LETTER X.

ARMINIUS, WRITING FROM THE GERMAN CAMP BEFORE PARIS, COMMENTS, IN HIS OLD UNAPPRECIATIVE SPIRIT, ON THE ATTITUDE OF OUR BELOVED COUNTRY IN THE BLACK SEA QUESTION.

SIR,

BEFORE PARIS, November 21, 1870. ANOTHER call "to speak with promptitude and energy !" We had all been full of the Russian note, and here is your magnificent Times to tell me what the great heart of my dear English friends is thinking of it. You have not forgotten, of course, that sentence of Mr. Lowe (a descendant of Pangloss, and a sort of hereditary connection of my family, though he took scant notice of me when I was in England): "The destiny of England is in the great heart of England." So, having a sincere regard for you, always listen when your great heart speaks, that I may see what sort of a destiny it is about to create for you. And I find that it is now speaking very loud indeed, even louder than when I wrote to you in August last, and that it is bent on telling Russia "with promptitude and energy," in your own fine, full-mouthed fashion, "what England believes to be

due from and to her." But even at such a crisis you do not forget to improve the occasion, and to indulge in the peculiar strain of moral reflection whence you get, your oracles tell us, "that moral weight which your action, if conducted with tolerable judgment, is sure to command" (see, in the last Edinburgh Review, "Germany, France, and England," p. 591). It is not so much the matter of the Russian incident as its manner that pains you. "We protest," says your magnificent Times, "that our sharpest feeling at the moment is pain at the apparent faithlessness of the Czar, and at the rudeness with which he has denounced the treaty."

My dear friend, the weather is abominable, and the supply of tobacco, to me at any rate, short and bad; but I cannot resist sitting down without a pipe, in the mud, to write to you, when I see your great heart beating in this manner.

How like you, how like the British Philistine in one of his hot fits, when he is moved to speak to Europe "with promptitude and energy!" Of history, the future, the inevitable drive of events, not an inkling! A moral criticism of Russia and a wounded self-consequence, that is all you are full of. The British Philistine all over!

At your present stage of development, as I have often remarked to you, this beneficent being is the depositary of your force, the mover of your policy. Your Government is, in and by itself, nothing. You are a self-governing people, you are represented by your "strong middle part," your Philistine: and this

is what your Government. must watch; this is what it must take its cue from.

Here, then, is your situation, that your Govern. ment does not and cannot really govern, but at present is and must be the mouthpiece of your Philistines; and that foreign Governments know this very well, know it to their cost. Nothing the best of them would like better than to deal with England seriously and respectfully,—the England of their traditions, the England of history; nothing, even, they would like better than to deal with the English Government,

-as at any time it may happen to stand, composed of a dozen men more or less eminent,-seriously and respectfully. But, good God! it is not with these dozen men in their natural state that a foreign Government finds it has to deal; it is with these dozen men sitting in devout expectation to see how the cat will jump,—and that cat the British Philistine!

What statesman can deal seriously and respectfully when he finds that he is not dealing mind to mind with an intelligent equal, but that he is dealing with a tumult of likes and dislikes, hopes, panics, intrigues, stock-jobbing, quidnuncs, newspapers,-dealing with ignorance in short, for that one word contains it all,— behind his intelligent equal? Whatever he says to a British Minister, however convincing he may be, a foreign statesman knows that he has only half his hearer's attention, that only one of the British Minister's eyes is turned his way; the other eye is turned anxiously back on the home Philistines and

the home press, and according as these finally go the British Minister must go too. This sort of thing demoralises your Ministers themselves in the end, even your able and honest ones, and makes them impossible to deal with. God forgive me if I do him wrong!--but I always suspect that your sly old Sir Hamilton Seymour, in his conversations with the Emperor Nicholas before the Crimean war, had at last your Philistines and your press, and their unmistakable bent, in his eye, and did not lead the poor Czar quite straight. If ever there was a man who respected England, and would have gone cordially and easily with a capable British minister, that man was Nicholas. England, Russia, and Austria are the Powers with a real interest in the Eastern question, and it ought to be settled fairly between them. Nicholas wished nothing better. Even if you would not thus settle the question, he would have forborne to any extent sooner than go to war with you, if he could only have known what you were really at. To be sure, as you did not know this yourselves, you could not possibly tell him, poor man! Louis Napoleon, meanwhile, had his prestige to make. France pulled the wires right and left; your Philistines had a passion for that old acrobat Lord Palmerston, who, clever as he was, had an aristocrat's inaptitude for ideas, and believed in upholding and renovating the Grand Turk; Lord Aberdeen knew better, but his eye was nervously fixed on the British Philistine and the British press. The British Philistine learnt that he was being treated with rudeness

and must make his voice heard "with promptitude and energy." There was the usual explosion of passions, prejudices, stock-jobbing, newspaper articles, chatter, and general ignorance, and the Czar found he must either submit to have capital made out of him by French vanity and Bonapartist necessities, or enter into the Crimean war. He entered into the Crimean war, and it broke his heart. France came out of the Crimean war the first Power in Europe, with French vanity and Bonapartist necessities fully served. You came out of it with the British Philis tine's role in European affairs for the first time thoroughly recognised and appreciated.

Now for the "faithlessness" and "rudeness" of Russia's present proceeding. It has been known for the last half-dozen years in every chancery of Europe that Russia declared her position in the Black Sea to be intolerable, and was resolved to get it altered. France and Bonaparte, driven by the French fat as you are driven by the British Philistine, and the French fat has proved a yet more fatal driver than yours, being debauched and immoral, as well as ignorant,―came to grief. I suppose Russia was not bound to wait till they were in a position to make capital out of her again. "But with us, at any rate," you will say, "she might have dealt seriously and respectfully, instead of being faithless and rude. Again, I believe Russia would have wished nothing better than to deal seriously with you, and to settle with you, not only the question of the Black Sea, but the whole Eastern question, which begins to press