Note 19 — LORD PALMERSTON. ON THE CASE OF DON PACIFICO: HOUSE OF COMMONS, JUNE 25, 1850. (continued 2)

Note 19, p. 208.—“While the Carlist War was still continuing, Lord Palmerston had convinced himself that Louis Philippe intended to marry the young Queen Isabella, if possible, to one of his sons. Some years later this project was officially mentioned by Guizot to the English statesman, who at once caused it to be understood that England would not permit the union.... Louis Philippe now suggested that his youngest son, the Duke of Montpensier, should wed the Infanta Fernanda, sister of the Queen of Spain. On the express understanding that this marriage should not take place until the Queen should herself have been married and have had children, the English Cabinet assented to the proposal. That the marriages should not be simultaneous was treated by both governments as the very heart and substance of the arrangement, inasmuch as the failure of children by the Queen’s marriage would make her sister, or her sister’s heir, inheritor of the throne. This was repeatedly acknowledged by Louis Philippe and his Minister, Guizot, in the course of communications which extended over some years. Nevertheless, in 1846, the French Ambassador at Madrid, in conjunction with the Queen’s mother, Maria Cristina, succeeded in carrying out a plan by which the conditions laid down at London, and accepted at Paris, were utterly frustrated. Of the Queen’s Spanish cousins, there was one, Don Francisco, who was known to be physically unfit for marriage. To this person it was determined by Maria Cristina and the French Ambassador that the young Isabella should be united, her sister being simultaneously married to the Duke of Montpensier.”—Fyffe, “Modern Europe,” vol. ii., pp. 504, 505, New York, 1877.