My beloved Uncle,—I hardly know how to write, for my head reels and swims, and my heart is very sore!51 What an awful misfortune this is! How the hand of death seems bent on pursuing that poor, dear family! once so prosperous. Poor Ferdinand so proud of his children—of his five sons—now the eldest and most distinguished, the head of the family, gone, and also another of fifteen, and the youngest still ill! The two others at sea, and will land to-morrow in utter ignorance of everything, and poor, dear, good Louis (whom I thought dreadfully low when we saw him and Jean for an hour on Friday) King! It is an almost incredible event! a terrible calamity for Portugal, and a real European loss! Dear Pedro was so good, so clever, so distinguished! He was so attached to my beloved Albert, and the characters and tastes suited so well, and he had such confidence in Albert! All, all gone! He is happy now, united again to dear Stéphanie,52 whose loss he never recovered.... Ever your devoted Niece,
Victoria R.
Footnote 51: King Pedro of Portugal died of typhoid fever on the 11th of November; his brother Ferdinand had died on the 6th; and Prince John, Duke of Beja, succumbed in the following December.
Footnote 52: The young Queen Stéphanie of Portugal had died in 1859.
Viscount Palmerston to Queen Victoria.
THE AFFAIR OF THE TRENT
Downing Street, 13th November 1861.
... Viscount Palmerston met yesterday at dinner at Baron Brunnow's the Grand Duke Constantine and the Grand Duchess, and they were overflowing with thankfulness for the kind and gracious reception they had met with at Windsor Castle.
There was reason to suspect that an American federal steamer of war of eight guns, which had lately arrived at Falmouth, and from thence at Southampton, was intended to intercept the Mail Packet coming home with the West Indian Mail, in order to take out of her Messrs Mason and Slidell, the two Envoys from the Southern Confederacy, supposed to be coming in her.[53]
Viscount Palmerston had on Monday a meeting at the Treasury of the Chancellor, Doctor Lushington, the three Law Officers,[54] the Duke of Somerset, Sir George Grey, and Mr Hammond.[55] The result of their deliberation was that, according to the Law of Nations, as laid down by Lord Stowell, and practised and enforced by England in the war with France, the Northern Union being a belligerent is entitled by its ships of war to stop and search any neutral Merchantmen, and the West India Packet is such; to search her if there is reasonable suspicion that she is carrying enemy's despatches, and if such are found on board to take her to a port of the belligerent, and there to proceed against her for condemnation. Such being ruled to be the law, the only thing that could be done was to order the Phaeton frigate to drop down to Yarmouth Roads from Portsmouth, and to watch the American steamer, and to see that she did not exercise this belligerent right within the three-mile limit of British jurisdiction, and this was done. But Viscount Palmerston sent yesterday for Mr Adams to ask him about this matter, and to represent to him how unwise it would be to create irritation in this country merely for the sake of preventing the landing of Mr Slidell, whose presence here would have no more effect on the policy of your Majesty with regard to America than the presence of the three other Southern Deputies who have been here for many months. Mr Adams assured Viscount Palmerston that the American steamer had orders not to meddle with any vessel under any foreign flag; that it came to intercept the Nashville, the Confederate ship in which it was thought the Southern Envoys might be coming; and not having met with her was going back to the American coast to watch some Merchantmen supposed to be taking arms to the Southern ports.