It is totally and absolutely impossible that Austria can keep quiet
possession of the Italian provinces; and all you hear at Vienna to the
contrary is nothing but the _bon à dire_ of the Metternich school,
and is the result of the established practice of the disciples of
that school to go on asserting as facts that which they know to be
false, but wish to be true, under the absurd notion that by frequent
repetition falsehood may become truth. The only consequence of this
system is that those who act upon it and those who are misled by it
govern their conduct upon entirely erroneous data; and the results of
such false policy are, that men like Metternich and Guizot meet in
exile in London; that Sovereigns like Louis Philippe drink unwholesome
water and sour small beer at Claremont, instead of champagne and claret
at the Tuileries; and that ancient empires like Austria are thrown
into anarchy and confusion, and are brought to the very verge of
dissolution....
I quite understand the drift and meaning of Prince Windischgratz’s
message to our Queen, but pray make the Camarilla understand that, in
a constitutional country like England, these things cannot answer;
and that a foreign Government which places its reliance upon working
upon the Court against the Government of this country is sure to be
disappointed.
II.—=Source.=—_Letters of Queen Victoria_, 1837-1861, vol. ii.,
p. 221. (London: 1907.)
_Queen Victoria to Lord John Russell._
OSBORNE, _July 25, 1848_.
The Queen must tell Lord John what she has repeatedly told Lord
Palmerston, but without apparent effect, that the establishment of an
_entente cordiale with the French Republic_, for the purpose of driving
the Austrians out of _their dominions_ in Italy, would be a _disgrace_
to this country.... The notion of establishing a Venetian State under
French guarantee is too absurd.