[1] In 1847 the rate of discount had risen to 8 per cent., and the bullion in the Bank had fallen to £8,313,000. On the 9th of November, 1857, the rate of discount rose to 10 per cent., and yet gold still flowed out till it sank to £7,171,000. The Bank was authorised to increase its issue by £21,000,000.

[2] Campbell’s army consisted of 25,000 men, 16,000 being European troops, the largest number ever brought together in India up to that time.

[3] Sir H. Rose’s losses were 38 killed, and 215 wounded. The starving women and children were, however, spared, and, indeed, fed by the English soldiers, out of their own rations. The massacre of the garrison was an act of vengeance for the treacherous butchery of the English in Jhansi, who, on the 4th of June, 1857, had surrendered, on the assurance that their lives would be spared by the implacable Ranee. She, however, ordered them to be killed, as at Cawnpore.

[4] The Nankin Treaty of 1842 was confirmed. Ambassadors and diplomatic agents were by the new Treaty to be appointed at St. James’s and Pekin, and the British Minister was to be received at Pekin without being called on to perform any humiliating ceremony. Disrespect to the British Minister was to be a punishable offence, and Consuls in open ports were to be respected. Chinese Christians were to be protected, and not persecuted by the Government, and British subjects were to have a right of travelling in China under passports. Newchwang, Tang-chow, Taiwan, Chan-chow, and Kiung-chow were to be, with the ports, opened by the Treaty of Nankin free to British subjects. British subjects were permitted to employ Chinamen in any lawful capacity, and British ships were to trade on the Yang-Tsze river. All questions of right between British subjects were to be decided by British authorities, but Chinese criminals were to be punished by the Chinese tribunals. Other clauses stipulated for a war indemnity to England, for full privileges of protection to British subjects, and for tariff and customs dues on goods carried by British ships. After the Treaty was concluded, the Chinese Emperor evaded his obligation to ratify it, till compelled to do so by force in 1860.

[5] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., pp. 125, 126.

[6] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., pp. 133, 134.

[7] Palmerston in defeating Mr. Locke King’s motion for leave to bring in a Reform Bill committed a fatal error. The Cabinet originally meant to support the scheme, but to insist on raising Mr. King’s £10 county franchise to £20—which would probably have settled the Reform question for ten or fifteen years. As it was, by opposing the measure, and referring Reform to a Cabinet Committee, they disgusted a powerful body of their own supporters, who felt that the Whigs meant to shelve Reform altogether.

[8] Lord Granville and the Duke of Argyll.

[9] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 155.

[10] Mr. Henley, one of the ablest members of the Tory Party, strenuously opposed his leaders on this question, and supported the vote of thanks to Lord Canning.

[11] It is more than probable that had the Tories been in office Napoleon III. would never have dreamt of pressing them, as he pressed Palmerston, to alter the law of Conspiracy so as to harass political refugees in England. In 1853 he sounded Lord Malmesbury on the subject, who told him, with manly firmness and frankness, that “Every country had its own subject on which no cession could be made. The Holy Places in the East was that of Russia, the refugees was ours, and it was useless to torment us about an impossibility, for no English Minister could alter the law at present.”—Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 392.

[12] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, entry under date 21st February.

[13] See Letter of Prince Consort to Stockmar, Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXIII.

[14] Her Majesty’s sanction strengthened the hands of the unconstitutional sections of the Radical and Tory Parties, who have of late years connived at the progressive usurpation of the functions of the Executive by the House of Commons, thereby laying the basis for “Home Rule” agitations in discontented Ireland, and in “neglected” Wales and Scotland. In the attempt to combine executive with legislative functions the House of Commons has virtually broken down.

