Yet look at the facts of the last quarter of a century, during far the greater portion of which Lord Palmerston held the seals of the Foreign Office. He took the direction of our international relations at an epoch of singular difficulty and peril, when one of the principal nations of Europe, our nearest neighbour, had just discarded its ancient dynasty by a popular revolution; when other Continental countries were agitated by corresponding movements, and a general ferment prevailed which menaced spreading convulsions and contingent wars; and when the forcible severance of Belgium and Holland presented a problem for the great powers which few believed could be solved without a war. Since that time he has had to deal with many delicate and dangerous questions of diplomacy and statesmanship, to tide over many crises of no ordinary gloom, to soothe many wounded susceptibilities, to stand firm against many unreasonable demands, to defeat many unwarrantable intrigues. Questions of American boundaries and American ambitions; questions of Russian designs on Turkey, and French hankerings after Egypt; questions of great perplexity between Austria and Italy, as between France. and Switzerland,-have threatened disturbance to the harmony of the world. A third revolution, a sanguinary civil strife, and a daring coup-d'état, have intervened in France, and rendered our relations with that country such as required both strong clear views, and great suavity and steadiness in pursuing them, to maintain in a satisfactory condition; while nearly the whole of Europe was subjected to a series of political convulsions, which overthrew ministers, dynasties, thrones, and constitutions, like houses of cards, and called for the exercise of a degree of sagacity and firmness in the foreign minister of England which more ordinary times neither need nor test. Yet during the whole of that trying time England enjoyed unbroken peace at home, and the often imminent peril of a European war was as often successfully averted. By one means or another, thanks to singular good fortune, or to skill yet more singular, the critical and menacing conjunctures of 1831, 1840, 1848, and 1852, passed over without rupture and without hostilities, so far at least as we were concerned. no sooner had Lord Palmerston resigned the Foreign Office to a minister whose prudence, conciliatory demeanour, and genial disposition, had always been the theme of general praise, than a war of most formidable character broke out, and threatened to last for years and to involve all Europe in its vortex. The peace minister" par excellence found himself under the hard necessity of declaring war. The minister whom it was the fashion to represent as perpetually occupied in bringing us to

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the verge of war had the happiness to terminate hostilities by a successful and honourable peace in little more than a year after his elevation to the premiership.

Now we are far from meaning to infer from this that Lord Aberdeen is pre-eminently bellicose, or Lord Palmerston preeminently pacific; but certainly the facts we have recalled should induce those who preach the opposite doctrine to pause a little in their inconsiderate accusations. The truth, no doubt, is, that both statesmen are equally resolute to uphold the honour and defend the interests of Great Britain, and equally desirous, while doing so, to preserve peace and friendly relations with all other powers. But to a certain extent they differ in the means by which they would attain, and in the temper in which they pursue, their end. Vigilance and firmness may predominate in the character of one minister, mildness and conciliation in that of the other; one set of qualities will at times be more suitable and successful than the other, according to the nature of the conjuncture and the disposition of the adversary to be dealt with. Occasionally yieldingness may be needed, occasionally pertinacity; and it may happen that the respective qualities are in some crises unfortunately misplaced. The character and habitual mode of action of Lord Palmerston may arouse combativeness and irritation; they may also protect weakness and prevent encroachment, and no doubt they often have done so,—by warning off the ill-disposed in time. The character and mode of action of Lord Aberdeen may by possibility tempt aggression, and invite grasping or vulgar adversaries to put forth inadmissible demands; they may, on the other hand, allay suspicion, soothe jealousy, and awake a corresponding spirit of accommodation in generous opponents. The treatment which would succeed with one antagonist, would be out of place in dealing with a man of different mood; and tact to discern when to be yielding and when to be stiff is peculiarly needed in a foreign minister. Now not only is it very possible that Lord Palmerston's real disposition may be earnestly and sincerely pacific, but it is by no means improbable that his prompt and vigilant antagonism may be a fairer security for peace than more yielding and forbearing tendencies. Unhappily the world is full of what we may call tentative aggressors, the selfish, the vulgar, the violent, the covetous,-men who desire what is not their own because it would suit them, and who are skilful in blinding themselves to the immorality of such desires; and these parties are always trying how far they may presume on the forbearance of the quiet and the powerful, and impose a restless and uneasy life on all neighbours who they fancy may

prefer peace to the trouble of resistance, and the dangerous repose of slumber to the harass of incessant vigilance. In presence of such, it may well chance that a policy and temper which yield little, and pass over nothing, may be at once the wisest and the most secure, and in the end the least troublesome. Men and states get tired of attempting what they know will not be permitted, and of cherishing secret designs which experience has shown them are sure to be detected and exposed. Little difficulties, too, are not allowed to grow into great ones the misunderstanding is settled before it has expanded into a quarrel; the pilfering propensity is checked before it has enlarged into an actual seizure or an absolute demand; encroachment is warned back before it has proceeded so far that retrogression would be attended with humiliation and disgrace. Those who know the secret history of the last four years, are understood to believe, that if Lord Palmerston's counsel of prompt and peremptory measures had been taken early in 1853, at the first step of Russian aggression, that power would have drawn back in time, and the war which has cost so much and injured so many would have been averted. We are not, therefore, disposed to condemn the spirit which presides over Lord Palmerston's foreign policy, though it may sometimes be manifested too suddenly or be pushed too far.

