y according to his own views and
opinions, without the slightest control, and scarcely any
interference on the part of his colleagues. This apathy is mainly
attributable to that which appears in Parliament and in the
country upon all foreign questions. Nobody understands and nobody
cares for them, and when any rare and occasional notice is taken
of a particular point, or of some question on which a slight and
evanescent interest is manifested, Palmerston has little
difficulty in dealing with the matter, which he always meets with
a consummate impudence and, it must be allowed, a skill and
resolution, which invariably carry him through. Whether the
policy which he has adopted upon the Eastern Question be the
soundest and most judicious, events must determine; but I never
was more amazed than at reading his letters, so dashing, bold,
and confident in their tone. Considering the immensity of the
stake for which he is playing, that he _may_ be about to plunge
all Europe into a war, and that if war does ensue it will be
entirely his doing, it is utterly astonishing he should not be
more seriously affected than he appears to be with the gravity of
the circumstances, and should not look with more anxiety (if not
apprehension) to the possible results; but he talks in the most
off-hand way of the clamour that broke out at Paris, of his
entire conviction that the French Cabinet have no thoughts of
going to war, and that if they were to do so, their fleets would
be instantly swept from the sea, and their armies everywhere
defeated. That if they were to try and make it a war of opinion
and stir up the elements of revolution in other countries, a more
fatal retaliation could and would be effected in France, where
Carlist or Napoleonist interest, aided by foreign intervention,
would shake the throne of Louis Philippe, while taxation and
conscription would very soon disgust the French with a war in
which he did not anticipate the possibility of their gaining any
military successes. Everything may possibly turn out according to
his expectations. He is a man blessed with extraordinary good
fortune, and his motto seems to be that of Danton, 'De l'audace,
encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace.' But there is a
flippancy in his tone, an undoubting self-sufficiency, and a
levity in discussing interests of such tremendous magnitude,
which satisfies me that he is a very dangerous man to be
entrusted with the uncontrolled management of