Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/166



none of her Ministers has the Queen ever been in sharper conflict than with Lord Palmerston. From his third Foreign Secretaryship in 1846 till his dismissal in 1852, the history of their relations was one long struggle.

Palmerston considered himself the political inheritor of Canning's foreign policy, and that he was bound, as the representative of England to foreign Governments, to be the upholder of political liberty and the foe of tyranny and oppression all over Europe. In this he carried with him the whole-hearted sympathy of the mass of English public opinion. It was not with his opinions and views, but with his way of giving effect to them, that the Queen quarrelled. But the English people were not in a position at the time the conflict was going on to make the distinction. They knew that the Queen and Lord Palmerston was the friend of Hungary, and Poland, and Italy; and in proportion as they gave their sympathy to these countries and to Lord Palmerston, they were hostile to the Court. Now, as their personal loyalty to the Queen was very strong, they sought to find a reason for the Queen's opposition to Lord Palmerston, and they found it, or thought they found it, in the person of the Prince. The Queen's husband was supposed to be a power behind the throne thwarting the will of her constitutional advisers in the interests of foreign despots. The popular view was that the Prince ruled