Of the policy of the war with Russia, and of the spirit in which, on the whole, that war was conducted, we have on more than one occasion expressed our warm approval. At first, indeed, there were divided councils, and the trumpet gave forth an uncertain sound. But when the discordant elements had seceded from the Cabinet, and still more when the resolute and earnest spirit of the nation had spoken out in tones which admitted of no misapprehension, the war was prosecuted in a manner which, as far at least as energy and stubborn determination were concerned, left nothing to be desired. Wavering and weary allies were kept firm to their engagements in spite of exhaustion and misgivings. Unskilful and timid negotiators were rebuked or disavowed. It is no secret now, that it was owing simply and solely to the steady perseverance of the British people and the British Government, that we owed the final triumph of the war, and the satisfactory and honourable conditions of the peace. If the most eloquent and influential statesman out of office here had been listened to, Sebastopol never would have been taken, and the Danube and the Black Sea never would have been wrested from the grasp of Russia. If our Ministers had not displayed the utmost firmness and cheerfulness in upholding the flagging spirits of our ally, whose finances were exhausted and who was discouraged at the long delay of the expected victory,

peace would have been concluded on terms which would have left the original objects of the war wholly unaccomplished. It will be known some day-it is known in a few quarters now-how great were the difficulties our Ministers had to encounter, in order to prevent all our efforts and sacrifices from being rendered unavailing by a want of pertinacity at last, and with what patience and steadiness they met and overcame those difficulties. And after all was over, and the peace of Paris had given us what we had fought for, Russian intrigue would have undone half our work, had not Lord Palmerston and Lord Clarendon displayed an unrelaxing vigilance, and an unbending will, which were strangely misconstrued here -but nowhere else. Our English newspapers, with scarcely an exception, were curiously in the dark with regard to the real facts of this last act in the drama. They abused Lord Palmerston for so resolutely opposing the reopening of the Paris Conferences; and then for finally-and, as they fancied, weakly and inconsistently-permitting them to take place. The Continental politicians better comprehended the truth and meaning of these circumstances; and while writers on this side of the water were talking of Lord Palmerston's defeat, the Paris scribes were furious at Lord Palmerston's victory;-and a real and most momentous victory it was. The British Government refused to consent to the renewal of the conferences till it was agreed that the terms of the peace should not be altered or reconsidered; till, in fact, it had been arranged that the negotiators should meet only to embody in a formal document the understandings previously arrived at. Ministers were determined that the new Bessarabian frontier should effect, as originally decided, the entire removal of Russia from the Danube; and would listen to no proposals for the second meeting of the contracting powers till this point was conceded, and the Russian quibble effectually quashed. Their firmness prevailed: the Emperor of the French was at last satisfied of the wisdom and justice of our pertinacity, and virtually supported our demands. The peculiar mode in which the arrangement was finally brought about cannot, of course, yet be disclosed; but the facts are as we have stated. The conference-ambassadors only reassembled to give a diplomatic and binding shape to the terms already adjusted between France, Sardinia, and ourselves. They met, not to discuss, but to enact.

The next point to be touched upon is the American dispute. While the terms of peace, and even the issue of the war with Russia, yet trembled in the balance, the government of the United States, for purposes best known to themselves, thought the

moment opportune for getting up two very pretty diplomatic quarrels with a friendly power which seemed at the time to have its hands full. We are not about now to weary our readers with any disquisitions on either the "Enlistment Question" or the "Central American Question:" we discussed both fully at the time. We did not then, and we do not now, entertain the slightest doubt, that-bating the original error of endeavouring to obtain recruits in a state which we were foolish enough to believe well-disposed towards us-in both matters Great Britain was altogether right, and the United States altogether wrong. We question whether any thing more discour teous, more ungenerous, and more unfair, than the conduct of the American government was ever recorded in diplomatic history. We notice it here only for the sake of explaining the conduct of the British Ministers in that last act of the drama which has been so much and so falsely perverted to their discredit,we mean their submission to the insult implied in the dismissal of Mr. Crampton, without retaliating by the dismissal of Mr. Dallas. There is no doubt that the government at Washington, in the plenitude of their insolence and unfriendliness, offered us a deliberate affront; and that Great Britain-Lord Palmerston being her minister-pocketed that affront. But let us see what were the true circumstances of the case; and then decide whether they reflected discredit upon Lord Palmerston, or upon some other parties.

We thought at the time, and we think still, that the proper course for this country to have pursued on that occasion was, to have requested Mr. Dallas to retire; and to have ceased for the moment all diplomatic relations with a government which had manifested such a captious and unfriendly temper, and which was obviously making use of the dispute with England for electioneering purposes of their own. It was possible enough that Mr. Crampton had been injudicious in his conduct, and unguarded in his language. It was possible also that, by resenting the proceedings of the American democratic politicians, we might be aiding them to play their sinister internal game. Still, from the outset of the difference there had been such barefaced and hostile endeavours to entrap us into a false position, and such an obvious determination to fasten a quarrel upon us if they could, or, failing that, to insult us to the utmost limits of possible forbearance; the language, not only of their press, but of their high officials,-of their president and their attorneygeneral, had been so rude, un-European, and ungentlemanly; and the instructions forwarded to Mr. Dallas for the arrangement of the Central American dispute, while ostensibly and avowedly earnest and pacific, appeared on closer examination so

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