XLVII. CHAP, riage. On the other hand, the British ambassador at Madrid, Sir Henry Bulwer, perceiving that there were few Bourbon princes that were desirable husbands for the Spanish princesses, wrote to his government, and otherwise maintained, how absurd and unfair it was to limit the choice of husbands for the princesses to one family, that family so effete in most of its branches. The Spanish people could not accept a Carlist or a Sicilian Bourbon. Besides the Orleans princes, there remained but the sons of Prince Francisco de Paula, of whom the eldest had the voice and the appearance of a soprano, whilst the younger, still worse, had actually declared himself a Liberal and an exaltado! "Why not marry the Queen to any prince, Bourbon or not," asked Sir Henry Bulwer, "and let the Infanta marry the Duc de Montpensier?" So natural a proposition is set down by M. Guizot as nothing less than an anti-Gallican and Coburg conspiracy. To put an end to M. Guizot's terror, Lord Aberdeen applied to Prince Albert, who gave his word that the family of Coburg would not press and did not even desire the marriage. This promise of the Prince was far, however, from quieting the susceptible French minister. M. Guizot saw a Coburg in every breeze. It is evident that he was wholly preoccupied and absorbed by this arch enemy. And thus he and Louis-Philippe, in their anxiety to keep Bourbons and Bourbon alliances on the throne of Spain, allowed the same Bourbon family to slip off that very throne of which they had the special keeping, being no other than the throne of France itself. Unfortunately the susceptible minister and monarch had had a still more susceptible envoy at Madrid, Count Bresson, who was always in a panic or a passion, and proved it indeed by his last act, suicide, without it being possible to assign a sufficient reason. The year 1846 demanded a solution of the marriage question. The Sicilian and Carlist princes being set XLVII. aside, the sons of Don Francisco came into the front CHAP. rank. Lord Aberdeen had quitted office, Lord Palmerston was in power; and his lordship, being informed of the non-virile symptoms, manifest in the aspect and voice of the Duke of Cadiz, eldest of these princes, declared that his brother Don Enrique should alone be thought of as the Queen's husband. The French King's minister, as well as Queen Christina, thought otherwise. They had their own reasons. Lord Palmerston feared that a marriage with the Duke of Cadiz would prove null and sterile. He was not aware how such defects are remedied or supplied in Spain. He, therefore, was opposed to a marriage of Queen Isabella with the Duke of Cadiz. Were it to be decided on, he for very cogent reasons was desirous that the promise of the French government should in that case be observed, of not solemnising the marriage of the Infanta with the Duc de Montpensier until the Queen had given birth to an heir. Previous to the letter of Lord Palmerston mentioning the name of Saxe-Coburg, Count Bresson had, however, actually obtained from Queen Christina a promise of the simultaneous marriage of the Queen and Princess to the Dukes of Cadiz and Montpensier. Louis-Philippe showed himself highly displeased at such an intrigue, which placed him under the charge of duplicity towards England. M. Guizot viewed it otherwise. He considered Lord Palmerston's mere mention of the SaxeCoburg candidate as freeing himself and the King from all engagements. This minister pleaded that the French court was to be disengaged from all previous agreements if the Queen's marriage with any prince not a descendant of Philip the Fifth had been imminent.* These words are vague enough. But even admitting their worth, no one could suppose Isabella's Life of Peel. XLVII. CHAP. marriage with the Prince of Saxe-Coburg to have been at the time either probable or imminent. M. Guizot, however, considered it sufficiently so to despatch orders to the French envoy, Bresson, at Madrid to precipitate and accomplish the simultaneous marriage of the princesses. Subsequent events have shown how little important were all these causes and jealousies, and how weak a hold the House of Bourbon had upon any one throne of Europe, much less upon two such thrones as those of France and Spain. The conduct of the King and M. Guizot sufficed to create the conviction, not only in the English cabinet, but in the English public, that the French government had tricked them. The result was that the two countries and the two governments fell asunder, and that Eastern Europe perceived that the Anglo-French alliance was at an end. This emboldened them to complete the partition of Poland, and rendered France powerless to pursue any liberal or national policy in Italy. Had the Orleans dynasty and the French government of its predilection endured for any time, they would have afforded still further and distressing proofs of how much this separation from England left them at the mercy of other powers. But whilst the foreign policy of the French government went to deprive it of all allies, all support, and all confidence abroad, its domestic policy was gradually alienating every friend and every party at home, until the monarch and his ministers stood as isolated in the Tuileries as France did in Europe. There was no circumstance connected with the dynasty of July that rendered it more welcome to the Liberals, and indeed to the French in general, than the conviction that it could not, apparently, favour the clergy, and that it would neither give high patronage to the ultramontanes nor make over to them that supremacy over education which it was the aim of the Restoration to accomplish. Notwithstanding this belief, the ultra-religious party gradually raised its head in France, and became especially noisy and virulent in its attacks on the university. The clergy no longer strove indeed to dominate that body, appoint its grand-masters, and dictate the spirit and course of education; they adopted quite different aims, and, seeing it impossible to predominate in the councils of education, they clamoured for complete freedom of public instruction. They demanded, in other words, the power of establishing those Jesuit or monastic schools which had been banished the kingdom to Switzerland in the last years of Charles the Tenth's reign. Freedom of education is a good principle in a country where all is free. But in a centralised administration, or a country where every institution depends on a minister, to allow the Jesuits to establish schools and colleges was simply to set one administration against another. M. Guizot, as a Protestant, experienced more scruples than another might have felt. He showed himself tolerant to the Jesuits, and instead of protecting the university, and putting down its monastic foes with the strong hand, he applied to Rome. This was an attempt to take the matter out of the hands of the Chamber, which showed itself strongly opposed to the condescension of M. Guizot to the church party and the Jesuits. His conduct, no doubt, proceeded from principles of tolerance and justice, and a wish to give even ultra-Catholicism fair play. But the result was unfortunate, for, though the court of Rome advised the Jesuits to desist and withdraw, the good fathers managed to hold their ground under another name, and thus contrived to make the Orleans dynasty fall under the same imputations which Liberal France had directed against the Restoration. Such imputations became more powerful and more pointed when the policy of the French government in CHAP. XLVII. CHAP. XLVII. Switzerland became an object of public opposition and |