The Queen trusts that the Government will take this into serious consideration, and, if they should concur in this view, that no time will be lost.
Queen Victoria to the King of Prussia.
[Translation. ]
BUCKINGHAM PALACE, June 1854.
Dearest Sir AND BROTHER,—Your faithful Bunsen has handed me your Majesty’s long explanatory letter, and has taken his leave of us,[1] with tears in his eyes, and I can assure your Majesty that I, too, see with pain the departure of one whom I have been accustomed to consider as the faithful mirror of your feelings, wishes, and views, and whose depth and warmth of heart I esteem no less highly than his high mental gifts. Sympathy with his fate is. general here. I entirely recognise in your letter the expression of your friendship, which is so dear to me, and which does not admit any sort of misunderstanding to exist between us, without my endeavouring at once to clear it up and remove it. How could I meet your friendship otherwise than by equally absolute frankness, allowing you to look into my inmost heart! Though you have shown me a proof of your gracious confidence in giving me, down to the smallest detail, an account of your personal and business relations with your servants, I still believe that I have no right to formulate any judgment. Only one thing my heart bids me to express, viz., that the men with whom you have broken were faithful, veracious servants, warmly devoted to you, and that just by the freedom and independence of spirit, with which they have expressed their opinions to your Majesty, they have given an indisputable proof of having had in view, not their own personal advantage and the favour of their Sovereign, but his true interests and welfare alone; and if just such men as these—among them even your loving brother, a thoroughly noble and chivalrous Prince, standing next to the throne—find themselves forced, in a grave crisis, to turn away from you, this is a momentous sign, which might well give cause to your Majesty to take counsel with yourself, and to examine with anxious care, whether perhaps the hidden cause of past and future evils may not lie in your Majesty’s own views?[2] You complain, most honoured Sire and Brother, that your policy is blamed as vacillating, and that your own person is insulted at home and abroad (a thing which has often
