already by expressing to the French ambassador in London, M. de Walewski, his warm approval of the President’s conduct;[276] and Lord Normanby, greatly annoyed at being directed to hold one language in Paris, while the head of his department was taking a widely different tone in Downing Street—­a complication which inevitably “subjected him to misrepresentation and suspicion”—­naturally complained to the Prime-minister of being placed in so embarrassing a situation.

Both the Queen and the Prime-minister had for some time been discontented at the independent manner in which Lord Palmerston apparently considered himself entitled to transact the business of his department, carrying it so far as even to claim a right to send out despatches without giving them any intimation of either their contents or their objects.  And the Queen, in consequence, above a year before,[277] had drawn up a memorandum, in which she expressed with great distinctness her desire to have every step which the Foreign Secretary might recommend to be taken laid clearly before her, with sufficient time for consideration, “that she might know distinctly to what she had given her royal sanction;” and “to be kept informed of what passed between him and the Foreign Ministers before important decisions are taken,” etc., etc.  And, after such an intimation of her wish, she not unnaturally felt great annoyance at learning that in a transaction so important as this coup d’etat (to give it the name by which from the first it was described in every country) Lord Palmerston had taken upon himself to hold language to the French Ambassador “in complete contradiction to the line of strict neutrality and passiveness which she had expressed her desire to see followed with regard to the late convulsions at Paris, and which was approved by the cabinet."[278] The Prime-minister seems to have taken the same view of the act, and remonstrated with Lord Palmerston, who treated the matter very lightly, and justified his right to hold such a conversation, which he characterized as “unofficial,” in such a tone and on such grounds that Lord John considered he left him no alternative “but to advise the Queen to place the Foreign Office in other hands.”

A careful and generally impartial political critic has recently expressed an opinion “that Lord Palmerston made good his case;"[279] but his argument on the transaction seems to overlook the most material point in it.  Lord Palmerston’s own defence of his conduct was, that “his conversation with Walewski was of an unofficial description; that he had said nothing to him which would in any degree or way fetter the action of the government; and that, if it was to be held that a Secretary of State could never express any opinion to a foreign minister on passing events except as the organ of a previously consulted cabinet, there would be an end of that easy and familiar intercourse which tends essentially to promote good understanding between ministers and government;” and he even added, as a personal justification of himself as against the Prime-minister, that three days afterward Lord John Russell himself, Lord Lansdowne (the President of the Council), and Sir Charles Wood (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) had all discussed the transaction with M. de Walewski at a dinner-party, “and their opinions were, if anything, rather more strongly favorable than his had been.”