t any instigation from Lord John, the queen complained to him
of the management of the foreign office. Her majesty demanded that all
despatches should be shown to her, that no decision on foreign questions
should be made by the foreign minister until her opinion was taken, that
no despatch which she had signed should be arbitrarily altered by the
minister, and that she should receive early and prompt intimation of
all negotiations between the foreign office and the ministers of foreign
courts. Her majesty directed Lord John Russell to show the document
conveying her demands to the foreign secretary. From the production of
this stern, severe, and rebukeful missive from the royal hand, it became
evident either that Lord Palmerston had failed in his duty, abused
the confidence of her majesty, and behaved with intolerable insolence,
assumption, and arrogance, or that a conspiracy existed to prejudice the
mind of the queen against a faithful and most competent minister, and
that the premier either aided that conspiracy, or took no decided stand
to resist it. It appeared that the main occasion of the cabinet and
court differences with Lord Palmerston was in connection with the _coup
d'etat_ in Paris. The court and the premier sympathised with the house
of Orleans, and consequently with the opposition given by the French
assembly to the president of the republic. Lord Palmerston believed
that the assembly provoked the conduct of the president by invading his
constitutional rights, and by violating the constitution formed by the
constituent assembly, and in virtue of which the legislative assembly
of France existed. Despatches sent to the English minister at Paris, the
Marquis of Normanby, of a private nature, were by that nobleman shown to
the French minister for foreign affairs, and out of that event arose
the complication. Lord Palmerston pleaded unqualified innocence of the
impeachment implied in her majesty's written commands to Lord John. Lord
Normanby was well known to be of Lord John's section of the whigs, and
a court favourite. From all these circumstances, the country drew
the following conclusions with extraordinary unanimity:--that Lord
Palmerston acted with more independence of the first minister than
was customary on the part of a secretary of state, but that his great
talents, great experience, great influence at home and abroad, justified
him; that Lord John Russell was imprudent in overlooking the peculiar
claim