1851 QUEEN'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH LORD J. RUSSELL. 329

and success, and that all the labour and anxiety, which it caused for nearly two years, should now likewise only be remembered with the things that are past! I feel as if it were doing my dearest Albert an injury, that it should be gone by, and yet it has effected its purpose a thousandfold.'

The following correspondence between the Queen and Lord John Russell may fitly close our record of the Great Exhibition:

'Downing Street, 17th October, 1851.

'Lord John Russell presents his humble duty to your Majesty. As he has had no commands to the contrary, he will summon the Council for one o'clock on the 23rd at Windsor Castle.

'He purposes to desire Mr. Cubitt, Mr. Paxton, and Mr. Fox to be in attendance to be knighted. It is desirable this should be done on a day of ceremony, as marking the importance of the occasion.

'The sad solemnity of the closing of the Exhibition was as successful as it was possible to be.

'In taking leave of it, there is one result which must be peculiarly gratifying to your Majesty. The grandeur of the conception, the zeal, invention, and talent displayed in the execution, and the perfect order maintained from the first day to the last, have contributed together to give imperishable fame to Prince Albert. If to others much praise is due for their several parts in this work, it is to his energy and judgment that the world owe both the original design and the harmonious and rapid execution. Whatever may be done hereafter, no one can deprive the Prince of the glory of being the first to conceive and to carry into effect this beneficent design, nor will the Monarchy fail to participate in the advantage to be derived from this undertaking. No Republic of the Old or New World has done anything so splendid or so useful.'

'Windsor Castle, 17th October, 1851.

'The Queen has received Lord John Russell's letter of this day. We are both much pleased and touched at Lord John's kind and gratifying expressions relative to the success of the Great Exhibition, the closing of which we must much regret, as, indeed, all seem to do. Lord John is right in supposing it is particularly gratifying to her, to see her beloved husband's name stand for ever immortalised by the conception of the

330 QUEEN'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH LORD J. RUSSELL. 1851

greatest triumph of Peace which the world has ever produced, and by the energy and perseverance with which he helped to carry it out. To feel this and to see this so universally acknowedged by a country, which we both daily feel more attached to and more proud of, is indeed a source of immense happiness and gratitude to the Queen. She feels grateful to Providence to have permitted her to be united to so great, so noble, so excellent a Prince, and this year will ever remain the happiest and proudest of her life. The day of the closing of the Exhibition (which the Queen regretted much she could not witness) was the twelfth anniversary of her betrothal tɔ the Prince, which is a curious coincidence.'

In a letter, dated 15th May, 1851, from the Chevalier Bunsen to Max Müller (Bunsen's Life, ii. p. 269), he says, "The Exhibition is and will remain the most poetical event of our time, and one deserving a place in the world's history. Les Anglais ont fait de la poésie sans s'en douter, as M. Jourdain was found to have made prose.'

CHAPTER XLIV.

Kossuth's Reception in England-Finsbury and Islington Addresses to Lord Palmerston -Coup-d'État of 2nd December-Lord Palmerston approves the Action of the Prince President-Correspondence between Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston-Lord Palmerston removed from Office.

THE arrival of Kossuth in England towards the end of October was the signal for one of those outbreaks of enthusiasm, in which the popular admiration for some hero of the hour runs into extravagance, but at the same time generally exhausts itself. Incidentally it had an important bearing upon the retirement of Lord Palmerston from the Ministry in the ensuing December, which brings it within the scope of the present narrative.

Since the imperious demands of Russia and Austria for the surrender of the Hungarian leader by Turkey had been withdrawn (see ante, p. 200), he had lived in honourable captivity at Kutayah. Under a subsequent arrangement he was free to leave the country, and having selected America as his future abode, the Government of the United States placed a steam frigate at his disposal to convey him to New York. Calling at Marseilles on the way, he had applied to the French authorities for leave to pass through France, but his request had been refused by the Government, upon which he published an Address to 'the Democrats of Marseilles,' couched in terms that more than justified the refusal. From Marseilles he went to Gibraltar, where he embarked in the English mail-packet, and reached Southampton on the 23rd of October.

