wer. Lord Palmerston, on
behalf of his court and government, disclaimed it, and demanded that
the royal family of Spain should be left free to follow their own
inclinations, excepting only as regarded members of the royal family
of France, against a union with which the English whig foreign minister
protested, as a breach of the treaty of Utrecht. Mr. Disraeli, and
others of the conservative party, were of opinion with M. Guizot, that
such marriages as the French ministry contemplated would not infringe
that treaty, which guaranteed that the throne of France and Spain
should not be filled by the same person, but made no provision against
marriages upon which such an event might appear to be contingent.
The British government was firm in regarding the proceedings of Louis
Philippe as directed by an unprincipled ambition, in defiance of
treaties, and of the alliance between Great Britain and France then
subsisting. The English government did not encourage a member of the
house of Cobourg, but advocated the pretensions to her majesty's hand of
a Spanish prince, Don Enrique, the Queen of Spain's own cousin. To this
the French government was opposed, because Don Enrique was of liberal
political opinions, and it was the policy of Louis Philippe and his
_alter ego_, M. Guizot, to keep down liberal aspirations in Spain. The
reaction policy of the French king and his minister was now in full
operation, and this was, unfortunately, more felt at Madrid than at
Paris. The King of the French wished, he alleged, to see the choice of
the Spanish princess fall within the Bourbon circle; but a ban was laid
on Don Enrique, because of his constitutionalism, or, as Guizot was
pleased to designate it, his revolutionary opinions. The intrigue of
the French government was successful, so far that the Queen of Spain
was married to a Spanish Bourbon, brother to Don Enrique, a man whom
the queen personally hated, a bigoted devotee and reactionary, whose
fanaticism against liberty was morbid, and who was an avowed Carlist,
openly denying the right of the Queen of Spain to the throne. Whatever
could be supposed as likely to influence the fortunes of the young queen
and of the Spanish nation, unfavourably, in connection with a royal
marriage, was associated with this; but Louis Philippe and M.
Guizot cared for none of these things, so as their own project was
accomplished. At the same time the sister of the queen was married to
the Duc de Montpensier