what they know they will be permitted to inflict; they can only undertake what they know the country will enable them to carry out. Now, over all these things, there must generally hang some degree of uncertainty: a fresh election may weaken their hands, and compel some modification of their course; a bad harvest or bad trade may intervene, and render heavy taxes and large expenditure less endurable; and a popular assembly never can be expected to manifest the same persistency in its views, or the same resolute pertinacity in its exertions and its sacrifices, that may fairly be demanded from an aristocracy. Fatigue ensues, doctrines alter, principles progress, discussion gradually modifies the public sentiment and sympathy, and we are in danger of backing discreditably out of enterprises into which we have rushed courageously.

At present we are suffering from all these causes of feebleness and incoherence. We are in a state of conflict, and we are in a state of transition. As regards the maxims of our international policy, we have drifted away from our old moorings, and we have not yet fairly grappled to any others. We have among us, also, three sets of notions, more or less incongruous, among which our allegiance is as yet wavering. Our leading statesmen hold one, though falteringly; the great body of the people hold another, though somewhat doubtingly, and more with the heart than with the head; while certain economists hold a third, and hold it with a zealous and aggressive dogmatism which goes far to make amends for the scantiness of their numbers and the narrowness of their creed. The statesman's doctrine - the traditional policy of which Lord Palmerston may be accepted as the embodiment and exponent-is that England, holding the foremost rank in the commonwealth of nations, being connected with most by engagements, and with all by interests or sympathies, must of necessity take part in every great movement, direct or influence the course of every international controversy, have, in fact, diplomatically or materially, a finger in every European, American, African, or Asiatic pie. The Premier clings to old alliances, to time-honoured combinations,-to the ancestral machine, in short; he would keep the members of the European Areopagus much as they were, but is not very averse to the introduction of any new element, or any reasonable modification of forms and proceedings, provided only the old edifice remains; he rushes frantically in to darn any rent, to stop any gap, but will not face the idea of abolition or reconstruction in any shape: any thing that can be fitted in is permissible; any thing that is inherently antagonistic is the unclean thing-anathema maranatha. He supports constitutional monarchy wherever it can assert its own existence; encourages free institutions

where they do not threaten to end in republican or socialistic experiments; does usually what he has been in the habit of doing for fifty years; thwarts France about the Suez Canal, because he has a traditional dread of her influence in the Levant; keeps Turkey on her legs, and tries to persuade himself and others that those dead bones can live,-not because he conscientiously believes so, but because he cannot see what would be done when the Ottoman Empire crumbles to pieces, and shrinks with natural laziness from the laborious problem and the 'contingent chaos. He abhorred and condemned the autocratic tyrannies of Italy, because England has always hated oppression and favoured constitutionalism; yet he remonstrated against that only foreign aid that could ever have set Italy free, because he deprecated a war which might spread, and dreaded equally a result which might render Austria helpless, or a result which might crush Italy into still deeper misery. He protested against the annexation of Savoy and Nice, because the territorial aggrandisement of France has always been an hereditary bugbear, and here his course, therefore, was clear. Free Italy he could rejoice in, for his sympathies are with humanity and justice; but united Italy was a phenomenon which startled him, for it did not readily fit into the old European chess-board; he fancied a dual Italy would have been more manageable and less disturbing to his dusty and dog-eared map, and put forward his Foreign Secretary to utter a posthumous sigh over the futile scheme. A powerful nation in the peninsula was the very thing wanted for the practical realisation of his own end; but it was a means altogether new as well as grand, and his imagination, therefore, could not grasp it; it would have involved a rearrangement of his national and dynastic forces, and his unenterprising conservatism therefore would not face it. He never dreams of striking out any magnificent, consistent, vivifying conception; he "stands upon the old way;" he administers the old routine-with spirit and with skill, no doubt; he upholds the existing régime of the world, but would willingly reform it, so far as reform did not entail remodelling. This is what we call the traditional policy of Britain, and, with slight variations, it is the policy of all our ministers.

The popular policy—of which Mr. Louis may be regarded as the most earnest and eloquent exponent that has yet appeared is far truer in conception and far nobler in spirit; and, with all its rashness and its crudity, probably more consistent and more safe. The popular instinct is right, though the popular ignorance is great. The English people are easily roused to abhorrence of injustice and oppression exercised against others as against themselves, and they sympathise cor

dially with all attempts on the part of other nations to conquer those liberties for which they themselves so gallantly contended. They would willingly aid, as well as encourage, all who are struggling for rational rights, or insurgent against real wrongs, provided neither religion, property, nor order are assailed by the revolutionists. They have, too, a strong though an inarticulate conviction that a generous, will in the end be wiser and safer than a selfish, policy; that earnest sympathy wins more strength, because more friends, than cautious isolation; that free nations with free institutions must, as a rule, be the natural and the permanent allies and well-wishers of England; and that the time may come ere long when, in spite of our pride and our might, our courage and our wealth, we shall need all the sincere and hearty auxiliaries that we can summon round us. In this our people are wiser than our ministers; for these, by an unstable policy, make enemies and alienate friends on both sides; they perpetually irritate despots by avowing their sympathy with insurgent patriots, and disappoint insurgent patriots by obstinately confining this sympathy to words, out of deference to the oppressors, who at once hate us for our sentiments and despise us for our inaction.

