Footnote 57: The Prince had been unwell, even before the receipt of the distressing news from Portugal, and began to suffer from a somewhat continuous insomnia. On the 22nd of November, he drove to Sandhurst to inspect the new buildings in progress there. The day was very wet, and, though he returned in the middle of the day to Windsor, the exertion proved too severe for him; on the 24th he complained of rheumatic pains, and of prolonged sleeplessness.

Viscount Palmerston to Queen Victoria.

REDRESS DEMANDED

Downing Street, 29th November 1861.

Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and begs to state that the Cabinet at its meeting this afternoon resumed the consideration of the forcible capture of the Southern Envoys from on board the Trent steamer upon which the law officers had yesterday given the opinion contained in the accompanying report. The law officers and Doctor Phillimore, Counsel to the Admiralty, were in attendance. The result was that it appeared to the Cabinet that a gross outrage and violation of international law has been committed, and that your Majesty should be advised to demand reparation and redress. The Cabinet is to meet again to-morrow at two, by which time Lord Russell will have prepared an instruction to Lord Lyons for the consideration of the Cabinet, and for submission afterwards to your Majesty. The general outline and tenor which appeared to meet the opinions of the Cabinet would be, that the Washington Government should be told that what has been done is a violation of international law, and of the rights of Great Britain, and that your Majesty's Government trust that the act will be disavowed and the prisoners set free and restored to British Protection; and that Lord Lyons should be instructed that if this demand is refused he should retire from the United States.

It is stated by Mrs and Miss Slidell, who are now in London, that the Northern officer who came on board the Trent said that they were acting on their own responsibility without instructions from Washington; that very possibly their act might be disavowed and the prisoners set free on their arrival at Washington. But it was known that the San Jacinto, though come from the African station, had arrived from thence several weeks before, and had been at St Thomas, and had there received communications from New York; and it is also said that General Scott, who has recently arrived in France, has said to Americans in Paris that he has come not on an excursion of pleasure, but on diplomatic business; that the seizure of these envoys was discussed in Cabinet at Washington, he being present, and was deliberately determined upon and ordered; that the Washington Cabinet fully foresaw it might lead to war with England; and that he was commissioned to propose to France in that case to join the Northern States in war against England, and to offer France in that case the restoration of the French Province of Canada.

General Scott will probably find himself much mistaken as to the success of his overtures; for the French Government is more disposed towards the South than the North, and is probably thinking more about Cotton than about Canada....

Earl Russell to Queen Victoria.

AN ULTIMATUM

Foreign Office, 29th November 1861.