign office was addressed to the queen and to the prime minister as well as to himself, and that the replies involved them all. In the following autumn Palmerston remarked on a further protest made in the queen's behalf by Lord John : 'Unfortunately the queen gives ear too easily to persons who are hostile to her government, and who wish to poison her mind with distrust of her ministers, and in this way she is constantly suffering under groundless uneasiness.' To this challenge she answered, through Lord John, 1 Oct. 1848: 'The queen naturally, as I think, dreads that upon some occasion you may give her name to sanction proceedings which she may afterwards be compelled to disavow' (, Lord John Russell, ii. 47). Unluckily for the queen, Palmerston's action was vehemently applauded by a majority in parliament and in the country, and his defence of his action in regard to Greece in the Don Pacifico affair in June 1850 elicited the stirring enthusiasm of the House of Commons. The queen, in conversation with political friends like Aberdeen and Clarendon, loudly exclaimed against her humiliation. Lord John was often as much out of sympathy with Palmerston as she, but he knew the government could not stand