=Source.=—Sir Theodore Martin’s _The Life of the Prince Consort_,
vol. i., p. 69. (London: 1875.)
Amid the general enthusiasm with which Prince Albert was welcomed
in England, murmurs of jealousy and distrust were certain to be
heard. There were some who, on purely selfish grounds, deprecated the
marriage of the Queen with any but an English Prince; others who then,
and for many years afterwards, were eager to surmise danger in the
influence of a foreign prince upon the councils of the Crown. But the
real difficulty of his task, being what he was by nature, and by the
deliberate purpose which he had set before himself, lay elsewhere....
Although the husband of the Queen, the law—to use Her Majesty’s
words—took cognisance of him as “merely the younger son of the Duke of
Coburg.” Thus, while ostensibly occupying the most brilliant position
in the kingdom, his right of precedence was to be disputed, and was
disputed by a few members of the Royal Family, who made no secret of
their disappointment that Her Majesty’s choice had not fallen upon some
scion of the reigning House in whom they had a nearer interest. A more
pressing source of disquietude, however, existed in the fact that the
Prince possessed no independent authority by right of his position, and
could exercise none, even within his own household, without trenching
upon the privileges of others, who were not always disposed to admit of
interference....
Not less delicate was the Prince’s task in fixing the line to be taken
by him with regard to public affairs.... From the first, however, the
Prince appreciated the extreme delicacy of his position, and laid down
for himself the rule that no act of his should by possibility expose
him to the imputation of interference with the machinery of the State,
or of encroachment on the functions and privileges of the Sovereign....
The principle upon which he acted, as expressed by himself ten
years later, in his letter to the Duke of Wellington, declining to
entertain the offer of the command of the Army, cannot be too clearly
kept in view in reading the story of his life. It was “to sink his
own individual existence in that of his wife—to aim at no power by
himself or for himself—to shun all ostentation—to assume no separate
responsibility before the public—to make his position entirely a part
of hers—to fill up every gap which, as a woman, she would naturally
leave in the exercise of her regal functions—continually and anxiously
to watch every part of the public business, in order to be able to
advise and assist her at any moment in any of the multifarious and
difficult questions brought before her—political, or social, or
personal—to place all his powers at her command as the natural head
of her family, superintendent of her household, manager of her private
affairs, her sole confidential adviser in politics, and only assistant
in her communications with the officers of the Government, her private
secretary, and permanent minister.”