f France and of the United States. The first
object of the undeviating policy of the British cabinet has been to
maintain uninterrupted the relations of peace between Great Britain and
the other nations of the world, without any abandonment of national
interests and without any sacrifice of national honor. The next object
to which their anxious and unremitting exertions have been directed has
been by an appropriate exercise of the good offices and moral influence
of Great Britain to heal dissensions which may have arisen among
neighboring powers and to preserve for other nations those blessings of
peace which Great Britain is so desirous of securing for herself.

The steady efforts of His Majesty's Government have hitherto been,
fortunately, successful in the accomplishment of both these ends, and
while Europe during the last five years has passed through a crisis of
extraordinary hazard without any disturbance of the general peace, His
Majesty's Government has the satisfaction of thinking that it has on
more than one occasion been instrumental in reconciling differences
which might otherwise have led to quarrels, and in cementing union
between friendly powers.

But if ever there could be an occasion on which it would be painful to
the British Government to see the relations of amity broken off between
two friendly states that occasion is undoubtedly the present, when a
rupture is apprehended between two great powers, with both of which
Great Britain is united by the closest ties--with one of which she is
engaged in active alliance; with the other of which she is joined by
community of interests and by the bonds of kindred.

Nor would the grounds of difference on the present occasion reconcile
the friends and wellwishers of the differing parties to the misfortune
of an open rupture between them.

When the conflicting interests of two nations are so opposed on a
particular question as to admit of no possible compromise, the sword may
be required to cut the knot which reason is unable to untie.

When passions have been so excited on both sides that no common standard
of justice can be found, and what one party insists on as a right the
other denounces as a wrong, prejudice may become too headstrong to yield
to the voice of equity, and those who can agree on nothing else may
consent to abide the fate of arms and to allow that the party which
shall prove the weakest in the war shall be deemed to have been wrong
in the