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CHAPTER XIV.

FRANCE AND THE UNITED STATES.

1860-1863.

Lord Palmerston's distrust of Napoleon-Permanent and Special Reasons-Speech on the Fortifications Bill and Conversation with Count Flahault-The Anglo-French Expedition to China-The American Civil War-England's declaration of neutrality-The Trent and Alabama affairs-The Mexican expedition.

DISTRUST of France and of the Emperor of the French was the distinguishing feature of Lord Palmerston's foreign policy during the last five years of his life. And, though it may seem inconsistent that the Statesman who had been the pivot of the Anglo-French alliance during the Crimean war, should abruptly part company with his former friend and become his undisguised opponent, the Prime Minister was in reality no more inconsistent than when, at an earlier period of his career, he had thrown over the entente cordiale with Louis Philippe. For with Palmerston the interests of his country were all in all, and he would never have consented to surrender an infinitesimal part of them to further the designs of Louis Napoleon or anyone else. He had trusted the Emperor to the last; perhaps, during the Italian cam

paign beyond the limits of prudence. But his eyes were opened by the annexation of Nice and Savoy, still more by the "natural frontiers" theory, which was then put forward as the reason for that act of Vandalism, and the additional violation of the arrangements of 1815 committed by Napoleon when he refused to hand over to Switzerland, Chablais and Faucigny, the northern districts of Savoy, which had been declared by the Congress of Vienna to share in the neutrality of the Helvetic Federation. The "natural frontiers" theory was evidently capable of being put into practice in several directions, practically towards the Rhine, where the resistance, thanks to the want of cohesion among the German states, would possibly be feeble in the extreme. The Cabinet was constrained to declare through the mouth of Lord John Russell that upon such an unsettlement of the peace of Europe, England would not pursue a policy of isolation.

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Lord Palmerston was no milk-and-water enemy, and his distrust of the Emperor was undoubtedly to some degree exaggerated. Napoleon might have had “a mind like a rabbit-warren," but it did not necessarily follow, from his recent proceedings, that he had intended all along to avenge Waterloo," and that his design was to beat "with our aid or with our concurrence or with our neutrality, first Russia and then Austria, and by dealing with them generously to make them his friends in any subsequent quarrel with us." That was a somewhat unsubstantial specimen of a deductive argument, and Lord Palmerston was in all probability equally under a delusion when he ascribed to the French Emperor the design of instigating Spain to seize Tangiers, and so, by occupying fortified points on each side of the gut of Gibraltar, of virtually shutting England out of the Medi

terranean. His suspicions were also based upon a slight substratum of fact when he accused Napoleon, who, as mandatory of the Powers, had sent an expedition to put down a bloody and barbarous war of religion between the Druses and Maronites in Syria, of being actuated by the desire of permanently occupying that country. Lord Palmerston seems, in fact, to have hardly appreciated the position of the man of December. Napoleon was not ungrateful; he was fully conscious, as his letters to the Queen and the Prince Consort clearly prove, that he owed nearly everything to England. She had been the first power to give him a status; and without her make-weight, he would never have been able to pose, even for a moment, as the holder of the European balance. If the French alliance was useful to Lord Palmerston, the English alliance was to the Emperor as the breath of his nostrils.

At the same time there were both permanent and special reasons for regarding the Emperor of the French as an untrustworthy ally. The permanent reasons were compressed in the contradictions of his position. The elected of a plébiscite, the crowned ex-Carbonaro, was logically bound to assist subjects against the sovereigns, on the other hand, a ruler who claimed to govern by Divine right, was equally bound to uphold the royal, and particularly the Papal, power. He had thus no firm basis of action; and, as the author of the coup d'état, the patentee of a veiled autocracy, he was irresistibly driven to risky adventures abroad, so as to distract the French nation from the spectacle of ministerial corruption and financial mismanagement, in which the Second Empire was rapidly being engulfed. The man of December was, in short, developing into the man of Mexico and Sedan.

The special reasons were to be found in the vast naval preparations which were being hurried on in the French ports, and which evidently menaced a maritime power. It was in vain that the Emperor protested that his navy was not sufficient for his wants, and that Mr. Cobden, of course in perfect good faith, attempted to persuade the Cabinet that the alarm was entirely baseless.

We know [said Lord Palmerston, on the Fortifications Bill] that the utmost exertions are made and still are making, to create a navy very nearly equal to our own-a navy which cannot be required for purposes of defence for France, and which, therefore, we are justified in looking upon as a possible antagonist we may have to encounter—a navy which, under present arrangements, would provide to our neighbours the means of transporting within a very few hours a large and formidable number of troops to our coast.

And he made no disguise of the fact that the increased expenditure on our defences was necessitated by the attitude of France.

It is impossible for any man to cast his eyes over the face of Europe, and to see and hear what is passing, without being convinced that the future is not free from danger. It is difficult to say where the storm may burst; but the horizon is charged with clouds which betoken the possibility of a tempest. The Committee, of course, knows that in the main I am speaking of our immediate neighbours across the channel, and there is no use in disguising it. No one has any right to take offence at considerations and reflections which are purely founded upon the principles of self-defence.

A few months previously, Lord Palmerston had stated his meaning with even more definiteness in the wellknown conversation with old Count Flahault, then French Ambassador in London, as they drove together to the House of Commons. He bluntly told him that it was impossible to trust the Emperor any longer; and that if war was forced upon England, England would fearlessly accept it.

"This was very spirited and becoming," was the verdict of Greville in one of the last entries in his journal

upon an imperfect report of the conversation being transmitted to him by Lord Clarendon. And though it is proverbially difficult to prove a negative, the terms of the Emperor's letter of self-exculpation to Count Persigny of the 23rd of July 1860 fairly warrant the conclusion that in this case post hoc and propter hoc were identical, and that war was averted by Lord Palmerston's firm language, backed up by preparations for war. At all events, the relations between the two countries grew considerably less fraught with danger, and the international friendship was almost reconnected before the close of the year by the success of the joint Anglo-French expedition to China, under Sir Hope Grant aud General Montauban, better known as Count Palikao. Pekin was taken, and the ratification of the important Treaty of Tien-tsin, which had been signed by Lord Elgin two years previously, was at length wrung from the Celestial Government.

The breach was, however, never completely healed, and it was well that the British Government continued to be on its guard against the dreamer of the Tuileries; otherwise, we should have been almost inevitably embroiled in the American Civil war. More than once in the course of that struggle, the Emperor of the French urged our Ministers to recognise the Southern States, but he was always met with a firm but courteous refusal. That refusal was greatly to their credit. There could be no doubt that there was in England a strong current of feeling in favour of the South, especially among the upper classes. Material interests may be considered to have influenced the commercial stratum of society more than the fact that the Virginians could trace descent from the Cavaliers. The closure of the Southern harbours would cut off the cotton trade, and