und to obey; if they are dutiful, she will owe her peace of mind to
their continued generosity.

With relation to Foreign Courts, the Queen's position is equally
humiliating in this respect. _Some_ Sovereigns (crowned heads) address
her husband as "Brother," some as "Brother and Cousin," some merely as
"Cousin." When the Queen has been abroad, her husband's position has
always been a subject of negotiation and vexation; the position which
has been accorded to him the Queen has always had to acknowledge as
a grace and favour bestowed on her by the Sovereign whom she visited.
While last year the Emperor of the French treated the Prince as a
Royal personage, his uncle declined to come to Paris avowedly because
he would not give precedence to the Prince; and on the Rhine in 1845
the King of Prussia could not give the place to the Queen's husband
which common civility required, because of the presence of an
Archduke, the third son of an uncle of the then reigning Emperor of
Austria, who would not give the _pas_, and whom the King would not
offend.

The only legal position in Europe, according to international law,
which the husband of the Queen of England enjoys, is that of a younger
brother of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, and this merely because the
English law does not know of him. This is derogatory to the dignity of
the Crown of England.

But _nationally_ also it is an injury to the position of the Crown
that the Queen's husband should have no other title than that of
Prince of Saxe-Coburg, and thus be perpetually represented to the
country as a foreigner. "The Queen and her foreign husband, the Prince
Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha!"

The Queen has a right to claim that her husband should be an
Englishman, bearing an English title, and enjoying a legal position
which she has not to defend with a wife's anxiety as a usurpation
against her own children, her subjects, and Foreign Courts.

The question has often been discussed by me with different Prime
Ministers and Lord Chancellors, who have invariably entirely agreed
with me; but the wish to wait for a good moment to bring the matter
before Parliament has caused one year after another to elapse without
anything being done. If I become _now_ more anxious to have it
settled, it is in order that it should be so before our children are
grown up, that it might not appear to be done in order to guard their
father's position against them personally, which could not fail to