gree of ignorance so often displayed by our governments in their foreign transactions, are disposed at once to ascribe it to corruption, or to some other influence equally discreditable. But he who knows the history of those administrations with which Lord Palmerston was originally connected, will believe no amount of honest blundering to be impossible in one trained in such a school.

XIX.-WAR WITH FRANCE.

[From the Paper dated December 5, 1840.]

SIR,-I thank you for your comments on my last letter. If we are agreed as to the tremendous evil of a war with France, I am quite willing to hope that you may judge more justly than I of Lord Palmerston's past policy, and I can truly say that I would far rather that the foolishness should be in my writings than in his conduct. At any rate I will not again separate Lord Palmerston from his colleagues, and as no man can wish more earnestly than I do for the continuance of the Whig government, I certainly am not disposed to cavil at its measures, nor would wish to speak of it in any unfriendly language.

But without irritating any one, if I can help it, I would again press upon your readers the dangers of the actual crisis, and the urgent need of a generous and utterly unselfish and unpassionate policy on the part of the British government. No one can doubt that our late success at Acre will exasperate the war party in France, and render the task of the French government in preserving peace more difficult. But our newspapers are fanning the flame, not only by absurd comparisons between Napoleon's failure before Acre and our success, but actually in some instances by calling upon our government to keep Acre in its own hands, and convert it into another Gibraltar. do not insult the government by suspecting them of such

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an act of infamy: but I speak of the mischief done to public feeling in France by the mere broaching of such a project, even though it never entered any more influential head than that of an obscure writer in a newspaper. But we know that suspicion of English Machiavelism has been one of the inherent faults of the French character; we know that the most extravagant crimes were imputed to our government on no foundation at all; how much more plausibly will our nation be charged with what is truly the guilt of some at any rate amongst us,—and how naturally will the French transfer to the English people and government what is known to be the language of some of the leading English journals.

If, again, in an evil hour our demands should in any way rise with our success;-if, without the baseness of appropriating to ourselves what we have won in the name of our ally, we demand even for that ally, and in a fancied spirit of general policy, any greater concessions than we had before insisted on; then, too, we shall be overstraining the patience of the French people,—and all the virtue of their government, nay all the prudence of the majority of the Chamber of Deputies, may be too weak to stop the tempest.

For let us not believe that the decision of the French Chambers must necessarily be in the last resort the decision of France. One single step foolishly taken in the exultation of success, may so gather round the more jacobinical war party all that vast mass of elements which in France are most intolerant of a peace represented as prudential but dishonourable, that the Chambers must either yield, or the door of revolution is well nigh opened. Should it indeed open, and should the heroic king of the French and his wise and virtuous minister fall in such a struggle, how deep would be the guilt of those British ministers who in mere childish vanity were, with their eyes open, the original causes of such a catastrophe.

All that has been hitherto done in Syria cannot in itself

be welcome to Russia; its object, its only justification has been, that it is to raise up a barrier against Russian encroachments. Thus far then Russia, in lending her name to the treaty of July, may be said to have been acting against herself. But what then is to be her reward? Or is not the moment now come when she hopes to reap it? Let us unite if we will under the Sultan's sceptre all the countries which once obeyed Solyman the Magnificent; let us strip Mohammed Ali of Egypt as well as of Syria, and advance the Turkish frontier not to the Pruth but to the Borysthenes or even to the Don; what would Russia care, if the price paid her for allowing armour to be put on the limbs and a sword into the hand of a dying enemy, be the wasting mutual hostility of those two powers who, had they remained united, would have been enemies invincible by the utmost efforts of her ambition. If Russia be wise, she will not only tolerate but will gladly tempt our worst excesses of pride or of ambition;—let her but involve us in a war with France, and all her momentary sacrifices will be over paid a thousand fold.

Nor let me be thought to have any the slightest sympathy with that violent party in France whose language no doubt has given much provocation to the people of England. But that party can be wholesomely and effectually put down, not by the arms of Europe, but only by the wisdom and virtue of France herself. The more and the wilder may be the elements of anarchy and blood existing in the mass of the French nation, the more closely should we sympathize with those better elements which hitherto have so nobly resisted them: the more earnestly should we avoid giving to the evil an additional power by weakening the hands of the good. Let it ever be remembered that the crimes of September could not have been perpetrated had it not been for the unjust invasion of France and the proclamation of the Duke of Brunswick. Thousands of good and brave men, in 1793 and 1794, thought that even the Government of the Mountain Committees

was a less evil than the triumph of the Coalition over the French nation.

It is the unfortunate result at any rate of Lord Palmerston's policy, even now that it has added strength to that violent party in France, which twenty-five years of peace and increasing prosperity had gone far to weaken. It has revived half-extinguished jealousies and animosities between France and England: an evil dearly purchased by the expulsion of Mohammed Ali from Syria. At this moment the mischief may be remediable; if the British government meets M. Guizot more than half way in the work of peace-if its tone be frank and friendly-its conduct moderate and straightforward; if it be made manifest that we prize the friendship of France most highly-that our object in our apparent estrangement was but to secure benefits no less important to France than to ourselves—but having no secret or selfish ends to gratify we have done what we honestly thought but for the peace and welfare of Europe, and trust that as our interests and those of France are in fact identical, so they may be identical no less in our mutual apprehension of them; but we may pursue the same ends side by side, with no other strife but as to which shall pursue them most purely and most zealously.

XX. THE ELECTIONS.

[From the Paper dated August 21, 1841.]

SIR,-The event has answered to, or even surpassed my expectations. The Tories have obtained not only a large but a commanding majority. The wheel is "come full circle." The "reaction" is consummated, and the prospects which it opens to us are of the gravest.

Your correspondent, Vigil, wishes that the daily press might be made a vehicle for communicating systematic information on politics; he laments, and with justice, the

general want of such information. But the misfortune is, that if the information could be conveyed in a newspaper, I doubt whether common readers would bring with them the state of mind which would enable them to profit by it. The evil in my opinion lies deeper, it is not only that men are not well informed on political subjects, but that the whole spirit with which they turn to them is faulty; they do not regard them as a matter of solemn duty, they bring to them not their better mind but their worst; either their lightest or their most passionate and most unscrupulous. The temper of most men, I fear, in reading a newspaper, or in talking or acting about political subjects, is the very most unlike in the world to that with which they would say their prayers, or consider any practical question of duty in common life, or perform acts of charity.

Now I am well aware that we are even in our best tempers far enough from what we ought to be. Nevertheless, we are not by many degrees so bad as our talking, or writing, or acting on political matters would make us appear to be. If our morality at elections, for example, was a fair specimen of our principles and practice in general, we should be indeed utterly hateful both in the sight of God and of man.

The remedy of this evil is not obvious. Political preaching is a matter so delicate that one hardly dares to wish for its adoption. It is greatly to be feared that the preacher would soon go off from the state of mind with which political questions should be approached, and try to give his hearers what he would call right notions on political subjects; the consequence of which would be, not the purifying of our politics, but the polluting of our devotions; we should not read newspapers with a better mind, but pray with a worse.

Undoubtedly, I wish that men held on political subjects those opinions which I believe to be true. But this is by What I no means my most earnest wish on the matter. wish far above all other things, is that men would talk,