Finally comes the third party, of whom Mr. Bright is the fitting spokesman, the advocates of economy and isolation, who admit neither indignation at the wrongs nor enthusiasm for the rights of citizens in other lands; who know that sympathy is often costly, and maintain that it is usually misplaced; who proclaim that between foreign controversialists we cannot judge, and ought not to interfere; who believe that to be rich is to be strong, that to be passive is to be secure; that, both as Christians and as men of business, the wise and righteous course is to buy and sell and get gain, to let fools and sinners fight and weaken each other, to turn a blind eye to the crimes of the wrong-doer, and a deaf ear to the groans of the tortured and the crushed. These reasoners, in spite of their unamiable doctrines, have just enough truth on their side to secure a hearing, and at times an influence. Our interventions have often been ineffectual, often imprudent, often on behalf of the unworthy or the ungrateful; intervention is always costly; war is usually both a folly and a sin; taxation is a heavy burden on the poor, and charity should, as a rule, begin at home.

Now the actual foreign policy of England-or rather her external action, for it can scarcely be entitled a policy-is a compound, or rather an alternation, of all these influences. Any one of the theories, consistently followed out, would give us a steady and intelligible course of action; the mixing of them, or the adoption of each in turn, gives nothing but feebleness and

vacillation. Sometimes one view is in the ascendant, sometimes another; more often each has just sufficient power to modify and confuse the others; not unfrequently the ministers, who speak in the name of the nation, hold a language to foreign states which the Houses of Parliament, who determine the proceedings of the nation, do not encourage, or will not permit them to carry out in deeds. Lord John Russell, with his spirit and his sympathy with freedom, writes energetic despatches at the Foreign Office; Mr. Bright, with his narrow parsimony, does much to tie up the purse-strings and to chill the generous feelings of the nation,-at all events he succeeds in impressing on the governments of other countries the conviction. that the language of the ministers is that of a party only, and not of the people. Thus the trumpet gives forth an uncertain sound, which fails alike to intimidate our enemies, to reassure our friends, or to inspirit our own forces. We incur, too, reproaches on the score of duplicity and perfidy,―vices the most alien from our nature; yet we are unable to say that the reproaches are wholly unreasonable. For the unquestionable and openly expressed sympathy of the nation with the struggling and the oppressed in all quarters, encourages them when disposed for insurrection and resistance; and they not unnaturally conclude, that because they have the good wishes of England, they will have her assistance also. But active aid to insurgents, however just their cause, it is not our practice, and is now against our principles, to render; yet when it is withheld they fancy themselves deserted and betrayed. At the same time, the despots against whom these insurgents rise hate us because we have indorsed the claims of their trampled subjects, and avowed our conviction of the righteousness of their rebellion; and half despise us because we have abstained from intervention, and dealt only in protocols and protests. Thus our policy, even when in the main sound and loyal, not being systematic, distinct, and proclaimed as national, makes many bitter enemies, and few grateful or confiding friends.

It is far easier to establish the fact on which we have been dilating, and to explain its causes, than to point out the remedy. In truth the distinct national policy we need, and from the want of which the influence and the fame of England have suffered so much impairment, can only be established slowly and with difficulty, and through the twofold process of discussion and of action. In both these ways, however, the work is even now going on. Foreign affairs occupy far more of the public attention than they used to do, partly in consequence of their own intrinsic interest, and partly because nearly all our great domestic controversies

have been settled or have died out. Since the Napoleonic wars, at least till the year 1848, Englishmen as a rule, even English politicians, took little heed of what went on abroad; foreign affairs were left to the Foreign Secretary; he alone was considered to be much concerned with them, or to understand them; and the discussions which took place in Parliament when any idiosyncratic member ventured to assail the proceedings of Lord Aberdeen or Lord Palmerston, were usually of a character to confirm both these prevalent impressions. People turned away from debates on Greece, Syria, Tahiti, and Schleswig-Holstein with indifference or with disgust, and took refuge in the more congenial, intelligible, and exciting topics of free trade, suffrage extension, or national education. The columns in the newspapers which contained tidings of other courts and countries were little read, and the system of "Our own correspondents" knew nothing of the portentous development it has since attained. This state of comfortable but not wholesome apathy lasted till the rousing year of 1848. By that time the last great domestic struggle on the Corn Laws was at an end; the direction of our future course on nearly all home matters had been definitely settled; our progress in the way of various practical reforms, though slow and silent, was tolerably steady; and there were few conscious grievances, and no poignant or general distress, to stir the popular mind to any agitation on questions of organic change. Our own affairs became dull just as those of other nations became intensely exciting, and from that date we have thought and felt and talked more of Italy, France, Hungary, Turkey, and America, than of England. In fact, it is not too much to say, that the events which have so crowded upon one another in these countries have concerned us more deeply, as well as interested us more vividly, than any thing which has taken place at home.

The first effect of this sudden awakening to a comparatively new set of subjects has of course been to make us talk considerable nonsense, and urge our ministers to some very questionable steps. We have had to speak and act in matters on which our information was very scanty and our intelligence very little cultivated. We have learned them, as we learn every thing in England, by trying and by blundering. We are doing so still. We are educating ourselves by the not very dignified process -but the very costly one both to ourselves and others—of haranguing and conversing much, and gradually selecting out of the ideas and principles thrown out in speeches and in conversation those which seem soundest or are most congenial; by making great mistakes in action, and studying and profiting by the consequences. The press teems with information from all quarters