[15] The Cabinet consisted of Lord Derby, Premier; Lord Chelmsford, Lord Chancellor; Lord Salisbury, President of the Council; Lord Hardwicke, Lord Privy Seal; Lord Malmesbury, Foreign Secretary; Mr. Walpole, Home Secretary; Lord Stanley, Colonial Secretary; Sir John Pakington, First Lord of the Admiralty; General Peel, Secretary of State for War; Mr. Henley, President of the Board of Trade; Lord John Manners, First Commissioner of Works; Lord Ellenborough, President of the Board of Control; and Mr. Disraeli, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader of the House of Commons.

[16] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 98. Soon afterwards, however, arrangements were made which enabled Sir E. B. Lytton to take the Colonial Office, Lord Derby going to the India Office.

[17] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 99.

[18] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 214. The evidence of Mr. Greville in this instance is that of an unwilling witness. He still affected, like most independent political thinkers in 1858, to treat a Derby-Disraeli Cabinet as a burlesque Ministry. For example, he never condescended to attend as Clerk of the Privy Council after Lord Derby took office, but allowed his deputy to do duty. When this was pointed out to Lord Derby, he only laughed, and said “he had not observed his (Greville’s) absence, as he never knew whether it was John or Thomas who answered the bell.”—Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 153.

[19] Moreover, there was just a chance that Ministers might be beaten, which would necessarily have brought back Lord John Russell, a prospect to which Whigs like Lord Clarendon looked forward with horror, because he would come back with a Reform Bill. See a private letter from Lord Malmesbury to Lord Cowley in The Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 100.

[20] See The Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 101, 106, 151, and 152, for evidence bearing on this grave charge against Palmerston and Persigny.

[21] The Peelite leaders sneered at the appointment. Mr. Greville calls Pélissier “a military ruffian, as ignorant of diplomacy as of astronomy.”—Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 181. The Palmerstonians objected to him because his ignorance of diplomacy rendered it difficult for them to intrigue with him for the purpose of embarrassing the Government of their own country.

[22] A few days after the formation of the Derby-Disraeli Ministry, De Persigny told Clarendon that the Tory Government “had prepared for themselves an héritage de rupture by the concurrence of their Party in the vote that had driven Lord Palmerston from power.”—Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXIV. “The first time I met him (Persigny) at the Foreign Office,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “he literally raved, laying his hand on the hilt of his sword (he was in Court dress), and shouting ‘C’est la guerre! c’est la guerre!’ during which scene I sat perfectly silent and unmoved, till he was blown, which is the best way of meeting such explosions from foreigners.”—Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 106.

[23] The Cagliari was a Sardinian ship fitted out to carry a revolutionary expedition to stir up Calabria. She was seized by the Neapolitan Government, and her two English engineers, Messrs. Watts and Park, were imprisoned.

[24] Mr. Greville hints that the Radicals were subsequently angry at Lord John Russell for helping Mr. Disraeli out of his difficulty with the India Bill. On this point he seems to have been misinformed. See Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.

[25] The phrase was one used by Pélissier to the Prince Consort. See Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXIV.

[26] Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 428; Holmes’ History of the Indian Mutiny, p. 454; Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 118.

[27] The Talookdars of Oudh were not freeholders, but Crown vassals—in some cases hereditary—who really farmed the Crown rents as middlemen between the cultivators and the State. As a matter of abstract right, Canning’s proclamation, declaring the soil of Oudh to be the sole property of the British Government, could not be impugned. Nor could its policy as regards rebel Talookdars be disputed. Still, it is but fair to say that Outram thought the original draft too sweeping, and that it might prejudice many claims which it would be prudent to recognise. Canning allowed Outram to soften the Proclamation, and it was so discreetly acted on by Outram and his successor, Mr. Robert Montgomery, that the powerful local aristocracy of Oudh were speedily pacified. There was, therefore, just a grain of truth in Ellenborough’s objections to the original draft.

[28] A Resolution of this sort, however, was valid only for the current Session. Hence it had to be renewed every Session a Jew came to be sworn. In 1860 a new Act substituted a standing order for a Resolution, so that Jews could be sworn without any preliminary proceedings. Even this last relic of bigotry was swept away by the Act 29 & 30 Vict., c. 19, which deleted the words “on the true faith of a Christian” from the Parliamentary Oath. See Sir Erskine May’s Parliamentary Practice, Sixth Edition, pp. 189-192.

