Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 39.djvu/171

 Our American Civil War. 159

that the dismemberment of the United States would aid him in that quarter. With Queen Victoria it was different. Her hu- manitarian sympathies were appealed to. Her husband, the Prince Consort, was a Hohenzollern, and the idea of the unifi- cation of Germany was then beginning to take shape. Look- ing forward to a soHdified Germany, and apprehensive of the growing spirit of democracy, it was impossible for the Prince to look with favor upon a war which might disrupt an existing government and the consequences of which it was impossible to foresee. It is well known that the Prince was none too popular with the British Cabinet, but the Queen reposed in him the utmost confidence, and he was in fact her privy councillor. Neither of them liked Palmerston, and often differed with him upon questions of State policy. Sir Theodore Martin, in his life of the Prince, has given us what the Prince put on record in the shape of a memorandum, as to an interview between Palmerston and himself which occurred August 17th, 1850. in the following words :

"The Queen had often, \ was sorry to say, latter!)^ almost invariably differed from the line of policy pursued by Palmer- ston. What she had a right to require was, that before a Hne of policy was adopted or brought before her for her sanction, she should be in full possession of all the facts and all the motives operating. She felt that in this respect she was not dealt with as she ought to be. She never found a matter 'intact' nor a question in which we were not already compromised be- fore it was submitted to her." See volume 2, page 308.

W'hen the affair of the "Trent" took place, in 1861, and Mason and Slidell, the Confederate Commissioners, were forci- bly removed from aboard a British steamer by Captain Wilkes, commanding a war vessel of the United States, it produced, as is well known, the greatest indignation in England, as an insult to her flag, and a flagrant breach of interational law. For the instant, war seemed imminent. A demand for reparation couched in peremptory language was drawn up by the British Government, to be sent to the Government at Washington, but