THE QUEEN AND PALMERSTON
Osborne, 20th August 1848.
The Queen has received an autograph letter from the Archduke John (in answer to the private letter she had written to him through Lord Cowley), which has been cut open at the Foreign Office. The Queen wishes Lord Palmerston to take care that this does not happen again. The opening of official letters even, addressed to the Queen, which she has of late observed, is really not becoming, and ought to be discontinued, as it used never to be the case formerly.
Queen Victoria to Lord John Russell.
Osborne, 21st August 1848.
The Queen has received Lord John Russell's letter of yesterday, but cannot say that she has been satisfied by the reasons given by Lord Palmerston. The union of Lombardy and Piedmont cannot be considered as a concession to France for the maintenance of peace, because we know that it is the very thing the French object to. The Queen quite agrees that the principal consideration always to be kept in sight is the preservation of the peace of Europe; but it is precisely on that account that she regrets that the terms proposed by Lord Palmerston (whilst they are not in accordance with the views of France) are almost the only ones which must be most offensive to Austria. Lord Palmerston will have his kingdom of Upper Italy under Charles Albert, to which every other consideration is to be sacrificed, and Lord Normanby's alteration of the terms certainly serve that purpose well; but it is quite independent of the question of mediation, and the only thing in the whole proceeding which is indefensible in principle.
It will be a calamity for ages to come if this principle is to become part of the international law, viz. "that a people can at any time transfer their allegiance from the Sovereign of one State to that of another by universal suffrage (under momentary excitement)," and this is what Lord Normanby—no doubt according to Lord Palmerston's wishes—has taken as the basis of the mediation. For even the faits accomplis, which are a convenient basis to justify any act of injustice, are here against Charles Albert.
Lord Palmerston's argument respecting Schleswig,38 which the Queen quoted in her last letter, had no reference to the Treaty of 1720.
Footnote 38: The first act of the Vor-Parlament, a body which had existed temporarily at Frankfort, to pave the way for the National Assembly of a Consolidated Germany, had been to treat Schleswig, theretofore part of the Danish dominions, as absorbed in the German Confederation, and Lord Palmerston's objections to this proceeding had been treated by the Queen in a letter of 19th August as inconsistent with his attitude towards Austria.