Sir Robert Peel humbly assures your Majesty that he has advised such measures of preparation to be taken in respect to the amount of disposable naval force, and the position of it, as without bearing the character of menace or causing needless disquietude and alarm, may provide for an unfavourable issue of our present differences with the United States.
Sir Robert Peel fears that when the President ventured to make to Mr Fox the communication which he did make, he must have laboured under apprehension that M'Leod might be executed in spite of the efforts of the general Government of the United States to save his life.
Footnote 146: British Minister at Washington.
Footnote 147: One Alexander M'Leod was tried at Utica on the charge of being implicated in the destruction of the Caroline (an American vessel engaged in carrying arms to the Canadian rebels), in 1837, and in the death of Mr Durfee, an American. The vessel had been boarded by Canadian loyalists when lying in American waters, set on fire and sent over Niagara Falls, and in the affray Durfee was killed. M'Leod was apprehended on American territory, and hence arose the friction between the two countries. M'Leod was acquitted 12th October 1841.
Queen Victoria to the Earl of Aberdeen.
PORTUGAL
Buckingham Palace, 31st October 1841.
The Queen received yesterday evening Lord Aberdeen's letter with the accompanying despatches and draft. She certainly is surprised at the strange and improper tone in which Lord Howard's148 despatches are written, and can only attribute them to an over-eager and, she fully believes, mistaken feeling of the danger to which he believes the throne of the Queen to be exposed.
The Queen has carefully perused Lord Aberdeen's draft, which she highly approves, but wishes to suggest to Lord Aberdeen whether upon further consideration it might not perhaps be as well to soften the words under which she has drawn a pencil line, as she fears they might irritate Lord Howard very much.
The Queen is induced to copy the following sentences from a letter she received from her cousin, the King of Portugal, a few days ago, and which it may be satisfactory to Lord Aberdeen to see:—