The Sun.
London, England, 1847-01-15 00:00:00

THE SPANISH MARRIAGES.
(Continued from The Sun of yesterday.)

We have received from Paris copies of the docu-
ments respec4ing the marriages of the Queen of Spain
with Don Francisco d'Assis and the Infanta with the
Duke de Montpensier, presented to the Chamber of De-
puties by M. Guizot on Tuesday last.
The following are translations of the most important
dispatches:—
LORD PALMERSTON TO LORD NORMANBY.
Foreign-office, Oct. 31, 1846.
My Lord,—Her Majesty's Government would willingly
have allowed the communications between j; the two
Governments on the Spanish marriages to close with M.
Guizot's dispatch of the sth inst., a copy of which was
transmitted to me by Count Jarnac on the Bth, if it were
not that there are some statements and some arguments
in that dispatch which it is impossible for her Majesty's
Government to leave entirely without a reply.
M. Guizot's dispatch, like that from me to your Ex •
eellency, to which it was an answer, treats of two sub-
jects,—the marriage of the Queen of Spain, and the
marriage of the Infanta. With regard to the first I
have little to say, except so far as I may have to touch
upon it in treating of the second ; and except to express
the sincere and earnest wish of her Majesty's Govern-
ment that it may conduce to the happiness of the Queen
and to the welfare of the Spanish nation. Her Ma-
jesty's Government, indeed, in answer to repeated appli-
cations from the Government of Spain on the subject of
the Queen's marriage, had instructed her Majesty's Mi-
nister at Madrid to recommend a different arrangement,
and had invited the French Government to join in that
recommendation ; but the recommendation or her Ma
jesty's Government was not givea to the Government of
Spain in the spirit of dictation, as M. Guizot's dispatch
would seem to imply ; nor did her Majesty's
Government either ask or expect that the Government
of France should exclusively recommend the candidate
whom her Majesty's Government thought the best. Wo
knew perfectly well, that if that candidate were not ac-
cepted by the Spanish Court, the French Government
would recommend another; and I distinctly stated to
Count Jarnac, in answer to a question which he put to
me, that her Majesty's Government, having given its
opinion, would, in the event of that opinion not pre-
vailing, take no part either for or against the other can-
didate whom the French Government would afterwards
propose. But what I adverted to in regard to this
matter, in my former dispatch, is this, that while at the
latter end of August Count Jarnac was holding out to
me, and M. Guizot to your Excellency, the expectation
that M. Bresson would be instructed to co-operate with
Mr. Bulwer in recommending the candidate whom the
British Government wished to point out, provided that,
in the event of that candidate being rejected, Mr. Bulwer
would be instructed not to oppose M. Bresson in recom-
mending the other. M. Bresson was at that very time al-
ready deciding the matter at Madrid, against that first
candidate, in pursuance of instructions previously sent to
him from Paris; and her Majesty's Government think
that the French Government might as well have made
those instructions known to them, instead of continuing
to discuss the conditions of a joint action which those in-
structions had put entirely out of the question. And in
at
professedters, wi taht respectthe te tao dwe
shi
rice hfotrh
ae
fFruerlgleanmredhutuGtaoolvutehnrednsemeresntmatnding, and now seems to imply that
a similar disposition was not equally felt by her Ma-
jesty's Government, it is to be observed that her Ma-
jesty's Government twice communicated to the French
Government the instructions which had been sent to
Mr. Bulwer ; the first time in extenso, and the second
time in substance •, whereas no similar communication
was ever made to her Majesty's Government of the ine
structions sent to M. Bresson. But not only was the
confidence thus shown by her Majesty's Government
towards the Government of France not reciprocated, but
it was turned to purposes at variance with the spirit in
which it was. made ; and though M. Guizot declared that
my instruction, of the 19th of July, to Mr. Bulwer, of
which a copy was communicated in confidence to M.
Guizot, and was sent immediately by him to M. Bresson,
was not used by M. Bresson in any public or official
manner, yet he does not deny :that it was used by M.
Bresson in a manner unauthorised by her Majesty's
Government, to whom, and to whom alone, it belonged
to determine what use should be made at Madrid of
own instruction to her Majesty's Minister at that Court.
M. Guizot reverts to the earlier periods of these trans-
actions, and admits that, from the outset, the King of
the French spontaneously made kriown that he did not
pretend to obtain the hand of the Queen of Spain for
any of his sons, and that he wished the Queen of Spain
to choose her consort from among the descendants of
Philip V., a category which, as the French Government
pointed out at the time, specifically excluded all the
members of the Royal Family of France. But surely
there declarations had reference to a principle, and not
simply:to a person. The objection of which his Ma-
jesty the King of the French by such declarations ad-
mitted the validity, was not that one of his sons should
be the husband of Isabella of Bourbon, but that one of his
sons should be the husband of the Queen of Spain ; and
the principle of that objection is therefore not confined
in its application to a marriage of one of his sons with the
reigning sovereign, but evidently applies also to a mar-
riage with the immediate heiress to the Crown. And
is this the doctrine of her Majesty's Government
alone P And is it only now' 'for the first time, advanced?
Far otherwise. It is a doctrine admitted virtually
andby hisal an Maje
an tees ct ye
d e tnbt pleiriinegd
;of
fetrhemF. rGenacihzothailmiasdeelf,s
in his dispatch to certain engagements, from which
February,the F renc h184G60, vtehrantmtehnety isnhtoi
uml ad e
idn,
aosnpectihfieed2c7otnhtinof.
gency, consider themselves freed and released. And
what were those engagements ? They were, first, the
engagement, originally and spontaneously made by his
Majesty the King of the French, that no son of his
should marry the Queen of Spain ; and, secondly, the
engagement, also spontaneously taken by his Majesty,
and by his Minister, in September, 1845, at Eu, that in
no case should the Duke of Montpensier marry the In-
fanta until the Queen of Spain should have been mar-
ried ; and until, by her having had children, the
prospect of a direct succession to the Spanish Crown
should have been assured. Does not the second of these
engagements prove that the first was understood by
those who made it exactly in the sense which I have
given to it ? and that the objection of which the King
of the French acknowledged the force and justice, was,
not that one of his sons should marry a particular
Princess of the House of Bourbon, but that any of his
sons should be the consort of the Queen of Spain ? And
his Majesty, feeling and admitting the force of that ob-
jection, proposed, of his own accord, that the marriage
which he wished to take place between his son and the
Infanta should be postponed until the birth of children
to the Queen should in some degree have divested that
marriage of the appearance of an attempt to take the
chance of attaining by indirect. means in Lone way that
which had been relinquished directly in another.
This last-mentioned engagement at Eu was obviously
not sufficient to remove the objections of the British
Government to the proposed marriage of the Duke of
Montpensier to the Infanta. But that engagement, such
as it was, ought to have been kept; and if it had been
kept, time would have been allowed to the two Govern-
ments to discuss with deliberation the various questions
connected with the matter, and they might have endea-
voured to have arrived at some, amicable arrangement
of their mutual views and interests with regard to it.
But the object of the French Government on this occa-
sion seems to have been so to precipitate the matter, as
to render all arrangement and mutual understanding im-
possible. This engagement, spontaneously made by the
French Government, has been broken; and upon what
plea? M. Guizot, in his dispatch, assigns two grounds
of excuse for its violation. The one, a circumstance
which happened during the administration of her Ma-
jesty's late Government; the other, some circumstances
which are said to have happened after her Majesty's
present Government came into office.
M. Guizot alludes to a communication which was made
to her Majesty's late Government on the 27th of
February of the present year, the purport of which was
that the King of the French would hold himself free
from the engagement he had taken as to the marriage of
the Queen and of the Infanta, and would deem himself
at liberty to ask the hand either of the one or of the
other for the Duke of Montpensier, in a certain con-
tingency. That contingency M. Guizot stated, in his
dispatch, to have been defined to be, "if any combina-
tion should acquire consistency, which should make the
French Government fear that the Consort of the Queen
of Spain would be takennot from among the descendants
of Philip V."

