her been false? All these questions are unanswered.

[Pageheading: THE QUEEN OF PORTUGAL]

_Viscount Palmerston to Queen Victoria._

FOREIGN OFFICE, _30th October 1847._

Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and has
many apologies to make for not having attended your Majesty's Council
to-day, and the more so as his absence arose from an inadvertence
which he is almost ashamed to mention. But having got on horseback
to ride to the station, with his thoughts occupied with some matters
which he was thinking of, he rode mechanically and in a fit of absence
to the Nine Elms Station,[20] and did not recollect his mistake till
he had got there; and although he made the best of his way afterwards
to the Paddington Station, he could not get there in time for any
train that would have taken him early enough to Windsor.

Viscount Palmerston received this morning your Majesty's remarks upon
his proposed drafts to Sir Hamilton Seymour, and has modified some of
the expressions in those drafts; but those drafts are only private
and confidential answers in his own name to private and confidential
communications from Sir Hamilton Seymour, and they express only his
own personal opinions, and not those of the Government.

Viscount Palmerston is sorry to say that the circumstances lately
mentioned by Sir Hamilton Seymour, coupled with the course pursued
at Lisbon almost ever since the successful interference of the Allied
Powers, have brought Viscount Palmerston to the painful convictions
expressed in the above-mentioned drafts, and he feels desirous, for
his own sake, to place those convictions at least upon record in this
Office. He will be most happy to find that he is mistaken, and will
most truly and heartily rejoice if events should prove that the
confidence which your Majesty reposes in the sincerity and good faith
of the Queen of Portugal is well founded; but in a matter of this
importance Viscount Palmerston feels that it is his bounden duty to
your Majesty not to conceal his opinions, even though they should,
as in the present case, unfortunately differ from those which your
Majesty entertains.

[Footnote 20: The former terminus of the London and
South-Western Railway.]

_Queen Victoria to Viscount Palmerston._

WINDSOR CASTLE, _21st October 1847._

The Queen acknowledges Lord Palmerston's letter of yesterday. She can
have no objections to Lord Palmerston's putting on rec