(July 1843.)
The Queen having attentively perused the proposed General Order for the more efficient repression of the practice of duelling in the Army, approves of the same, but recommends that the Duke of Wellington should submit to the Cabinet the propriety of considering of a general measure applicable to all branches of the Naval and Military Service.49
Footnote 49: An influential anti-duelling association had been formed this year, and subsequently public attention was drawn to the question by a duel on 1st July, at Camden Town, in which Colonel Fawcett was shot by his brother-in-law, Lieutenant Munro, who had reluctantly gone out, after enduring much provocation. Mainly owing to Prince Albert's efforts, the Articles of War were so amended as to put a stop to the practice.
The Prince Albert to Lord Aberdeen.
THE SPANISH MARRIAGE
20th July 1843.
My dear Lord Aberdeen,—The Queen and myself have been taken much by surprise by Lord Howard de Walden's despatch marked "most confidential." The opinions of the Portuguese Court must have entirely changed. Although we have not heard anything on the subject, we are fully convinced of the correctness of Lord Howard's statements and of his conjectures. We are both pleased to see the view which he takes, and the good opinion he has of our little cousin. The Queen thinks it right that you should inform Lord Howard that the possibility of a marriage between Prince Leopold50 and the Queen of Spain has been for some time a favourite thought of hers and mine, and that you thought that this combination had some advantages which hardly any other could offer. But that the matter had been and was treated here as one purely and solely Spanish, in which we carefully abstained from interfering with, and that we leave it to work itself out or not by its own merit.
That you wished him to take the same view, but not to lose sight of it, and to report to you whatever he might hear bearing upon the subject. Believe me, etc.,
Albert.
Footnote 50: Son of Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, and brother of the King of Portugal. See ante, p. [378], and post, p. [487].