net
for your Majesty's information. He prays to have it returned.

_Queen Victoria to Lord John Russell._

WINDSOR CASTLE, _21st November 1851._

The Queen has received Lord John Russell's letter and returns the note
on his former communication to the Cabinet. If Lord John felt on the
3rd of November that "above all, it behoves us to be particularly
cautious and not to afford just ground of complaint to any Party,
and that we cannot be too vigilant or weigh our proceedings too
scrupulously"--the Queen cannot suppose that Lord John considers the
official reception by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
of addresses, in which allied Sovereigns are called Despots and
Assassins, as within that "latitude" which he claims for every
minister, "which he may use perhaps with indiscretion, perhaps with
bad taste, but with no consequence of sufficient importance to deserve
notice."

The Queen leaves it to Lord John Russell whether he will lay her
letter, or only the substance of it, before the Cabinet;[25] but she
hopes that they will make that careful enquiry into the justice of
her complaint which she was sorry to miss altogether in Lord John
Russell's answer. It is no question with the Queen whether she pleases
the Emperor of Austria or not, but whether she gives him a just ground
of complaint or not. And if she does so, she can never believe that
this will add to her popularity with her own people. Lord John's
letter must accordingly have disappointed her as containing a mere
attempt at a defence of Lord Palmerston. Lord John sees one cause of
excuse in Lord Palmerston's natural desire to console himself for the
mortification of having had to decline seeing M. Kossuth; the Queen
has _every reason to believe_ that he has seen him after all.

[Footnote 25: On the 4th of December the matter came before
the Cabinet. No formal resolution was adopted, but regret was
expressed at Palmerston's want of caution in not ascertaining
in advance the tenor of the addresses, and in admitting
unreliable reporters.]

[Pageheading: DEATH OF KING OF HANOVER]

_Queen Victoria to Viscount Palmerston._

WINDSOR CASTLE, _21st November 1851._

The Queen has just received Lord Palmerston's letter with the
Memorandum relative to the mourning of her Uncle, the late King of
Hanover,[26] and she has to say in reply that she thinks the mourning
ought not to be for a Foreign Sovereign but for a Prince of t