ising whatever
influence your Majesty could employ for the preservation of
the general peace, your Majesty had looked with anxiety to the
circumstances which threatened its continued existence. That your
Majesty was unable to see in those circumstances, any which were
beyond the reach of diplomatic skill, if there were only a mutual
desire, on the part of the Chief Powers concerned, to give fair play
to its exercise. That the only source of substantial danger was the
present state of Italy; and that even in that there would be little
danger of interruption to the general tranquillity, were it not for
the antagonism excited by interests and engagements, real or supposed,
of France and Austria.

That your Majesty believed that the supposed divergence of these
interests and engagements might be capable of reconciliation if
entered into with mutual frankness, and with a mutual disposition to
avoid the calamities of war; but that, as it appeared to your Majesty,
neither party would be willing to invite the other to a friendly
discussion of the points of difference between them.

That in this state of affairs your Majesty, as a mutual friend of both
Sovereigns, and having no individual interests to serve, entertained
the hope that by the spontaneous offer of good offices, your Majesty
might be the means of establishing certain bases, on which the Powers
mainly interested might subsequently enter into amicable negotiations
with regard to the questions chiefly in dispute, or threatening
serious results.

Of these, the most pressing are those which relate to the Italian
Peninsula.

That your Majesty, anxiously revolving in your mind the question how
your Majesty's influence could best be brought to bear, had come to
the conclusion that your Majesty's Ambassador at Paris, having
the fullest knowledge of the views entertained by that Court, and
possessing your Majesty's entire confidence, might usefully be
intrusted with a highly confidential, but wholly unofficial mission,
for the purpose of ascertaining whether there were any possibility
consistently with the views of the two Courts of offering such
suggestions as might be mutually acceptable as the basis of future
arrangements; and, if such should happily be found to be the case, of
offering them simultaneously to the two parties, as the suggestions of
a mutual friend.

That your Majesty trusted His R.I.A.[15] Majesty would look upon this
communication in the truly frie