een in a state of complete panic,
because on the 28th they made application to France, which is answered
in a few hours by Lord Cowley: 'I said Her Majesty's Government were
most sincerely anxious to----' (laughter). I wish really to be candid,
not to misrepresent anything, and to put the case before the House
without garbling any of the dispatches.--'I said that Her Majesty's
Government were most sincerely anxious to act with the Imperial
Government in this question.' No doubt they were. I am vindicating
your conduct. I believe in your sincerity throughout. It is only your
intense incapacity that I denounce. The passage in the dispatch is
Shakespearian; it is one of those dramatic descriptions which only a
masterly pen could accomplish. Lord Cowley went on:

Her Majesty's Government felt that if the two Powers
could agree, war might be avoided; otherwise the danger
of war was imminent. M. Drouyn de Lhuys said he partook
this opinion; but as his Excellency made no further
observation, I remarked it would be a grievous thing if the
difference of opinion which had arisen upon the merits of
a general Congress were to produce an estrangement which
would leave each Government to pursue its own course.
I hoped that this would not be the case. Her Majesty's
Government would do all in their power to avoid it. I
presumed I might give them the assurance that the Imperial
Government were not decided to reject the notion of
a Conference. (No. 4, 444.)

Well, Sir, this received a curt and unsatisfactory reply. Nothing
could be obtained from the plaintive appeal of Lord Cowley. Well, what
did Her Majesty's Government do? Having received information that the
threat of federal execution had been fulfilled, having appealed to
France, and been treated in the manner I have described, what did the
Government do? Why, the Secretary of State, within twenty-four hours
afterwards, penned the fiercest dispatch he had ever yet written.
It is dated December 31, 1863, and it is addressed to Sir Andrew
Buchanan:

Her Majesty's Government do not hold that war would
relieve Prussia from the obligations of the treaty of 1852.
The King of Denmark would by that treaty be entitled
still to be acknowledged as the sovereign of all the dominions
of the late King of Denmark. He has been so
entitled from the time of the death of the late King. A
war of conquest undertaken by Germany avowedly for the
purpose of