The Express.
London, England, 1847-01-14 00:00:00

M. OtilLOT TO C. 7ARNAC._

rants, Nov. 22, 1846.
M. le C.—l send you herewith a copy of a despatch
of Lord Palmerston, dated Oct. 31, which Lord Normanbv
communicated to me the 4th Nov. I have already answered
mast of the arguments which have been repeated in this do-
cument. I shall address myself now only to the serious
errors in it, to establish in truth the essential facts. This
protracted dispute only serves to obscure the facts and em-
bitter the personalities. In supporting the rights and the
interests of France and of the government, I desire sin-
cerely to maintain with the British government good and
amicable relations. To this policy I shall be faitbfuL
Lord Palmerston wishes to prove that the French govern-
ment has violated the engagements it has contracted in
September, 1845, at the Chateau d'Eu, on the subject of the
Spanish marriages, and that it has violated the treaty of
Utrecht, and the obligations that this treaty imposed on it—
such is the language of its last despatch. The more this lan-
guage is unmeasured, the more I hold myself bound to re-
produce it without attenuation, and to reply to it with frank-
ness. Lord Palmerston declared, in his despatch of 22nd
September last, that he had not found at the Foreign-office,
on the subject of the Spanish marriage, any convention or
any arrangement between the French and English govern-
ments. He proclaims, at present, engagements contracted, as
he says, on this subject at the Chateau d'Eu by the French go-
vernment, and hesays at the same time in reference to my
memorandum of 27th Fcbru ,ry last, communicated to Lord
Aberdeen, 4th March, that there exists no trace of it in the
Foreign-office. I may ask if there exist in the Foreign-office
any trace of the engagements made at the Chateau d'En ? I
may be astonished that, on the one hand, it is pretended to
he so well informed of engagements of which no official proof
is offered, while, on the other hand, ignorance is affected of
facts and documents which it is not convenient to acknow-
ledge. Ts there not a singular contradiction in this, and a
somewhat excessive complaisance towards our own side of
the question ? I will not follow a like course. I will not
depart from any engagement taken at the Chateau
d'Eu, merely because Lord Palmerston has not found
them enrolled at the Foreign-01m. Between governments

having a reciprocal confidence and respect, business is riceA
transacted without referenco to official documents. Tun
are even circumstances in which such mutualconfilebee

is a matter of state convenience, and eonoequently ft duty,
Such is this question of the Spanish marriages. For gp.,,
it is essentially a question of internal order, and one Is
which her independence and her dignity were engaged,
Lard Aberdeen and myself, desiring to regulate our
conduct with this view, did not think that this
question should be a subject of habitual official eo,
respondence. We thought that we should act with mote
conversance for Spain and for ourselves by confining me.
selves to those communications which our mutual confide's,
rendered natural and easy. This is the reason why Iggi
Palmerston has not found at ths Foreign-offiee any trice of
those communications which, in his despatch of September
22, he calls a bargain. But the engagements of the Chateau
d'Eu, as well as the declarations of the memorandum
of February 27, are not the less real or serious, and fat
from contesting them, I cordially admit them, and proclairi
their sacred character. But I muat,at the same time, establish
them in their truth and integrity. Now, in recalling do
engagements taken by the French government at the CM.
teau d'Eu, Lord Palmerston forgets and omits to say the
these engagements were candid., al and mutual. We have
never expressed them without annexing two reservations-.
namely, first, that the Queen of Spain Mould
choose her husband from the descendants of
Philip the Fifth ; and, secondly, that the Brit*
government should in commits with us, and to tas
utmost of its power, promote the result. Could we, without
the most culpable imprudence, restrain, on al serious a yyism
tion, our freedom of conduct and action, without attachiae
to our engagements clauses in conformity with the swim
interests and dignity of the country ? I have openly and.*
all occasions proclaimed in this respect our policy. I ham
often discoursed upon it at Paris with the British ambasseder,
apprising him of what we should do if the candiditeship at
a prince, not included in the descendants of Phillip V., and
more particularly Prince Leopold de Saxe Coburg, for the
hand of the Queen, should be presented with any chance of
success. The British government was therefore well aware,
both of the reservations which accompanied the engage.
ment, and of the support we expected from it. It has
said, I confess, that it could not admit the principle
of our policy, nor adopt in this question the same
attitude, hold the same language' or act in the same dine..
tioa with us ; but it promised us that it would act in concert
with us, and direct its efforts to the some object. That was
not a bargain. It was a course mutually agreed on, frankly
and faithfully. We have always reckoned on it,
According to Lord Palmerston, the Marquis de Mira-
flares had been sent on • mission to Paris last summer
by the court of Madrid, to persuade the king and government
not to oppose the marriage of Queen Isabella with the prince
of Coburg. This assertion is destitute of all foundation.
During the two months that the Marquis de Miratiores
passed in Paris he made no communication to the govern.
ment, no overtures ; he never addressed to me a word is
the sense indicated by Lord Palmerston. In my despatch
of the sth of October, after having shown how the MO= if
Prince Leopold, placed in the instructions of the 9th of July
at the head of the three candidates for the hand of
the Queen, must have produced in his favour the
effect of an indirect recommendatien, I has-e said
•• In admitting that Lord Palmerston his not intended to pet
forward or to recommend the Prince of Coburg, he will cer-
tainly admit that he has said absolutely nothing to remove
his claims, or discourage the Spanish government from fa.
vouring them." Lord Palmerston mistakes altogether the
sense of this phrase—" M. Guizot thus admits positively that
the government of her Majesty hid no intention to
promote or recommend the Prince of Coburg. To
admit that is to acknowledge the exact truth."
I have neither admitted nor denied that Lord Pal-
merston had not the intention of recommending the
Prince de Coburg in his instructions of the 19th July. It is
the effects and not the intentions that concern me, and that
I must look to. I desired to show what must he, at Madrid,
the effect of these instructions, even admitting hypothetically
that Lord Palmerston did not intend to promote or recent-
mend that prince. Continuing to discuss what I said on the
sth October, upon the effect of his instructions of 19th July,
at Madrid, Lord Palmerston cites textually from my despatch
the following passage. I place them side by side, the cite.
tion and the text of the despatch.
CITATION INSERTED IN raa ORIGINAL TINT.
-

