Note 141 — Chapter XXXII
Reading edition
[This transaction, which was little known at the time and is now forgotten, derives importance from the events which followed, and which led to Lord Palmerston's expulsion from the Cabinet. The proximate cause of that rupture was his unauthorised approval of the coup d'état in France on December 2. But that incident was only the crowning incident of a long series of disputes recorded in these pages, which had rendered Lord Palmerston's autocracy in the Foreign Office alike intolerable to the Court and to his colleagues.]