For instance, Van de Weyer asserts that when the marriage of the Queen of Spain was on the _tapis_, Leopold and Queen Victoria had it in their power to bring about the Coburg marriage, but that they deliberately refused to do so from respect to their engagements with France. And they acted in this with the full concurrence of Stockmar. The Queen of Spain had established, by private means, a correspondence with Queen Victoria. The letters passed through the hands of Mr. Huth, the merchant, and from him to Van de Weyer, who delivered them. Isabella complained in these letters of her desperate and forlorn condition; said she was bullied and threatened by the French, and expressed her abhorrence of the marriage Bresson was urging upon her. She declared that if Leopold and Queen Victoria would sanction the Coburg marriage, she would throw the French over, and marry Prince Leopold the next day. The King and our Queen held a solemn conference and deliberation on the subject. Palmerston was informed of the transaction; but the ministers seem to have had no great voice in the matter, for the Queen considered the engagement she had entered into at Eu as a personal promise, and England had consistently declared that 'she had no candidate.' To put forward Leopold at the last hour would have been to forfeit this pledge, which, on the contrary, was most strictly and honourably maintained. It was the knowledge of this, and the consciousness that a less conscientious policy might have rescued the Queen of Spain from a dreadful fate, that rendered the Queen of England and Stockmar so indignant when it turned out that the French Government had been far less scrupulous, and had not only forced on the marriage of the Queen to a man she detested, but had also married the other Infanta to Montpensier. This communication of Queen Isabella to Queen Victoria is to this day wholly unrevealed. With regard to Leopold's annuity (which I explained in the 'Edinburgh Review'), it was not only secured by act of Parliament, but by treaty; for there was a regular treaty of marriage concluded between Prince Leopold and the Crown of England on his marriage with the Princess Charlotte. The intrigues going on with reference to Belgium, both in France and in Holland, during the Polignac Ministry have been alluded to in a former page. [Footnote: _Ante_, pp. 111-12.] But it is less generally known that at this same time, the Prince of Orange, afterwards William II., was intriguing to form a party to place him on the throne of France in the event of the overthrow of the Bourbons.