Th. blest's government could not mistake its sitmtkin7To pre.
vent the oesmequencesi of it, it adopted at Madrid the most direct and
most legitimate ono,. It made an appall to the free choice, to the
independent will of Queen Isabella and her government. Beside tha
combination which was evidently pursued against Its pokey, it offered
a different combination—it reserved openly and positively the right to
do so; it must have done so, for the hypothesis fur which it bat
made this reserration, and which it had for.ween in Ito imtructions to
Madrid as in its declaration. at London, became more and more pro.
hable. The Queen of Spain and her government acceptel this cco.
binatlon.

CITATION OF LORD PALMERSTON.
M. Guizot's despatch goes on to soy that " the French
government was unable to deceive itself as to the state of
things, and saw that there was on the part of the Spanish
court so strong a desire for the Coburg alliance,that if the
British government should make no active opposition toil
and should remain only passive in the matter, that marriage
would certainly be concluded, and that consequently ths
French government resorted at Madrid to the most direst
and most legitimate means, and appealed to the free choice
and independent will of the Queen and her government to
bring about a different arrangement. By the side of a com-
bination which was being pursued evidently in opposition to
the policy of the French government, that government, says
M. Goixot, offered a different combination, and this latter
one was accepted by the Queen and the government."
In reading this passage I felt, I confess, an extreme oar-
prime. The phrases that I have underlined are not found
in my despatch, and I cannot consider this intercalation N
indifferent; for Lord Palmerston imputes to me palpable
contradictions, and which would be real, if, as he
says, all the phrases on which they rest really ex-
isted there. Lord Palmerston must allow me to re.
pulse these contradictions, which are not my prow
work. Lord Palmerston is astonished in speaking of the pro-
ceedings of loot May, by the Court of Madrid, with the
knowledge and concurrence of the British minister, to offer
the hand of the queen to the Prince of Coburg. I had not
said that I received the first notice of it from Lord Aberdeen
himself. I thank him for this reproach. It is very true that
Lord Aberdeen firstneve me this information, soon confirmed
by the French minister at Madrid. Nothing, certainly,
could be more agreeable to the French government than to
publish it ; for the fact proves at the same time both the
good faith of Lord Aberdeen, and the engagementthat he had
taken and so faithfully observed, to assist us in setting acids
the candidateship of the Prince of Coburg. But having n•
aired. from Lord Aberdeen this information in a Cidw
and confidential mammy, I did not know if it would
be agreeable to him that I should officially declare
that it had come from him. I did not feel myself at liberty
to dispose of it without his consent. It is with deep satis-
faction that I now render this homage to the rectitude with
which he has conducted on this occasion, as on many
others, the policy of frank confidence and commas
action, as we had mutually engaged to do. I will make
a short comparison. In the month Of May, Lord Aberdeenin-
formed me, on the occasion of a proceeding which forth. fine
time cave to the candidateship of the Prince of Coburg a caw
taro character i he disavowed this candidateship, and blamed
the English minister at Madrid for having associated himself
in the proceeding. In the month of July following, without
any notice or any previous communication with us, Lard
Palmerton himself proclaimed the candidateship of the Primo
of Coburg, and charged Mr. Bulwer to express the sincere
desire of the English government that the choice should fall
on him of the three candidates, who should be most woe
