Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/173

 nearly 500 persons were shipped off to Cayenne without any form of trial, thousands were shot down in the streets, and the Prince President became first by military and then by popular election Napoleon III. and Emperor of the French.

The Queen, true to her principles of non-intervention, at once wrote to the Prime Minister, instructing him to caution Lord Normanby, our ambassador in Paris, to observe strict neutrality, and to remain absolutely passive towards the new Government. Lord Palmerston accordingly sent a despatch to Lord Normanby in that sense. At the same time, however, that he was sending his despatch to Paris, he was seeing Count Walewski, the French ambassador in London, and expressing his entire approbation of the coup d'état and his conviction that the President could not have acted otherwise than he had done! On the 16th December he followed this up by a despatch to Lord Normanby, expressing his conviction that the action of Louis Napoleon was for the benefit of France and also of the rest of Europe. This despatch was sent off without the knowledge or approval of the Queen or the Prime Minister, and in contravention of their express wishes. This was the end. Lord Palmerston was dismissed, not at the instance of the Queen, but with her entire approval. Lord John Russell offered him, as a consolation, the Lord Lieutenantcy of Ireland and a British Peerage, both of which were curtly declined. The general opinion of the political world was that Palmerston's career was over. Disraeli spoke of him in the past tense, as if he were dead. There was tremendous rejoicing over his fall in every stronghold of despotism in Europe, especially in Austria, where the heads of the Government took credit to themselves for his overthrow, and gave balls in honor of the event; a rhyme was current