[29] In May they were induced to shake hands at Mr. Ellice’s (“Bear” Ellice) house. But Lord Malmesbury says that when the incident was discussed at Lady Palmerston’s, Lady William Russell observed, “They have shaken hands, and embraced, and hate each other more than ever.”—Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 120.

[30] After much diplomatic squabbling, a Conference settled the point on the 10th of August, by establishing the same institutions in both Principalities, both with separate Ministries and Parliaments. The first thing the Provinces did was to vote their own union under Prince Couza—a mortification for England, against the probable occurrence of which her careless diplomatists had not stipulated.

[31] Her Majesty was not the only one of the guests who had been shaken. “An absurd occurrence,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “took place when Sir John Pakington, as First Lord of the Admiralty, landed Lord Hardwicke and Admiral Dundas in his barge. As he steered her, he kept time with the men as he would if he had been rowing on the Thames, bending his body backwards and forwards, and as he approached the pier, not having given the order ‘Way enough,’ the boat with her whole force struck the mole, and the two admirals and the whole crew fell sprawling on their backs. The rage of the two former, after recovering themselves, was vented with uncontrolled expressions on the unfortunate First Lord, amidst the laughter of the spectators, who were standing on the pier.”—Memoirs of an Ex-Minister. Vol II., pp. 129, 130.

[32] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXVII.

[33] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXVIII.

[34] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXXVIII.

[35] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 213.

[36] This important secret pact was not unknown to the British Government. It came into Mr. Kinglake’s possession, and at Lord Palmerston’s request he gave a copy of it privately to Mr. Seymour Fitzgerald, who represented the Foreign Office in the House of Commons. The text was revealed by Lord Malmesbury. The Princess Clothilde made a grim joke upon her loveless and ill-fated marriage—“Quand on a vendu l’enfant, on peut bien vendre le berceau.”—Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 220, 221, 223.

[37] The intrigue between Lord Palmerston and Napoleon III. at Compiègne, in November, gave great and justifiable offence to the Tory Ministry, and was regarded with disapproval by the country.

[38] Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 236.

[39] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XC.

[40] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 155.

[41] See Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XC.

[42] Votes were given to persons who had £10 a year in Bank Stock or the Funds, or a deposit of £60 in a Savings Bank, or a pension from the State of £20 a year, and to University graduates, members of the learned professions, and certain schoolmasters.

[43] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XCII.

[44] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XCIII.

[45] Lord Palmerston’s organs in the Press were, during this controversy, virtually official organs of the French Emperor, and were embarrassing ministers with factious opposition. Lord Malmesbury, writing in his Diary on the 21st of February, observes, “Lady Tankerville says that Lady Palmerston told her that the attack upon the Foreign Policy of our Government, for which her husband had given notice to-morrow, was made in compliance with the Emperor’s wish!”—Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 158.

[46] Lord Malmesbury warned Prussia that England could not approve of her going to war with France, and would give her no assistance in protecting the German coast against an attack by a French or a Franco-Russian fleet.—See Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, pp. 204, 205.

[47] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 184.

[48] Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 160.

[49] The surrender of Lombardy and the Duchies to Sardinia was one.

[50] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 200, 201.

[51] Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II.

[52] The Queen apparently did not know that, owing to the use which Napoleon had made of Palmerston’s indiscreet approval of Persigny’s proposals, the Emperor of Austria was under the impression that we had been willing to act as extortioners. On the 12th of July, a day before the Queen wrote her letter to Lord John Russell, the Austrian Emperor wrote to Napoleon III., thanking him for informing him that England supported Persigny’s terms. Lord John Russell, in a despatch (July 27), found it necessary to undeceive the Austrian Government on this point.

[53] It was raised from 5d. to 9d.

