Queen Victoria to Lord John Russell

SARDINIA AND CENTRAL ITALY

Balmoral, 5th September 1859.

Lord John Russell will not be surprised if the despatches of Lord Cowley and drafts by Lord John in answer to them, which the Queen returns to him, have given her much pain. Here we have the very interference with advice to which the Queen had objected when officially brought before her for her sanction, to which the Cabinet objected, and which Lord John Russell agreed to withdraw, carried on by direct communication of the Prime Minister through the French Ambassador with the Emperor; and we have the very effect produced which the Queen dreaded, viz. the French Minister insinuating that we called upon his master to do that which he would consider so dishonourable that he would rather resign than be a party to it! What is the use of the Queen's open and, she fears, sometimes wearisome correspondence, with her Ministers, what the use of long deliberations of the Cabinet, if the very policy can be carried out by indirect means which is set aside officially, and what protection has the Queen against this practice? Lord John Russell's distinction also between his own official and private opinion or advice given to a Foreign Minister is a most dangerous, and, the Queen thinks, untenable theory, open to the same objections, for what he states will have the weight of the official character of the Foreign Secretary, whether stated as his private or his public opinion. His advice to the Marquis d'Azeglio is moreover quite open to the inference drawn by Count Walewski, that it is an encouragement to Sardinia, to Military intervention in and occupation of the Duchies, and Lord John Russell's answer hardly meets this point if left as it stands at present; for "the name of the King of Sardinia,... the chief of a well-disciplined army," will have little influence unless he is prepared to use that army.

The Queen must ask Lord John to instruct Lord Cowley to state to Count Walewski that no opinions expressed on Foreign Policy are those of "Her Majesty's Government" but those which are given in the official and regular way, and that Her Majesty's Government never thought of advising the French Government to break the solemn engagements into which the Emperor Napoleon entered towards the Emperor of Austria at Villafranca.

The Queen asks Lord John to communicate this letter to Lord Palmerston.

Footnote 73: Massimo d'Azeglio, Sardinian Commissioner in the Romagna. He had been Prime Minister of Sardinia from 1849 till 1852, when Cavour, who had been in his ministry, succeeded him.