.. My object in my last letter was not by any means, as you seem to
think, to accuse _your aristocracy_ of having mismanaged the Crimean war.
It has certainly been mismanaged, but who has been in fault?

Indeed I know not, and if I did I should think at the same time that it
would not be becoming in a foreigner to set himself up as a judge of the
blunders of any other Government than his own.

I thought that I had expressed myself clearly. At any rate what I wanted
to say, if I did not say it, is, that the present events created in my
opinion a new and great danger for your aristocracy, and that it will
suffer severely from the rebound, if it does not make enormous efforts to
show itself capable of repairing the past; and that it would be wrong to
suppose that by fighting bravely on the field of battle it could retain
the direction of the Government.

I did not intend to say more than this.

I will now add that if it persuades itself that it will easily get out of
the difficulty by making peace, I think that it will find itself
mistaken.

Peace, after what has happened, may be a good thing for England in
general, and useful to us, but I doubt whether it will be a gain for your
aristocracy. I think that if Chatham could return to life he would agree
with me, and would say that under the circumstances the remedy would not
be peace but a more successful war.

Kind regards, &c.

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

[Footnote 1: An article in the _North British Review_, see p. 107.--ED.]

CONVERSATIONS.

_Paris, Hotel Bedford.--Friday, March_ 2, 1855.--We slept on the 27th at
Calais, on the 28th at Amiens, and reached this place last night.

Tocqueville called on us this morning. We talked of the probability of
Louis Napoleon's going to the Crimea.

I said, 'that the report made by Lord John Russell, who talked the matter
over with him, was, that he certainly had once intended to go, and had
not given it up.'

'I do not value,' said Tocqueville, 'Lord John's inferences from anything
that he heard or saw in his audiences. All Louis Napoleon's words and
looks, are, whether intentionally or not, misleading. Now that his having
direct issue seems out of the question, and that the deeper and deeper
discredit into which the heir presumptive is falling, seems to put _him_
out of the question too, we are looking to this journey with great alarm.
We feel that, for the present, his life is necessary to us, and we feel
that it wou