[54] Palmerston contended in the end of August that these plans came within the decision of the Cabinet not to meddle with the Italian question till after the Treaty of Zurich had been signed. The Queen held that they did not, and on a Cabinet meeting being hastily summoned to settle the point, the decision went for the view of the Queen.

[55] Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 270.

[56] Ashley’s Life of Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 174.

[57] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 213.

[58] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XCVII.

[59] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXVI.

[60] The National Budget, by Alexander Johnstone Wilson. London: Macmillan: 1882, p. 90.

[61] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 216. Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXIX.

[62] In a letter to Mr. Bright he says, “To form a fair judgment of this reckless levity and utter want of dignity and decency on the part of the Prime Minister, just turn to the volumes of the life of the first Lord Auckland, who was sent by Pitt to negotiate the Commercial Treaty with France in 1786. I have not seen the book, but I can tell you what you will not find in its pages. You will not read that in the midst of those negotiations Pitt rose in the House, and declared that he apprehended danger of a sudden and unprovoked attack on our shores by the French king; that (whilst history told us we had 84,000 men voted for our Navy to the 31,000 in France, and whilst we had 150,000 riflemen assembled for drill) he, Mr. Pitt, pursued the eccentric course of proposing that the nation should spend £10,000,000 on fortifications, and that he accompanied this with speeches in the House in which he imputed treacherous and unprovoked designs upon us on the part of the monarch with whom his own Plenipotentiary was then negotiating a Treaty of Commerce in Paris. On the contrary, you will find Pitt consistently defending, in all its breadth and moral bearings, his peaceful policy, and it is the most enduring title to fame that he left in all his public career.”—Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXIX.

[63] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XCVIII.

[64] Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 190.

[65] Count Vitzthum illustrates the relations between the Republican conspirators and the Italian Court by the following anecdote:—One day an English gentleman visited Cavour, who was surprised to find he knew a great deal about the intrigues of Victor Emmanuel’s Government. He exclaimed, “How is it that you, a stranger, are acquainted with secrets which I thought were only known to one man besides the King and myself—namely, the Republican exile, Mazzini?”—St. Petersburg and London in the years 1852-1864. Reminiscences of Count Charles Frederick Vitzthum von Eckstaedt, late Saxon Minister at the Court of St. James’s: Longmans and Co. (1887).

[66] Count Vitzthum hints that the mysterious collapse of the Royalist armies in the Sicilies was due to foul play. He says of Garibaldi, “His jugglery, thanks to the inaction of Europe and the melancholy condition of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, met with unexpected success. One example will suffice. A few weeks after Garibaldi’s entry into Naples, a former Neapolitan General was arrested at Paris. He had, without knowing it, paid out some forged banknotes. The examination showed he had received them from Garibaldi as a bribe. People knew after this how the latter bought his victories.” Vitzthum seems to have disliked Garibaldi, and his opinion on the matter is not conclusive. One would like to have better evidence than the confession of an utterer of forged notes that he got them from Garibaldi. Even if the story be true, it only points to what was one justification for the Sicilian insurrection—the complete demoralisation of the servants of the State.

