Page:The Letters Of Queen Victoria, vol. 3 (1908).djvu/49

1854] what he means, but the public, particularly under strong excitement of patriotic feeling, is impatient and annoyed to hear at this moment the first Minister of the Crown enter into an impartial examination of the Emperor of Russia’s character and conduct. The qualities in Lord Aberdeen’s character which the Queen values most highly, his candour and his courage in expressing opinions even if opposed to general feelings of the moment, are in this instance dangerous to him, and the Queen hopes that in the vindication of his own conduct to-day, which ought to be triumphant, as it wants in fact no vindication, he will not undertake the ungrateful and injurious task of vindicating the Emperor of Russia from any of the exaggerated charges brought against him and his policy at a time when there is enough in it to make us fight with all might against it.

BUCKINGHAM PALACE, 27th June 1854. The Queen observes in Lord Cowley’s letter a suggestion of M. Drouyn de Lhuys to stop, if possible, the Russian Loan. She thinks this of the highest importance as cutting the sinews of war of the enemy. The Queen does not know whether we have by law the power to forbid the quotation of this stock in our market, but a short Act of Parliament might be obtained for the purpose. The London and Paris markets rejecting such paper would have the greatest influence upon its issue.

LONDON, 29th June 1854. Lord Aberdeen presents his humble duty to your Majesty. The Cabinet assembled yesterday evening at Lord John Russell’s, at Richmond, and continued to a very late hour.?

Lord Clarendon replied:—“. . . With reference to your Majesty’s note of this morning, Lord Clarendon begs to say that having laid a case fully before the Law Officers, and having ascertained from them that it would be high treason for any subject of your Majesty’s to be concerned in the Russian Loan, he will give all possible circulation to the opinion, and he has this evening sent it to Vienna, Berlin, and The Hague. . . .”