Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/90

60 CAUSES INVOLVING FRANCE AND ENGLAND and convert the once dangerous Zouave into the valued friend of the family.* Then, with great merriment, the whole English people turned round, and although they might still be willing to go to the brink of other precipices, they refused to go further towards that one. The doctrine had struck no root. It was ill suited to the race to whom it was addressed. The male cheered it, and forgot it until there came a time for testing it, and then discarding it ; and the woman, from the very first, with her true and simple instinct, was quick to understand its value She would subscribe, if her husband required it, to have the doctrine taught to charity children, but she would not suffer it to be taught to her own boy. So it proved barren. In truth, the English knew that they were a great and a free people, because their fathers, and their fathers' fathers, and all the great ancestry of whom they come, had been men of warlike quality ; and deeming it time to gainsay the teaching of the Peace Party, but not being sldlled in dialectics and the use of words, they imconsciously came to think that it would be well to express a practical opinion of the doctrine by taking the first honest and fair opportunity of • I have 110 copy of tliis curious pamphlet before inc, but it has been quoted (I believe by Lord Paliiier.ston) in the House of Coniuioiis, and therefore the passage alhideil to in the text might no doubt be found in Hansard, The writer, I remember, ■went further than is above stated. He argued that the French people would be so shiinicd by the kindness shown to their troops that they would never rest until they had paid us a large pecuniary in<lemnity for any losses or inconvenience which the invasion may have caused.