demanding explanations of the haughty language of Gramont. But they could not lose the advantage of being attacked. The assured neutrality of Europe, the union of all the German armies, were at that price. The telegram indicating the rebuff of Benedetti secured them against the risk of a pacific reaction at Paris. Dr. Bright who has related what came to Palmerston when he received in silence the complaint of Walewski, backed by the chorus of colonels, could tell what fate would have attended Ollivier if, while Germany rang with the tidings of insult, he had protested that there was no offence either meant or taken.
He thinks that we lost ground by our conduct during the war in France, and lost it unjustly. If we were censured for having failed to prevent or to abridge hostility, and for having made no friends by our neutrality, this judgment would be correct. But it is not enough to obtain defence against wild hitting. Even in the age of experimental science, the area which reason commands is not extensive, and history, by further contracting it, sacrifices itself. We go to historians for the sake of what is reasonable : passion, and folly, and sin, we find better in the poets. The cool reception of Thiers, or the sale of arms to the French, is the declamation, not the real complaint. But we had not taken note of the double train of gunpowder laid after the plebiscite, and our agents did not ascertain what the mysterious travellers, Lebrun, Bernhardt and Salazar, carried about them. Therefore, when the crisis came, we had forfeited somewhat of our weight and competence in advice, and were like watchers of a game whose eyes have strayed from the board. The decisive moment was when the emperor demanded security against the reappearance of Hohenzollern. Four days earlier Gramont assured us that France would be content with the voluntary renunciation which he asked our aid in obtaining ; and when it was obtained he pronounced it worthless, and gave an opening for effective remonstrance. Lord Lyons only informed him that, although we might be disappointed, deceived, and even
