Lord Palmerston a fait offrir tout dernièrement au Gouvernement Français, par Lord Normanby, une copie officielle de ces deux dépêches (22 Juin et 19 Juillet, 1846), afin qu’elles pussent être communiquées aux Chambres avec le reste de la correspondance. On a refusé cette offre, avec la meilleure grâce et de la manière la plus polie du monde.
Vouz trouverez ci-jointes les deux dernières dépêches sur cette affaire par M. Guizot et Lord Palmerston. Celle du dernier, très-récente, ne me parait pas trop ménager votre successeur.
A présent que j’ai tenu ma parole et que j’ai fait ce que vous m’avez demande, tenez la vôtre de votre côté, et écrivez-moi une longue lettre, mais tout de suite, afin que je puisse faire connaître à vos amis ici, au moment de la réunion du Parlement (le 19) la marche que vous et vos amis comptez suivre. C’est en répondant franchement à la confiance dont on vous donne des preuves si fortes, que vous en inspirerez davantage. Je ne puis pas toujours chercher à pénétrer ce que l’on pense, sans avoir rien à dire en retour. Du reste, vous êtes le meilleur juge de ce qu’il vous convient de faire.
Avez-vous vu M. Gréville? Il m’a dit qu’il irait vous voir et vous saluer de ma part. J’apprends, par le Times du 12, qu’on le suppose chargé d’une négociation non officielle pour renouveler l’entente cordiale. La dernière lettre de Lord Palmerston a été écrite après le départ de M. Gréville. M. Gréville est allé à Paris pour complaire aux invitations très-urgentes de Mme de Lieven. Comme le Times disait que M. Gréville est ‘l’ami intime de M. Thiers,’ est-il allé à Paris pour vous faire donner ‘l’accolade fraternelle’ à M. Guizot? Ecrivez-moi ce que vous pensez de cela; dites-moi si vous avez beaucoup causé avec M. Gréville de cette affaire et ce qu’il en pense. Tout ceci m’intéresse beaucoup. C’est inutile de répéter que vos lettres, comme les miennes, sont strictement confidentielles. Rappelez-vous bien de n’envoyer votre réponse que sous couverte directement à Lord Normanby. Croyez-moi toujours.
A. Panizzi.”
Mons. Guizot, though successful in the end, was unable to carry out his design for marrying the Queen of Spain, after his own and his master’s mind, within the space of a few weeks or months. Some years elapsed ere the slow course of the Spanish Marriages reached its climax. Meanwhile, a great political incident had occurred in this country. In the summer of 1846 Sir Robert Peel’s ministry had resigned. Lord Palmerston had succeeded Lord Aberdeen at the Foreign Office. The new Foreign Minister continued, with respect to the Spanish intrigue, his predecessor’s line of conduct throughout, albeit his expressions of indignation at Guizot’s duplicity may have been a little stronger and sterner than Lord Aberdeen’s. For this, however, it must be allowed that, as the affair progressed, there was ample reason.
By this time the list of candidates for the Queen’s hand had been considerably reduced. There remained but two within the principle of the descendants of Philip V., the Duke of Cadiz, and his brother, Don Enrique, Duke of Seville. To the last of these, Lord Palmerston, but simply as an outsider, gave the preference, as the only Spanish Prince who is fit, by his personal qualities, to be the Queen’s husband. Don Enrique, however, was a little too liberal and progressive in his principles to be accepted by the opposite party. Finally, after a long course of unseemly manœuvring and double-dealing, the marriage of Queen Isabella with Francis, Duke of Cadiz, was brought about, and at the same time, by a violation of good faith, such as blushing history has seldom had to record, the Duke de Montpensier’s marriage with the Infanta took place.
An excellent commentary on the various phases of this wretched intrigue, and on the conduct of those concerned in it, will be found in the subjoined correspondence between Thiers and Panizzi. In answer to the charges brought by the latter against Guizot, Thiers replies with very summary treatment of the French Minister, both politically and personally. The sketch of Louis-Philippe’s character, in the first quoted of these letters, is admirably drawn. The policy, however, of the great monarch of the barricades, made up of audacity and cunning, was on the whole so skilfully conducted, though so little likely to be enduring, as to our mind to justify a more significant epithet than that of a mere umpire.
What, however, stands out most conspicuously in this same letter is the sound, practical, and commonsense view taken by Thiers of the claim to actual and substantial importance of the Spanish Marriages; his justification of the British Cabinet’s policy of non-interference (and, with it, of Lord Aberdeen’s conduct) in a matter in no wise vital to England; and his far-sighted estimate of what might have been the consequences to Europe had more serious measures in opposition to the plot been adopted. It would have been an evil day that had seen the four greatest European powers ranged in two directly opposite, if not, indeed, openly hostile camps; whereof England and Prussia should have occupied the one, and France and Austria the other. The Spanish Marriages was a comedy, and decidedly unworthy of exaltation, at least for the time being, to the rank of an European tragedy.
