in the new Ministry Soult was President of the
Council, Guizot Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Duchatel
Minister of the Interior.]

[Pageheading: DISAFFECTION IN FRANCE]

_Viscount Palmerston to Queen Victoria._

WINDSOR CASTLE, _11th November 1840._

Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and with
reference to your Majesty's memorandum of the 9th inst., he entreats
your Majesty not to believe that there exists at present in France
that danger of internal revolution and of external war which the
French Government, to serve its own diplomatic purposes, endeavours to
represent.

There is no doubt a large Party among the leading politicians in
France, who have long contemplated the establishment of a virtually,
if not actually, independent State in Egypt and Syria, under the
direct protection and influence of France, and that Party feel great
disappointment and resentment at finding their schemes in this respect
baffled. But that Party will not revenge themselves on the Four Powers
by making a revolution in France, and they are enlightened enough to
see that France cannot revenge herself by making war against the Four
Powers, who are much stronger than she is.

... But your Majesty may be assured that there is in France an immense
mass of persons, possessed of property, and engaged in pursuits of
industry, who are decidedly adverse to unnecessary war, and determined
to oppose revolution. And although those persons have not hitherto
come prominently forward, yet their voice would have made itself
heard, when the question of peace or unprovoked war came practically
to be discussed.

With regard to internal revolution, there is undoubtedly in France a
large floating mass of Republicans and Anarchists, ready at any moment
to make a disturbance if there was no strong power to resist them; but
the persons who would lose by convulsion are infinitely more numerous,
and the National Guard of Paris, consisting of nearly 60,000 men,
are chiefly persons of this description, and are understood to be
decidedly for internal order, and for external peace.

It is very natural that the French Government, after having failed to
extort concessions upon the Turkish Question, by menaces of foreign
war, should now endeavour to obtain those concessions, by appealing
to fears of another kind, and should say that such concessions are
necessary in order to prevent revolution in France; but Viscount