[Footnote 19: Sir John Hobart Caradoc, second Lord Howden, British Minister at Rio Janeiro, was, together with Count Walewski, the French Minister there, engaged in a special mission to the River Plate and Uruguay; Buenos Ayres was blockaded by the British Fleet.]
The Queen has perused with eagerness Mr Bulwer's accounts of the late extraordinary events in Spain, but must confess that she has in vain looked for an explanation of the real motives and causes of the crisis. Has Lord Palmerston received any private letters throwing more light upon the matter? There seems to prevail the greatest mystery about the affair. Is the Queen reconciled with her husband? Has she sent for him? Have all the accounts of her hatred for Don Francisco and the Queen-Mother been false? All these questions are unanswered.
Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and has many apologies to make for not having attended your Majesty's Council to-day, and the more so as his absence arose from an inadvertence which he is almost ashamed to mention. But having got on horseback to ride to the station, with his thoughts occupied with some matters which he was thinking of, he rode mechanically and in a fit of absence to the Nine Elms Station,[20] and did not recollect his mistake till he had got there; and although he made the best of his way afterwards to the Paddington Station, he could not get there in time for any train that would have taken him early enough to Windsor.
Viscount Palmerston received this morning your Majesty's remarks upon his proposed drafts to Sir Hamilton Seymour, and has modified some of the expressions in those drafts; but those drafts are only private and confidential answers in his own name to private and confidential communications from Sir Hamilton Seymour, and they express only his own personal opinions, and not those of the Government.
Viscount Palmerston is sorry to say that the circumstances lately mentioned by Sir Hamilton Seymour, coupled with the course pursued at Lisbon almost ever since the successful interference of the Allied Powers, have brought Viscount Palmerston to the painful convictions expressed in the above-mentioned drafts, and he feels desirous, for his own sake, to place those convictions at least upon record in this Office. He will be most happy to find that he is mistaken, and will most truly and heartily rejoice if events should prove that the confidence which your Majesty reposes in the sincerity and good faith of the Queen of Portugal is well founded; but in a matter of this importance Viscount Palmerston feels that it is his bounden duty to your Majesty not to conceal his opinions, even though they should, as in the present case, unfortunately differ from those which your Majesty entertains.