Queen Victoria had a high idea of her duties and responsibilities.  From any legal responsibility she was aware that she was exempt; but she did not the less consider that a moral responsibility rested on her not to be content to give her royal sanction as a mere matter of form to every scheme or measure which might be submitted to her, but to examine every case for herself, to form her own opinion, and, if it differed from that of her ministers, to lay her objections and views fairly before them, though prepared, as the constitution required, to act on their decision rather than on her own, if, in spite of her arguments, they adhered to their judgment.  And in carrying out this notion of her duty she was singularly aided by the Prince, her husband, a man of perfectly upright character, of great general ability, and who, from the first moment of his married life, regulated his views of every question, domestic and foreign, by its bearing on English interests and English feelings, to which he early acclimatized himself with a remarkable readiness of appreciation.

In the administration of Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston was Foreign Secretary, and during its latter years foreign affairs occupied more of the attention of the country than matters of domestic policy.

The revolution of 1848, which overthrew the Orleans dynasty, had produced in France a state of affairs but little removed from anarchy, which was scarcely mitigated by the election of Prince Louis Napoleon to the Presidency of the new republic for four years, so constant was the opposition which the Republican party in the Assembly offered to every part of his policy.  They even carried their opposition so far as to form a deliberate plan for the impeachment of his minister and himself, and for his arrest and imprisonment at Vincennes.  But he was well-informed of all these dangers, and on the morning of the 2d of December, 1851 (the day, as was commonly believed, having been selected by him as being the anniversary of his uncle’s great victory of Austerlitz), he anticipated them by the arrest of all the leading malcontents in their beds; which he followed up by an appeal to the people to adopt a new constitution which he set before them, the chief article of which was the appointment of a President for ten years.

No one could avoid seeing that what was aimed at was the re-establishment of the Empire in his own person.  And so arbitrary a deed, as was inevitable, produced great excitement in England and anxious deliberations in the cabinet.  Their decision, in strict uniformity with the principle that rules our conduct toward foreign nations, was to instruct our ambassador in Paris, Lord Normanby, to avoid any act or word which could wear the appearance of an act of interference of any kind in the internal affairs of France.  But, on Lord Normanby reporting these instructions to the French Foreign Secretary, M. Guizot, he learned, to his surprise and perplexity, that Lord Palmerston had interfered