Queen Victoria to Viscount Palmerston.
AFFAIRS IN LOMBARDY
Buckingham Palace, 4th June 1848.
The Queen returns the enclosed draft. She has written upon it, in pencil, a passage which she thinks ought to be added, if the draft—though civil—is not to be a mere refusal to do anything for Austria, and a recommendation that whatever the Italians ask for ought to be given, for which a mediation is hardly necessary.26 The Queen thinks it most important that we should try to mediate and put a stop to the war, and equally important that the boundary which is to be settled should be such a one as to make a recurrence of hostilities unlikely. The Queen has only further to remark that Lord Palmerston speaks in the beginning of the letter only of the Cabinet, and adverts nowhere to the proposition having been submitted to her.
Footnote 26: War was now raging in Lombardy between the Austrians under Marshal Radetzky and the Piedmontese under the King of Sardinia.
Lord John Russell to Queen Victoria.
Chesham Place, 14th June 1848.
Lord John Russell presents his humble duty, and thanks your Majesty for the perusal of this interesting letter.
An Emperor with a rational Constitution might be a fair termination of the French follies; but Louis Napoleon, with the Communists, will probably destroy the last chance of order and tranquillity. A despotism must be the end.
May Heaven preserve us in peace!