Broadlands, 9th September 1859.
Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and has had the honour to receive your Majesty's communication of the 6th of this month; and although he had the honour of addressing your Majesty yesterday afternoon, he deems it his duty to submit some observations upon this communication.
Your Majesty states that Viscount Palmerston in his letter to Count Persigny endeavoured to persuade the Emperor of the French to break his word to the Emperor of Austria, but Viscount Palmerston must beg very respectfully but entirely to deny that accusation....75
Your Majesty is pleased to observe upon the danger and inconvenience of private communications with Foreign Ministers, and to add that your Majesty must insist upon this being distinctly guarded against. Viscount [Palmerston] would be very desirous of knowing the precise meaning of those last words. If your Majesty means that what is to be guarded against is any attempt to induce a Foreign Sovereign to break his word, Viscount Palmerston cordially subscribes to that opinion, and maintains that he has not done so in the past, and declares that he has no intention of doing so in the future. But if your Majesty's meaning is that Viscount Palmerston is to be debarred from communicating with Foreign Ministers except for the purpose of informing them officially of formal decisions of the British Government, Viscount Palmerston would beg humbly and respectfully to represent to your Majesty that such a curtailment of the proper and constitutional functions of the office which he holds would render it impossible for him to serve your Majesty consistently with his own honour or with advantage to the public interest.
Footnote 75: Lord Palmerston then gives a very long and detailed account of his position.
Queen Victoria to Viscount Palmerston.
THE QUEEN'S OPINION
Balmoral, 11th September 1859.
Lord Palmerston has written (on the 8th) a long letter to the Queen, which, besides giving his private opinion on the politics of Italy, which were not disputed, purports to show that when a principle of policy had been adopted by the Cabinet and sanctioned by the Sovereign, the Foreign Secretary ought not to be impeded in carrying out the details, either by objections raised to them by the Sovereign, or by making them dependent on the meetings of Cabinets, difficult to obtain at this time of year. Now the question raised by the Queen was just the reverse. The principle adopted by the Cabinet and sanctioned by the Queen was: not to interfere by active advice with the peace to be made at Zurich; the Foreign Secretary had submitted a draft which had appeared to the Queen to be in contradiction to this principle, which, upon the Sovereign's objection, he withdrew; the Cabinet was summoned and rejected a similar draft submitted to them, and the Queen then complained that the very same advice should have been given by the Prime Minister in an indirect way to which the Sovereign and Cabinet could not agree openly. Lord Palmerston's letter was not communicated to the Queen until it had been alluded to in a public despatch, and Count Walewski had insinuated to our Ambassador that, rather than be a party to a line of conduct, which he would look upon as dishonourable for his master, he would resign office. What the Queen has asked for is: an intimation to the French Government that private communications like that of Lord Palmerston to M. de Persigny must not be looked upon as the official expression of the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, and that we disclaim ever having intended to induce the Emperor to break his engagements made at Villafranca, whatever they may have been. The Queen does not conceive that Lord Palmerston can object to this course, nor does he attempt to do so in his letter.