red and premeditated by that astute and far-seeing
politician; and though upon the methods by which the Hohenzollern
candidature was originally started Bismarck is judiciously silent, we
may be morally certain that the instigation came from Berlin. The
maxim _Fecit cui prodest_ affords fair ground for this inference,
particularly when we remember the obvious improbability that the
Spanish ministry would have gratuitously set up a candidature which
must infallibly have brought their country into collision with its
formidable neighbour.

How the French Government fell into a net that had been spread for
them is to most of us sufficiently clear. Whether the emperor and his
ministers ought to have detected and avoided it, is the real question,
and it is practically the only question that concerns M. Ollivier. In
the final pages of his book, which touch in dignified and pathetic
words upon the injustice of the reproaches that have been heaped upon
him and the rancorous calumnies by which he has been pursued, his
readers are told that, having done his best to defend the cause of his
nation, he will terminate his work without taking up his personal
justification, though on one point he desires not to be misunderstood.
It has been pleaded on his behalf, he says, that he was in fact
opposed to the declaration of war, but agreed to it under the violent
pressure of public opinion, or else from reluctance to betray internal
dissensions that would have broken up the ministry, or for other
reasons. M. Ollivier insists, on the contrary, that after Bismarck's
'soufflet' he was convinced that peace could be maintained only at
the price of his country's abject humiliation; and that he chose the
alternative of war as infinitely preferable, without the least regard
to his personal reputation or interests. We may willingly agree that
M. Ollivier acted throughout from motives of high-minded patriotism,
and although we cannot acquit him on the charge of grave imprudence we
may freely admit that he was entangled in a situation of extraordinary
difficulty. To Englishmen, who are familiar with the regular and
recognised working of constitutional government, it will be plain that
he was the victim of a system that had placed him before the public as
the nominal head of a Cabinet that he was supposed to have formed, and
of a party in the Chamber that he was expected to lead. Whereas in
fact he had no proper control over the policy of the Cabinet,