He felt the greatest pleasure at seeing your Majesty again and looking so well, and he hopes that his high spirits did not betray him into talking too much or too heedlessly, which he is conscious that they sometimes do.
The King Leopold, Lord Melbourne perceives, still hankers after Greece; but Crowns will not bear to be chopped and changed about in this manner.

These new Kingdoms are not too firmly fixed as it is, and it will not do to add to the uncertainty by alteration....
[Pageheading: DISPUTE WITH UNITED STATES] _Sir Robert Peel to Queen Victoria._ WHITEHALL, _28th October 1841._ ...

Sir Robert Peel humbly assures your Majesty that he fully participates in the surprise which your Majesty so naturally expresses at the extraordinary intimation conveyed to Mr Fox[146] by the President of the United States.[147] Immediately after reading Mr Fox's despatch upon that subject, Sir Robert Peel sought an interview with Lord Aberdeen.

The measure contemplated by the President is a perfectly novel one, a measure of a hostile and unjustifiable character adopted with pacific intentions.
Sir Robert Peel does not comprehend the object of the President, and giving him credit for the desire to prevent the interruption of amicable relations with this country, Sir Robert Peel fears that the forcible detention of the British Minister, after the demand of passports, will produce a different impression on the public mind, both here and in the United States, from that which the President must (if he be sincere) have anticipated.

It appears to Sir Robert Peel that the object which the President professes to have in view would be better answered by the immediate compliance with Mr Fox's demand for passports, and the simultaneous despatch of a special mission to this country conveying whatever explanations or offers of reparation the President may have in contemplation.
Sir Robert Peel humbly assures your Majesty that he has advised such measures of preparation to be taken in respect to the amount of disposable naval force, and the position of it, as without bearing the character of menace or causing needless disquietude and alarm, may provide for an unfavourable issue of our present differences with the United States.
Sir Robert Peel fears that when the President ventured to make to Mr Fox the communication which he did make, he must have laboured under apprehension that M'Leod might be executed in spite of the efforts of the general Government of the United States to save his life.
[Footnote 146: British Minister at Washington.] [Footnote 147: One Alexander M'Leod was tried at Utica on the charge of being implicated in the destruction of the _Caroline_ (an American vessel engaged in carrying arms to the Canadian rebels), in 1837, and in the death of Mr Durfee, an American.