Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/490

478 Lord Aberdeen threatened to recall our minister at Madrid, and Lord Palmerston was committed to the Spanish Liberals and to their candidate Don Enrique. Having kept faith absolutely, they had a right to hold France to her bargain. But the French were able to reply that Sir Henry Bulwer was responsible for Prince Leopold ; that the court, if not the Ministry, were interested in his success ; that he was encouraged by the Kings of Portugal and Belgium. After three months of hesitation, Palmerston induced Prince Albert to decline the proposal of Queen Christine ; but the French employed their plausible materials so well that two generations have believed that the scheme which he in fact demolished was his own ; and as late as last June, M. de Mazade wrote that Lord Palmerston's first care on taking office in 1846 was to revive the candidature of Leopold. Duke Ernest, on the contrary, testifies that he was incapable of harbouring a design favourable to the house of Coburg. The rejection, not by France but by England, of a prince connected with the royal family, who was the fittest candidate, who was preferred by the Queen of Spain, opened that conflict between English and German notions of the function of monarchy in free States which the dynastic literature has exposed. Accepting without challenge Prince Albert's action in this country, Dr. Bright passes by the revealing allusions of the Duke of Coburg to what he feels as failure in his brother's career : "Ob Prinz Albert in seinem Verkehr mit dieser Nation gleich von vornherein den richtigen Ton zu treffen wusste, will ich nicht entscheiden. Ich habe iiber diesen Punkt oft in aller Liebe mit meinem Bruder gehadert und immer die Empfindung gehabt, dass ihn ein schweres Loos getroffen, sich dem grossen Inselvolke verstandnissvoll einfiigen zu müssen. . . . Man hätte streben mtissen ihn freundlicher zu stimmen. . . . Die grösste Wärme und opferfähigste Neigung vermochten sich zuweilen in schmerzliche Kalte zu verwandeln, und oftmals sah man ihn an jener Grenze, die für Mächtige und Hochgestellte so verführerisch sein mag, in Urtheilen und Anschauungen