[67] Cavour’s invasion of the Papal States was inevitable, though the pretext was flimsy. His subtle justification will be found in his masterly despatch of the 12th of October, reviewing the affairs of Italy, in which he dwelt on the advantage of substituting for the discredited dynasties, an Italian Kingdom that would “rob revolutionary passions of a theatre where previously most insane enterprises had chances, if not of success, at least of exciting the sympathies of all generously-minded men.” In a word, his case was that Sardinian intervention could alone prevent the national movement from degenerating into sheer anarchy. Fear, lest Garibaldi might be induced by Mazzini’s partisans, who had surrounded him, to set up a Republic, led the European Courts to condone by passive acquiescence a despatch which postulated the inherent right of a people to depose an hereditary monarch. France withdrew her Minister from Turin by way of formally discountenancing the invasion, which, however, had been secretly arranged at an interview between Napoleon and Cavour at Chambéry. England alone avowed her approval of Cavour’s policy, in a despatch which Lord John Russell sent to Sir J. Hudson on the 27th of October, but of which he kept the Queen and his colleagues in ignorance. The feeling of the country being with Lord John, the Queen and Lord Palmerston did not find it expedient to resent the affront. The truth is, that Lord John had previously written a despatch (31st August) menacing Sardinia if she attacked Austria in Venetia, and admitting the right of Austria to hold Venetia, which had enraged the Radicals. So by way of conciliating them he wrote the despatch of the 17th of October, recanting the absolutist doctrines he had promulgated in August. But personally, Lord John was notoriously a partisan of the national movement in Italy. “Sir J. Hudson,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “told me that Lord John virtually encouraged the King (Victor Emmanuel) to invade Naples, by asking his aide-de-camp at Richmond whether the King was not afraid. This was quite enough to send Victor Emmanuel anywhere.”—Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 237.

[68] See the Queen’s letter to Lord Palmerston (3rd June) quoted in Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CII.

[69] Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 263.

[70] Another part of Napoleon’s scheme at Baden was to suggest the partition of Turkey by way of compensating Austria for the loss of Venetia, an old idea of Talleyrand’s. Russia, however, objected to the Danubian provinces of Turkey being given to Austria, so the proposal was not made. The whole scheme would have thus been—the annexation of Rhenish territory to France, of the northern German States to Prussia, of the Danubian provinces to Austria, and of Venetia to Italy.

[71] This letter (which was published) was written without the knowledge of the French Ministry. It was prompted by certain suspicions which had been expressed as to the Emperor’s good faith in interfering again in the Eastern Question. In June Europe was shocked to learn that the Druses, who were Moslems, had massacred thousands of the Christian Maronites in the Lebanon. The Turks had abetted these atrocities, their defence being that the Maronites were meditating a rebellion. On the 9th of July Moslem fanatics, aided by Turkish troops, also butchered the people in the Christian quarter of Damascus—3,500 males being slaughtered. The Consulates of France, Austria, Russia, Holland, Belgium, and Greece were sacked, their inmates finding a refuge in the house of Abd-el-Kader. Fuad Pasha, the Imperial Ottoman Commissioner, punished the guilty parties, but the French Emperor also insisted on sending out troops to keep order in the country. This proposal was jealously regarded by England, but it was agreed to after much negotiation—France furnishing 6,000 men, and the other Powers as many more up to 6,000 as might be necessary, six months being fixed as the term of the occupation. The Emperor resented our suspicions as to his motives in occupying Syria, and in his celebrated letter to Persigny defends their disinterestedness.

[72] “It is high time,” wrote the Prince Consort to the Prince Regent of Prussia. “It seems to me one of his chief difficulties consists in the fundamental difference between his and the people’s way of looking at things. He proposes to make concessions as acts of grace; they, on the other hand, ask to have a legal status, and institutions not dependent on the good-or ill-will of the Sovereign. They had most of them Documentary Rights, as they were called, in the Middle Ages, and as the Revolution of 1848 had overthrown everything, the Emperor was wrong, when it had been put down, not to return to a state of things based on law and right, instead of, as it were, legitimising the Revolution by proclaiming himself as its heir.”—Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CIV. Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 264, contains a curious letter of Prince Bismarck’s on this interview, showing how utterly misinformed he was as to its purport.

[73] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CVI.

[74] The English Historical Review, No. 6, April, 1887, pp. 296-298.

[75] The English Historical Review, No. 6, April 1887, p. 297.

[76] Mr. John Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXIX.

[77] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 230-231.

[78] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 230.

[79] This great inventor and armourer had been offered £10,000 a year for life by Napoleon III. if he would go to France and manufacture his new cannon exclusively for the French. The offer was refused from patriotic motives, which was perhaps the reason why the British Government never could be got to behave as fairly to Mr. (afterwards Sir Joseph) Whitworth’s guns as to those produced by the engineers in the employment of Mr. (afterwards Sir W.) Armstrong at Elswick.

