3-011-739 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Lord Palmerston making the ministerial statement on Dano-German Affairs in the House of Commons on Monday, 1864. 'Every seat in the body of the house, and the very steps in each gangway, were occupied...[by] persons anxious to obtain the first intelligence of the decision of the Government on the Danish question...[Prime minister] Lord Palmerston...proceeded to give an outline of the circumstances which had led to the Treaty of 1852, and to the subsequent events down to the invasion of Schleswig. Up to that occurrence, he observed, all the parties to the Treaty of 1852, not excepting Prussia, had acknowledged the importance of maintaining the independence of the kingdom of Denmark...Remembering, however, that Denmark had originally been In the wrong; that she had rejected a proposal which might have led to the restoration of peace; that France and Russia, for reasons which no doubt were satisfactory to themselves, were indisposed to give any material support to Denmark; and, seeing that the whole brunt of any effort to dislodge the Germans from Schleswig and Holstein would fall upon England alone, her Majesty's Ministers did not consider it was consistent with their duty to advise the Queen to undertake such an enterprise [ie to go to war]'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.