XV. this announcement by advising Her Majesty to in- CHAP. 'clude any other Sovereigns in the same statement. 6 6 If Her Majesty should continue to be closely in 'accord with the rest of the four Powers, she may be advised to speak of them in general terms as her allies, but they are not to be named. 3d, If hos'tilities should become necessary, the two Governments will determine upon the measures to be adopted in common; and in that case also it is distinctly understood that the English Government will advise the Queen not to shrink from the gratifi'cation of receiving the Emperor of the French as her guest. It is, of course, to be understood (il va sans dire) that the reception of His Majesty at the English Court is to be in all respects the same as 'would be the reception of any other great Sovereign ' in alliance with the Queen. Whenever occasion re'quires it, the other actors in the operations of De'cember 1851 shall be received and treated by the English authorities with the honours due to the 'trusted servants of a friendly Power, and without ' objections founded on the transactions of December, 6 6 or any of the circumstances of their past lives.' These are only imaginary words, but they show what the French Emperor was seeking to achieve, and they represent but too faithfully what the English Government did. Every State is entitled to regard a foreign nation as represented by its Government. The principle is a sound one; but it must be owned that by this alliance the theory was pushed to an ugly conclusion. XV. * CHAP. What happened was the like of this:-There came to us five men heavily laden with treasure, but looking hurried and anxious. They wanted to speak to us. Upon inquiring who they were, and comparing their answers with our other means of knowing the truth, we found that two of them bore names resulting in the usual way from marriages and baptisms, and that the other three had been going by names which they had chosen for the sake of euphony. They said that suddenly they had become so struck with the soundness of our old-fashioned opinions, that they asked nothing better than to be suffered to devote the immense resources which they could command to the attainment of the object which we had always desired. All they wanted, in return, was that, in pursuing our own object side by side with them, we would promise not to suffer ourselves to be clogged by our old scruples against breaches of the peace; that we would admit them to our intimacy, allowing ourselves to be much seen with them in public; and that, in order to make our favour the more signal, we would consent to turn aside a little from our old friends: that was all. With regard to the question of how they had come by their treasure, and all the vast resources they offered us, their story was that they had all these things with the express consent of the former owner. There was something about them which made us fear that, if we repulsed them, they would carry their treasures to the very man who, at that moment, was giving These two were Prince Louis Bonaparte and Maupas. XV. us trouble. In truth, it seemed that, either from us CHAP. or from somebody else, they must and they would have shelter. Upon their hands there was a good deal of blood. We shrank a little, but we were tempted much. We yielded: we struck the bargain. What we did was not unlawful, for those with whom we treated had for the time a real hold upon the people in whose great name they professed to come; and by the custom of nations we were entitled to say that we would know nothing of any France except the France that was brought to us by these five persons to be disposed of for the purposes of our Eastern Question;' but when we had done this thing, we had no right to believe that to Europe at large, still less to the gentlemen of France, the fair name of England would seem as it seemed before. ment of it ment. But whatever were the terms of the understanding Announcebetween the two Governments, the result of it was to Parlia that the English Cabinet, disregarding the policy which only six days before had united it in a concerted action with the Powers represented at the Conference, now announced, through the lips of Lord Palmerston,* that England and France were agreed, that they continued to follow the same policy, and that they had the most perfect confidence ' in each other.' These words were enough to show any one used to foreign affairs that England was Failure of advancing with France into an adventurous policy, ment to and then (though even then they were dangerously stand the late) Members of Parliament might have stood of the dis * 8th July 1853, in the House of Commons. Parlia under real import closure. XV. CHAP. forward with some hope of being able to check their country in her smooth descent from peace to war. They lost the occasion; it did not recur. The At the close of the session, the Queen's Speech announced to Europe that the Emperor of the French had united with Her Majesty in earnest ' endeavours to reconcile differences, the continuance ' of which might involve Europe in war; and she ' declared that, acting in concert with her Allies, and relying on the exertions of the Conference then assembled at Vienna, Her Majesty had good reason 'to hope that an honourable arrangement would speedily be accomplished.' 6 * It would seem, at first sight, that this language had been occasioned by some accidental displacement of words; and that it could not have been intended for the Queen of England to say that she was acting in concert with her Allies assembled at Vienna, and to declare, in another limb of the same sentence, that she was 'united' with one of them. Unhappily, the error was not an error of words. The Speech accurately described the strange policy which our Government had adopted; for it was strictly true. that, in the midst of a perfect concord between the four great Powers, the English Cabinet had been drawn into a separate union with France, and into an union of such a kind as to require the distinguishing phrase which disclosed the new league to Europe. This Speech from the Throne may be regarded as * 129 Hansard, p. 1826. This XV. roads to to war off. marking the point where the roads of policy branched CHA P. off. By the one road, England, moving in company with the rest of the four Powers, might insure a marks peaceful repression of the outrage which was dis- where the turbing Europe; by the other, she might also enforce peace and the right, but, joined with the French Emperor, and branched parted from the rest of the four Powers, she would reach it by passing through war. The Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen desired peace, and not war; but, seeing dimly, they took the adventurous path. They so little knew whither they were going that they made no preparation for war.* * See Lord Aberdeen's evidence before the Sebastopol Committee. |