Here began a series of popular demonstrations, which were continued until he sailed for America early in November. The cause of Hungarian independence had always commanded warm and wide sympathy in England, and the policy of Austria since the final defeat of Kossuth and his friends had not been such as to mitigate the feelings of animosity with which she was regarded by the Liberal party throughout Europe. In welcoming Kossuth as they did, the English Liberals found

332

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1851

an opportunity ready to their hands of protesting against the policy of reaction, of which the fruits were now everywhere conspicuous on the Continent. But the excitement of the crowds who thronged to see and hear him was carried to its height by the irresistible charm of 'his strange power of speech,' which poured forth for hours together in purest English-English studied out of Shakspeare-a flood of passionate eloquence, not always to be resisted even by those who had little sympathy either with the man or the object to which his speeches in England were directed. That object was to engage England to adopt and enforce the doctrine; that no Government has the right to interfere in the intestine dissensions of a foreign State, and that, if any Government does so interfere, other Governments have a right to combine to prevent its intervention. The application of these principles was obvious; and, if applied, they meant war with Austria and Russia.

So long as the demonstrations in support of Kossuth were confined to Town Councils and public meetings, no harm was done. For what was said or done there the Government was not responsible. They could not be pledged by it to doctrines, which would have condemned their own action in the past, and might have hampered them fatally in the future.' However distasteful to the governments of Russia and Austria the language used might be, they could not complain of the free expression of what at the best were only individual opinions. But any step, which would have implied the sanction of the Government to the crusade on which Kossuth had entered, could not fail to make more difficult the relations, already sufficiently strained, between ourselves and the courts of Russia and Austria.

That Kossuth, on coming to England, should desire to

1 The Americans, who even outdid the English in the ardour of their enthusiasm, while Kossuth's oratory was addressed to their public meetings, felt this, and drew back the moment they saw where he wished to lead them. Active intervention against Austria was a step they were no more prepared to countenance than ourselves. The reception given to him, accordingly, by Congress, was more than cold, and the brilliant orator's hopes of material aid from the great American Republic were doomed to disappointment.

2 For example, had England not so lately as in 1840, under Lord Palmerston's guidance, interfered between Mehemet Ali and the Porte, wresting from the grasp of the rebellious feudatory that Syria which the Sultan himself was unable to reclaim, and compelling him to recognise the supremacy of the Sultan even in Egypt? We should have followed the same course in 1851 had the necessity arisen. With what consistency, then, could we refuse to Russia the right we claimed for ourselves?

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FINSBURY AND ISLINGTON ADDRESSES.

333

thank our Government in person for the efforts they had made on his behalf, was most natural, and no possible exception could have been taken to his being received for this purpose by the Foreign Secretary, had not Kossuth taken advantage of his popularity in England to engage in a fierce political agitation. After the violent language of his public speeches at Southampton and elsewhere, in which two Sov. ereigns, with whom we were on terms of peace and amity, were denounced in most opprobrious terms, it was obvious that any official reception would be construed into an approval of his language and doctrines. Such, at least, was the view taken by the head of the Ministry. It could not, he conceived, be right that any member of the administration should give an implied sanction to an agitation by a foreign refugee against Sovereigns in alliance with Her Majesty, and accordingly he wrote to Lord Palmerston to request that the reception, which was known to be contemplated, might not take place. This request was refused. Already rumors were afloat, that if Kossuth were to be received, the Austrian Minister had been directed to take his leave; and the question was looked upon by the Prime Minister as of so much gravity, that a Cabinet Council was summoned to consider it. They met on the 3rd of November, and Lord Palmerston, reluctantly deferring to the generally expressed opinion of his colleagues, intimated that he would avoid any interview with Kossuth.

Kossuth left England, but his admirers-determined apparently to obtain some compensation for the disappointment of their hero at not being allowed an official reception-got up addresses to Lord Palmerston of thanks for what he had done towards securing the personal safety and ultimate liberation of the illustrious patriot and exile.' In these addresses, which were voted at meetings of extreme Radicals in Finsbury and Islington, the Emperors of Austria and of Russia were spoken of as 'odious and detestable assassins' and 'merciless tyrants and despots;' and no common surprise was excited both at home and abroad, when it was known that Lord Palmerston had allowed them to be presented to himself at the Foreign Office, and had expressed himself 'extremely flattered and highly gratified' by the expression of opinion they contained as respected himself. He added, no doubt, that it could not be expected that he should concur in some of the expressions which had been used in the addresses;'