|Lord Palmerston’s Indiscretion.| On reading a statement attributed to her Foreign Minister so far at variance with her own opinion and the decision of her Cabinet, the Queen wrote to Lord John Russell, asking him if “he knew anything about the alleged approval, which, if true, would again expose the honour and dignity of the Queen’s Government in the eyes of the world.”
From the Silver Model] [by R. Hodd & Son.
H.M.S. “BRITANNIA,” 1837.
This, the most formidable line-of battle ship afloat at the time of Her Majesty’s Accession, was built in 1820 and carried 120 guns. She was the Flag ship at Portsmouth from 1835 to 1840. In 1850 she was converted into a Training Ship, and was finally broken up in 1869. The Silver Model, from which this Illustration was photographed, was presented to Her Majesty the Queen, together with a similar one of the ill-fated Victoria—the typical ship of 1887—by the officers and men of the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, and Auxiliary Naval Forces, and was exhibited amongst the Jubilee Presents.
H.M.S. “JUPITER,” 1897.
This “first class battleship,” which has but lately undergone her sea trials, is of the same size as the Majestic and the Magnificent. She was built by the Clydebank Shipbuilding Company, and may be taken as the representative ship of the year. Displacement, 15,000 tons; horse-power, 12,000; speed, 17½ knots.
The word “again” used by the Queen in this letter had reference to Lord Palmerston’s action in regard to the visit of Kossuth, the Hungarian refugee, to England in the previous October. There had been much sympathy in England with the cause of Hungarian independence; Kossuth had been fêted in many towns as an illustrious patriot and exile, and Palmerston consented to receive a visit from him. This was more than the susceptibilities of the Austrian Government could endure; Russell having summoned a Cabinet Council to consider the intended reception by the Foreign Minister, Palmerston reluctantly yielded to the opinion of his colleagues, and the reception was given up. But he consoled himself by receiving at the Foreign Office addresses from Radical meetings, in which the Emperors of Russia and Austria were described as “odious and detestable assassins” and “merciless tyrants and despots”; and, in expressing himself “extremely flattered and highly gratified” at the terms directed towards himself, he added that “it could not be expected that he should concur in some of the expressions which had been used in the addresses.” It was in receiving the deputation conveying these addresses that this characteristically English Minister earned one of his most-enduring nicknames. He said in the course of his speech that the conduct of Foreign Affairs required “a great deal of good generalship and judgment, and during the pending struggle a good deal of judicious bottle-holding was obliged to be brought into play.” However much this allusion to the prize ring may have scandalised some of the “unco guid,” it was just one of those sayings that tickle the popular fancy, and the “Judicious Bottle-holder” furnished the subject of one of Punch’s lively cartoons.
