lopment.

_Mr. Gladstone to Lord Granville._

_July 12_, 11.30 P.M.--I have seen, since Rothschild's
telegram,(207) that of Lyons, dated 7.55 P.M. It seems to me that
Lyons should be supplied with an urgent instruction by telegram
before the council of ministers to-morrow. France appealed to our
support at the outset. She received it so far as the immediate
object was concerned. It was immediately and energetically given.
It appears to have been named by the French minister in public
inclusively with that of other Powers. Under these circumstances
it is our duty to represent the immense responsibility which will
rest upon France, if she does not at once accept as satisfactory
and conclusive, the withdrawal of the candidature of Prince
Leopold.

The substance of this note was despatched to Paris at 2.30 A.M. on the
morning of July 13. It did not reach Lord Lyons till half-past nine, when
the council of ministers had already been sitting for half an hour at St.
Cloud. The telegram was hastily embodied in the form of a tolerably
emphatic letter and sent by special messenger to St. Cloud, where it was
placed in M. de Gramont's hand, at the table at which he and the other
ministers were still sitting in council in the presence of the Emperor and
the Empress.(208) At the same time Lord Granville strongly urged M. de
Lavalette in London, to impress upon his government that they ought not to
take upon themselves the responsibility of pursuing the quarrel on a
matter of form, when they had obtained what Gramont had assured Lord Lyons
would put an end to the dispute. Though Mr. Disraeli afterwards imputed
want of energy to the British remonstrances, there is no reason to suppose
that Lord Lyons was wanting either in directness or emphasis. What
warnings were likely to reach the minds of men trembling for their
personal popularity and for the dynasty, afraid of clamour in the streets,
afraid of the army, ignorant of vital facts both military and diplomatic,
incapable of measuring such facts even if they had known them, committed
by the rash declaration of defiance a week before to a position that made
retreat the only alternative to the sword? At the head of them all sat in
misery, a sovereign reduced by disease to a wavering shadow of the will
and vision of a man. They marched headlong to the pit that Bismarck was
digging for them.

(M104) On July 14 Mr. Gladstone again