Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/167

 the Queen, and that Stockmar ruled the Prince, and therefore that the policy of the court was not English, but German. That this was a complete misunderstanding, the publication of the "Prince Consort's Life," besides many other political memoirs and memoranda, has abundantly shown. But it was a very natural mistake, and from it arose, not altogether, it is to be feared, without the connivance of Lord Palmerston, a degree of hostility against the Prince which reached an extraordinary height during the early part of the Crimean War.

The question between the Queen and Lord Palmerston is no longer obscured by side issues; at no time was it based upon a divergence of political views. What the Queen, and the majority of Lord Palmerston's colleagues in the Government, no less than the Queen, objected to, was his way of sending despatches, calculated seriously to embroil England with foreign Governments, either entirely without their knowledge and concurrence, going through the form of submitting despatches to them for their criticism and approval, and then actually sending off something entirely different. The despatches submitted by the Foreign Secretary to the Cabinet and to the Queen, and materially altered by them, would be sometimes recast by Palmerston in accordance with his original draft, and thus the Ministers and Sovereign were made to appear to have consented to that of which they had disapproved. At other times he would send important despatches to the Queen for her approval, allowing her quite an inadequate time to digest their contents, almost forcing the suspicion that he wished her to give her assent without knowing what they contained. When this practice was complained of by the Prime Minister, Palmerston excused himself by saying that the practice of sending off early copies of