[120] [This refers to the arrangements concluded in London between the Great Powers for the maintenance of the integrity of the Danish dominions, which were afterwards so shamefully violated and abandoned.]
[121] [On June 17 Lord Stanley made his motion in the House of Lords censuring the Government for their coercive measures against the commerce and people of Greece, in a speech of extraordinary eloquence and power. The debate lasted all night. As morning dawned the division resulted in a majority of 37 against Ministers.]
[122] [Mr. Roebuck moved a resolution applauding the principles which have hitherto regulated the foreign policy of the Government, to countervail the recent vote of the Lords. A great and memorable debate followed, in which Lord Palmerston delivered his ablest speech, and Sir Robert Peel his last. The debate ended by a Ministerial majority of 46, so that, for the time, the supporters of Lord Palmerston were completely victorious; yet in that majority a large number of votes were given by those who most condemned his high-handed proceedings.]
[123] [In spite of the triumph Lord Palmerston had obtained in the House of Commons, the evils of his arbitrary mode of conducting-foreign affairs continued to excite the anxiety of his colleagues and something more than the distrust of the Court, and an attempt was made, with the concurrence of Lord John Russell, the Duke of Bedford, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Clarendon, to induce him to take some other office in the Government, which, of course, he declined to do. The details of this negotiation cannot now be published, but they were the premonitory symptoms of the storm which wrested the Foreign Office from the hands of Lord Palmerston in the following year.]
[124] [It may here be noted that the Minute of the Queen, in which Her Majesty laid down the rules which ought to govern the conduct of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and intimated that a departure from them 'must be considered as failing in sincerity towards the Crown, and justly to be visited by the exercise of her constitutional right of dismissing that Minister,' bore date August 12, 1850, and was communicated to Lord Palmerston by Lord John Russell at this time, within a few weeks of the termination of the debate on the foreign policy of the Government.]
[125] [The German question relates to the proceedings which had arisen out of the Frankfort Convention, the Schleswig-Holstein quarrel, and the dispute in Hesse, which nearly led to war. Lord Palmerston was strongly opposed to the views taken by the Court on these German questions.]
[126] [H.R.H. Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, youngest surviving son of George III., died in July 1850, and was succeeded by his son, Prince George of Cambridge. A question arose as to his precedence; but H.R.H. sits in the House of Lords as fourth Peer of the Blood Royal, the Duke of Cumberland not having taken the seat to which he has an hereditary right.]
[127] [Upon the death of William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne, his brother, Frederic Lamb, previously created Lord Beauvale, succeeded to the Melbourne title and to the Brocket and other estates. Lord Beauvale had married at Vienna, where he was British Minister, Mdlle. de Maltzahn, daughter of the Prussian Minister at that Court. Mr. Greville was much more intimate with Frederic, than he had ever been with William, Lamb, and he continued, during the remainder of Lord Beauvale's life, to be a frequent guest at Brocket. He generally called his friend by his former name or title, though he was, in fact, Viscount Melbourne after his brother's death.]
[128] [This letter is reprinted in the Appendix to the present volume.]
[129] [Mr. Green was Professor of Anatomy in the Royal Academy of Arts—a very eloquent and remarkable man, though but little known by the public. He had been the most intimate friend of the poet Coleridge in his later years, and published a work on the philosophical opinions of Coleridge after his death.]