able to Spain sod the Queen. And when, on the first in-
formation of this despatch, which was given to you after
haring represented to Lord Palmerston the serious objets
tiona which were raised, you asked him if it could not le
reconsidered, he told you that it had been already der
patched. Who will say that nothing was changed? WY
will say that we ought or could close our ens
on such changes, and run blindfold and passively the
chances which must ensue? The clearest duty, the mod
simple foresight, prescribed our conduct. We had promised
in Sept. 1845 not to conclude definitively the marriage of die
Duke of Montpensier until the queen should be married ad
have; had issue: but provided that the queen should tab
for her jsusband one of the descendants of Philip V.,ad
that th% English government should help us to bring best
that result.' The French government has faithfully °Werra a
promise, for it has been proposed in Nov., 1845, to dank
the marriage of the queen with a descendant of Philip V,*
consent to the immediate marriage of the Mike of Montpen
sier with the Infanta ; and this proposition was refused. We
saw, in May, 1846, the hand of the queen offered to the
Prince of Coburg, and in the July following this candidate
ship officially avowed without any objectionor observance 11
the English government. We were obliged to consider*,
marriage We have
nooft filed
ea Dukeen
result of this combination as probable and imminent. WI
teo:
must, to put aside this chance, consent to the immobile
sMingonletpedanysie in r wioutrh
etnhisie
Intenh
We have, on the contrary, scrupulously observed them. sub'
ject to the reservations and limitewhich have been previssel
laid down. The French government is not less faithful in*
serving the treaty of Utrecht than its own engagements.
Lord Palmerston sums up in these terms the meaning a
consequences of this treaty—" The perpetual *epergne ef
the two crowns of France and Spa
countriesns, and the excludes of
every
prince of the royal family of one of these countries a
of all the descendants of this prince from the summits M
the throne of the other country, in whatever maser the
said succession may present itself to them." I bare fay
admitted the first of these principles, the perpetual ItpllS.
lion of the two crowns. I have maintained that there did
not result from it, and that no one in Europe elm,
thought there resulted from it, the interdiction of the
marriages between the two royal houses of France sad
Spam, or the loss for the princes issuing Soo
these maniagee , of their eventual rights to the crows ii
Spain proceeding from the right of Philip V. I will real to
your memory but one of the facts I have already quoted.ma
that I could have multiplied to prove that such was:
throughout the whole of last century, the constant ad
general opinion of Europe. In 1711 Louis 1., Eiell
of Spain, the eon of Philip V., married /Wile
de Montpensier, the daughter of the Duke of Or-
leans, regent—of the prince, who had himself Riess
in 1712 the renunciation of the branch of Orleans to
their eventual claims of succession to the throne of Spain.
If king Louis I. had had children, a grandson of this saes
regent would have ascended the throne of Spain. WINS
would have become, In presence of this fact, accomplished is
the lifetime of the persons that signed the treaty a
Utrecht, of the doctrine of Lord Pahnenton ? " Bat ilk
admitting even," says he in hie despatch of 31st October,
" that there had beencaaes in which the stipulations of Utrecht
might not have been observed, the fact of this non-observance
by statesmen of the last century would not he a reason for
their not being invoked and observed by the statesmen dam
present century." The following is another fact of a 111011
I recent date, and the authority of which will not be contested
by Lord Palmerston. In 1739 the Infant Don Philip, Duke

