Windsor Castle, 18th November 1850.
The Queen is exceedingly sorry to hear that Lord Westmorland47 is gone, as she was particularly anxious to have seen him before his return to Berlin, and to have talked to him on the present critical events in Germany; but she quite forgot the day of his departure. What is the object of his seeing the President at Paris? and what are his instructions with regard to Germany?48
Having invariably encouraged Constitutional development in other countries,... and having at the beginning of the great movement in 1847, which led to all the catastrophes of the following years, sent a Cabinet Minister to Italy to declare to all Italian states that England would protect them from Austria if she should attempt by threats and violence to debar them from the attainment of their Constitutional development, consistency would require that we should now, when that great struggle is at its end and despotism is to be re-imposed by Austrian arms upon Germany, throw our weight into the scale of Constitutional Prussia and Germany.... The Queen is afraid, however, that all our Ministers abroad,—at Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Stuttgart, Hanover, etc. (with the exception of Lord Cowley at Frankfort)—are warm partisans of the despotic league against Prussia and a German Constitution and for the maintenance of the old Diet under Austrian and Russian influence. Ought not Lord Palmerston to make his agents understand that their sentiments are at variance with those of the English Government? and that they are doing serious mischief if they express them at Courts which have already every inclination to follow their desperate course?
Lord Palmerston is of course aware that the old Diet once reconstituted and recognised, one of the main laws of it is that "no organic change can be made without unanimity of voices," which was the cause of the nullity of that body from 1820 to 1848, and will now enable Austria, should Prussia and her confederates recognise the Diet, to condemn Germany to a further life of stagnation or new revolution.
Footnote 47: Minister at Berlin.
Footnote 48: Lord Palmerston may have had this letter of the Queen's in mind when he wrote on the 22nd of November to Lord Cowley: "Her (i.e. Prussia's) partisans try to make out that the contest between her and Austria is a struggle between constitutional and arbitrary Government, but it is no such thing." Ashley's Life of Lord Palmerston, vol. 1. chap. vi.
Viscount Palmerston to Queen Victoria.
CONSTITUTIONALISM IN GERMANY
Foreign Office, 18th November 1850.
Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty. With respect to the maintenance of Constitutional Government in Germany, Viscount Palmerston entirely subscribes to your Majesty's opinion, that a regard for consistency, as well as a sense of right and justice, ought to lead your Majesty's Government to give to the Constitutional principle in Germany the same moral support which they endeavoured to afford it in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere; but though he is conscious that he may be deceived and may think better of the Austrian Government in this respect than it deserves, yet he cannot persuade himself that rational and sound Constitutional Government is at present in danger in Germany, or that the Austrian Government, whatever may be their inclination and wishes, can think it possible in the present day to re-establish despotic government in a nation so enlightened, and so attached to free institutions as the German people now is. The danger for Germany seems to lie rather in the opposite direction, arising from the rash and weak precipitation with which in 1848 and 1849 those Governments which before had refused everything resolved in a moment of alarm to grant everything, and, passing from one extreme to the other, threw universal suffrage among people who had been, some wholly and others very much, unaccustomed to the working of representative Government. The French have found universal suffrage incompatible with good order even in a Republic; what must it be for a Monarchy?