The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎598v] (87/239)

56
HOW IT STRUCK A CONTEMPORARY.
law, by shamelessly breaking it themselves, the time of the
French Emperor will have come—the Emperor who was awaiting
his opportunity “ to wipe out the memory of Mexico by seizing
the provinces on the left bank of the Rhine w r hich for half a
century have been at once a temptation and a reproach to
France.” 1 These provinces ‘‘would be easy for the French to
conquer, and the barrier of the Rhine w'ould make it difficult for
the Germans to regain them.” In the famous correspondence in
which Lord Palmerston rebuked Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Cobden -
for desiring to reduce expenditure on armaments, it is to the am
bitions of France that he appeals as justifying a high degree of
military and naval efficiency on our part. ‘‘ We have on the other
side of the Channel a people who, say what they may, hate us as
a nation from the bottom of their hearts, and would make any
sacrifice to inflict a deep humiliation upon England. It is natural
that this should be. They are eminently vain, and their passion is
glory in war. They cannot forget or forgive Aboukir, Trafalgar,
the Peninsular, Waterloo, and St. Helena.” This fear of France
powerfully possessed Lord Palmerston during the last four years
of his life, and w T as, in effect, fatal to the intervention that he de
sired in the affair of the Duchies. For how could he expect the
French to support him, if he desired, at the same time, to block
the most cherished projects of the French Emperor (e.g., his
European Congress in 1863) and to deprive him of all possible
means of benefiting himself which might arise out of the joint
adventure? Louis Napoleon, as he had shown in 1859, did not
belong to the class of men who “ serve God for nought.” Lord
Palmerston had to make his choice between the aggrandisement of
France and the aggrandisement of Prussia, and, with whatever
lamentations over the fate of Denmark or protests against the dis
creditable conduct of the Germans, he preferred the second alter
native when it came to action. ‘‘It might, of course, have been
very different,” is the remark of Lord Palmerston’s biographer
about the upshot of this affair, ‘‘ could England have consented to
French conquest on the Rhine as the price to be paid for French
assistance.”
What emerges from this analysis is that the leading features of
the second greatest formative period of the last century—the
features which have all the obviousness of the inevitable on looking
back were mostly hidden from the contemporary observer. Lord
Salisbury and Lord Palmerston looked out upon the ferment of
the German States and saw neither purpose nor principle in their
excited movements. They supposed the invasion of the Duchies
(1) Essays. Vol. II., 142.
(2) Lift of Lord Palmerston. Vol. II., 446.