MARRIAGE OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE LEOPOLD, DUKE OF ALBANY. (Hansard, 23 March 1882)

§ EARL GRANVILLE

My Lords, this is the second time I have had the honour and, I may add, the pleasure of asking your Lordships to agree to an Address of congratulation to Her Majesty on the occasion of a Royal Marriage. On these occasions the ready and cheerful loyalty with which your Lordships have associated yourselves with the Addresses makes me feel how very satisfactory it is that the anticipations then formed have since been so amply fulfilled, to the additional comfort of Her Majesty and the increased happiness of the Royal Family. It is the less necessary for me to use many words now, because your Lordships had an opportunity, upon the debate on the Address, of adverting to this subject; and the manner in which your Lordships were pleased to receive the announcement and the observations that were made by several of your Lordships on this particular point showed how ready your Lordships were to concur in a proposal of this kind. Allusion was then made to the remarkable character and intellectual qualities inherited from his illustrious Father by the Bridegroom on this occasion, and I took the liberty of stating that what I had heard with regard to the qualifications of the Princess satisfied me that the Princess would win the love and admiration which had been obtained by the other foreign Princesses who had adopted this country as their home. Since that time Her Serene Highness has visited this country, and I can appeal to many who are 1623 present whether she does not possess all those qualities which will endear her to the British people, as they have already done to the Royal Family. I beg to move— That a humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, to thank Her Majesty for the most gracious communication which it has pleased Her Majesty to make to this House respecting the approaching marriage between his Royal Highness Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, and Her Serene Highness Princess Helen of Waldeck and Pyrmont, and to assure Her Majesty that this House, always feeling the most lively interest in any event which will contribute to the happiness of the Royal Family, will concur in those measures which may be proposed for the consideration of this House to make such a provision for His Royal Highness as may be suitable to the dignity of the Crown.

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY

My Lords, I am sure that your Lordships will give a ready assent to a Motion calculated to express the deep loyalty you feel to the Crown, and the confidence which your experience and the character of the Prince and Princess justify you in entertaining that this event will add to Her Majesty's happiness, and that it will increase the number of those to whom this country and this people look up with affection and regard. The noble Lord has justly referred to the high qualities which distinguish His Royal Highness and the exertions which he constantly makes to place his abilities at the service of his country. In the admiration which the noble Earl expressed your Lordships will, I am sure, all readily join, and you will feel no small satisfaction in being able, at the same time, to look forward to his union with the illustrious Princess about to become his bride—a Princess who is fitly chosen to share his exalted position. Such sentiments are properly associated with an occasion of this kind; but the Address your Lordships are asked to concur in does not in itself indicate your warm attachment to the Throne or your admiration of the illustrious Personages about it, because such a provision is called for from you to support the dignity of the Crown, and it is imposed upon you as a matter of duty arising from the understandings which took place when this Reign opened. But though the provision in which you may concur is not necessarily a proof of the feelings with which you regard Her Majesty and her Family, yet it may properly be associated with the warm 1624 and earnest expression of the loyalty which I am convinced every Member of your Lordships' House feels, not only to Her Majesty, but to all the Members of the Family, who have done so much to adorn the Throne.