[80] The growth of the Volunteer Force was striking. The army sneered at it, and in December, 1859, it was in a sickly condition. In March, 1860, to the surprise and delight of the Queen it had grown to be 70,000 strong, and at a levee she held for volunteer officers, 2,500 were presented to her. Before the end of the summer the force had increased to 180,000 men, and at the close of the year it had grown to be 200,000, and this, too, in spite of the fact that the recruits had to make their first acquaintance with military duties in a spring and summer notable for stormy and inclement weather.

[81] Canada had fitted out a regiment of infantry for the war.

[82] William IV. was pressed hard by his illegitimate son, the Earl of Munster, to make him Governor-General of Australasia. He always refused, for dynastic reasons—alleging that it was not prudent to create princely viceroys.

[83] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CVIII.

[84] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, ibid.

[85] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CI.

[86] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CVI.

[87] The war arose out of an attempt on the part of China to evade the ratification of the Treaty. The Taku forts were captured by the French and English allied forces, on the 21st of August, 1860. On the 21st of September, Consul Parkes, Captains Anderson and Brabazon, Messrs. De Norman, attaché of the Hon. F. Bruce, Mr. Loch, Lord Elgin’s secretary, and Mr. Bowlby, Times correspondent, were sent to the Chinese camp, on the invitation of the Chinese, under a flag of truce, to arrange for Lord Elgin’s journey to Pekin, where peace was to be made. Anderson, Brabazon, De Norman, Bowlby, and ten troopers were treacherously murdered. Parkes and Loch were cast into prison, and treated with odious brutality. That very day General Sir Hope Grant crushed the forces of the Chinese General, Sang-Ko-lin-sin. On the 6th of October the French looted the Summer Palace at Pekin, and on the 18th the English burnt it. The city itself surrendered on the 12th. Heavy indemnities, besides the ratification of the Treaty, were extorted from the Chinese.

[88] It is a curious fact that Dr. A. B. Granville had diagnosed the symptoms of the Czar’s hereditary malady—congestion of the brain—in 1853, and he warned Lord Palmerston that his Majesty would die in two years—a prophecy which came true. Had Nicholas therefore been handled gently, but firmly, by an accomplished diplomatist loyally carrying out Aberdeen’s temporising and cautious policy, and had steps been taken to prevent the Turks and Napoleon from irritating the autocrat at every turn in events, peace could have been maintained. See on this subject Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. I., pp. 30, 40.

[89] The phrase, which was a catchword in club-land, and which gave great offence to our American kinsfolk, was attributed, it is to be hoped erroneously, to the Marquis of Hartington.

[90] Evelyn Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 205.

[91] Evelyn Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, ibid.

[92] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 227.

[93] St. Petersburg and London: Reminiscences of Count Vitzthum, late Saxon Minister at the Court of St. James’s, Vol. II., p. 113 (Longmans), 1887.

[94] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CIX.

[95] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol II., p. 249.

[96] Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 113.

[97] A passage in Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences explains the Prince Consort’s allusion. “Among the elder ladies who in those days exercised some influence over Government circles,” writes Count Vitzthum, “was the widow of the former British Ambassador in Berlin, Lady William Russell. She was a clever, experienced lady, an admirable mother to her sons, the present Duke of Bedford, and Lord Ampthill, who died lately as Ambassador at Berlin. Her house was the constant resort of visitors, who liked to chat with her, even if they did not come, like her brother-in-law, Lord John Russell, to consult her on politics. As a Roman Catholic she was no admirer of Cavour or Garibaldi, and used to laugh at the Italian sympathies of her brother-in-law and Lord Palmerston, whom she called the ‘old Italian masters.’”—St. Petersburg and London: 1852-1864: Reminiscences of Count Vitzthum, Vol. II., p. 214.