The motion was negatived by a majority of 156 to 64—92. The House did not adjourn until three this morning.
Footnote 55: The Anti-Corn Law League was rapidly gaining importance, and fiscal policy occupied a great part of the session of 1842. Peel was already reducing import duties on articles other than corn. Cobden had been elected at Stockport, for the first time, in 1841.
The King of the Belgians to Queen Victoria.
FURTHER PARTICULARS OF ACCIDENT
Neuilly, 22nd July 1842.
My dearest Victoria,—I was anxious to write to you on the 18th, but I was so overpowered with all that surrounded me that I could really not. Yesterday I received your dear letter of the 19th, and I will answer it, so as to give you a clear view of the sad case. On the 12th, Tuesday, Chartres had taken leave, as he meant to go to St Omer, the 13th; however, in the family the Queen and others said he ought to come once more to see them. The King had ordered his carriage to go to town on the 13th, to a Council; Chartres meant to have called shortly after ten.
It is necessary to tell you all this, as it shows how strangely circumstances turned fatally. Chartres did not want to return once more to Neuilly, and the King, if exact, might see him once more in town. Chartres, however, instead of coming early, set off after eleven; his Off. d'Ordonnance, M. Bertin de Veaux, his valet de chambre, a German, Holder, begged him not to go quite alone in that small phaeton through Paris, as he was in uniform, but all this did not avail; he insisted to go in the phaeton and to go alone. He set out later than he expected, and if the King had set out exactly as he had named, the parents and the son would probably have met on the rising avenue of the Champs Elysees, towards the Barrière de l'Étoile and Arc de Triomphe. However, the King delayed his departure and the son set off. At the place where from the great avenue one turns off towards Neuilly, the horses, which were not even young horses, as I am told that he has had them some years, moved by that stupid longing to get to Neuilly, where they knew their stables, got rather above the postillion, and ran quasi away. Chartres got up and asked the postillion if he could hold his horses no longer; the boy called out "Non, Monseigneur"; he had looked back when he said this, and saw his master for the last time standing in the phaeton. People at some distance saw him come out of his carriage and describe a sort of semicircle falling down. Nobody knows exactly if he jumped out of the carriage, or if he lost his position and fell out. I am inclined to think that, trusting to his lightness and agility, he wanted to jump out, forgetting the impulse which a quick-going carriage gives, as there were marks on his knees as if he had first fallen that way. The principal blow was, however, on the head, the skull being entirely fractured. He was taken up senseless, that is to say confused, but not fainting, and carried into a small inn. At first his appearance, sitting in a chair, was so little altered that people thought it was nothing of any consequence.
He knew no one, and only spoke a few incoherent words in German. The accident happened about a quarter before twelve, and at four he was no more.
I refer for some other details to Albert. Poor Louise looks like a shadow, and only her great devotion for me supports her. It may serve as a lesson how fragile all human affairs are. Poor Chartres, it seems, with the prospect of these camps and altogether, was never in better spirits. But I must end. Ever, my dearest Victoria, your devoted Uncle,
Leopold R.