This communication of the 27th of February, 1846
upon which so much stress is laid as affording justifi-
cationl, for the course which the French Govt rnment has
pursued, was verbal and unofficial. There is no record
of it in the Foreign-office. There is nothing to show that
it was aver acquiesced i
in in by her Majesty's late Govern-
ment ; and the pretensions put forward, and the inten-
tions announcedit, are at variance with the principles
laid down, and with the opinions declarecil by her Ma-
jesty'slate, as well as her Mi;tjesty's present, Adminis-
tration. I never heard of this memorandum till lately.
It was never even mentioned to me by Count Jarnac
until after the event had happened for which it is now
quoted as a justification. It is said to have been a timely
ri
e ge warning,
and the
it s
existencen e lec of
eraswhich
made justifiesk n
ow theu to
m double f
e rm
thear-
first time, by Count Jarnac, after the news of the double
te marriagem b,
e r,cehuandtb
jeeenrnraeecesihet Ambeo uatn the
un
smiddlened
of Sep•
memo-
randum, which he said was the record of the communi.
cation in question ; but, although I remember that the
received.
d
passage quoted by M. Gutzot was in that memorandum,
yet, the specific contingency stated therein as the one
which would release the French Government from its en-
gagements, was the case of "there being at any time
an imminent danger of a marriage either of the Queen
of Spain, or of the Infanta, with Prince Leopold of Saxe
Coburg, or with any other foreign Prince, not being a
Bourbon, and not being a descendant of Phillip V. of
Spain ;" and it was in such a ease that the memorandum
declared, that his Majesty the King of the French would
consider himself free to ask for the Duke of Montpen-
sier the hand either of the Queen or of the Infanta.
It is to be remarked, that the memorandum thus places
both the marriage of the Queen, and that of the heiress
presumptive to the throne, in the same political:category;
but if there was between those two marriages, in the
opinion of the French Government, this identity of poli-