of Parma, son of Philip V., married Louisa Elisabeth,
the daughter of Louis XIV. In 1765, the Infanta
Louisa Maria Theresa, the issue of this marriage, and conse-
quently granddaughter to Loris XIV.. married Don Carlos,
Prince et the Asturian, since King of Spain under the name
of Charles IV. The King of Spain, Ferdinand VII., was then
great grandson of Louis XN ~ and Queen Isabella 11.,
e his daughter, now Queen regnant, is among the number
of the direct descendants of Louis XV. Has Lord Palmerston
ever contested the right of Ferdinand VII. and of Isabella II
to reign in Spain. Lord Palmerston, in the 18:h century,
has doue precisely what his predecessors and all Europe had
done in the course of the 18th ; he has not pretended—nay
thought—that the character of a descendant of a branch of the
royal house of France. that had renounced his own eventual
rights to the succession of the throne of Spain, could
destroy the rights to this throne proceeding from the titles
of Philip V. To such a degree has the natural aud true sig-
nification of the treaty of Utrecht been, up to these last few
days, universally and irresistibly admitted! But Lord Palmer-
ston does not confine himself to giving on this point an erron-
roue in terpretationdo this treaty ; he attacks much more its ig-
Bilk-aim and end—l might says its very existence. The pnn-
cipil and real object of the treaty of L treekt says he, inde-
pendently of the re-establishment of peace between the con-
tryting powers was that fur which the preceding war was
undertaken It was to avert too close and in,
timate a union between the kingdoms of France and
Spain The history of the last century proves
to us by numerous examples that, notwithstanding the
treaty of Utrecht, this intimate union continued to subsist.
Thus, according to Lord Palmerston, the treaty of Utrecht
did not suffice in the last centurv.and no doubt does not suffice
at the present day, for its chief and veritable object, and that
object is to be sought not in the basis of peace re-established
by the toasty of Utrecht, but in the pretensions of war that
preceded it. Strange forgetfulness of the lessons of ex-
wiensc given at all times to the most powerful
human determinations! The governments that wage
war do not obtain all that they had hoped for;
and when, by necessity or by wisdom, they renounce per-
petuating war, it is nearly always by a transaction between
the mutual pretensions that pace is re-established. England
and her allies had promised themselves to prevent the grand-
son of Louis XIV. and his descendants from establishing
themselves on the throne of Spain. LouisXlV., in accepting
the crown of Spain for a branch of his house, wished to re-
serve him his eventual rights to the crown of France. This
was the object of the two ambitions in the first' stages
of the war. After twelve years of bloodshed and struggle
the spirit of pence regained its empire, and the two nations
made terms. England and her allies accepted a branch of
the house of Bourbon on the throne of Spain. Louis XIV.
consented to the complete separation of the right of the two
royal houses of France and Spain. This wan the treaty of
Utrecht, the true and veritable object of which was " not to
give to one ur other of the belligerents all that they had
promised themselves from the war, but to give to all of
them, by a mutual transaction, the peace of which they stood
in need. The men who would misconstrue so evident a
fact, and who woulds eck, in the first thoughts of the war of
succession in Spain, and not in the definite conditions
of peace, which put an end to it, the principal of their
pretensions and of their policy ; such would, in truth, be
the violaton of the treaty of Utrecht, in its spirit
as in the letter, and would incur before Europe, now peace-
ful and happy, the responsibility of the consequences of that
violation. The government of the king faithfully observes
the treaty of Utrecht, for he only demands the maintenance
of the European balance es established by that treaty. Lard
Palmerston, at the very moment that he invokes the treaty of
Utrecht on one point, repudiates the fundamental basis of that
treaty and affords glimpsesof another policy, which would cer-
tainly rot be a policy of conservation and of peace. I have
followed up my plan. I have corrected in the despatch of
31st October, the serious mistakes •, I have re-established
the essential facts according to truths. In a sentiment of
peace and convenience, I abs:ain from all which would
only serve to feed • discussion now useless. I
have at heart, not to ray anything beyond what
is necessary, nothing that can hurt in either country '
the much desired re-establishment of that policy of
good understanding and mutual good will, to which
no one, I have some right to say, has been, and is, so faithful
as myself. I think the facts sufficiently explained to close
here this debate. I wish on:y in concluding to bring it
within its legitimate and constitutional limits. Lord
Palmerston brought forward in name a person
who should have never appeared in it. My surprise
at it was great. My duty commands me to express it loudly,
and to recall to mind that the responsibility of the govern-
ment of the king in this question is mine and mine alone.
It is my right and my honour. I request you to read this
dispatch to Lord Palmerston, and to give him a copy of it.—
I am, de., de.