combien il est difficile de conserver l'unité des détails de notre pouvoir où nous admettons le journalisme, et du principe de l'alliance anglaise partout, toujours, que notre amour de la Patrie et notre admiration pour vos grandes institutions libérales nous fait adopter, nous fera poursuivre.' As I left Paris immediately, I had not time to read myself the article Monsieur de Lamartine alludes to, and with which your Grace is of course acquainted.-I have, &c., The Duke's proposed reply was as follows: Le Maréchal Duc de Wellington présente ses hommages à Monsieur de Lamartine. Il a reçu des mains de M. Wellesley le rapport par écrit de la communication verbale dont l'a honoré Monsieur de Lamartine. Le Duc le remercie de la justice qu'il lui rend en le croyant intéressé au bonheur de la France, et à la consolidation des institutions pour la régie des affaires de son Gouvernement, et de la confiance avec laquelle il a communiqué avec le Duc. Le Duc désire sincèrement que la France puisse être heureuse. Elle n'a rien à craindre, ni à désirer [que] la durée de la paix générale, dont dans ses proportions elle a joui des bienfaits comme les autres nations du monde. Lord John replied Chesham Place: March 4, 1848. My dear Lord, I am going to-day to St. Leonards for my health, and have only a few minutes to acknowledge your Grace's letter of yesterday. It appears to me that nothing can be more judicious than your Grace's reply to M. Lamartine, and I can see no objection to it being sent. There is, as your Grace observes, a very suspicious phrase about the Northern powers, and I shall immediately transmit the correspondence to Lord Palmerston for his consideration. In the meantime it would be very useful if your Grace would see Count Dietrichstein, who seems greatly alarmed and very unjustly suspicious of the intentions of the British Government. We desire only the continuance of the general peace and of the present territorial arrangements.—Yours, Four days later the Duke wrote again : J. RUSSELL. London: March 8, 1848. It is My dear Lord,-I informed you that I had sent to Paris by the hand of Mr. Wellesley my letter addressed to M. de Lamartine. I enclose Mr. Wellesley's report of his delivery of my answer. best to postpone to decide whether I consent to the publication of my letter till I shall receive his answer in writing, and I will of course do nothing without submitting to your Lordship my notions. I have considered it my duty to keep secret M. de Lamartine's communication to me, and mine to him. Nobody knows of it excepting your Lordship and those of your colleagues to whom you may have communicated these documents. I have done so not only for the reason stated to your Lordship in my letter of the 3rd inst., but because I did not think it fair or quite safe possibly for Monsieur de Lamartine to make public the whole of his communication to me, particularly that part of it in relation to monarchy. I confess that I should not like to see my letter published without some notice at least of the purport of the communication to which it is an answer. I don't think the public would be satisfied with such a communication. However, I will decide upon nothing till I shall hear further from M. de Lamartine, and shall have your Lordship's concurrence in the course which I shall propose. I hope that you receive benefit from your residence at St. Leonards. I have the honour to be, my dear Lord, yours most faithfully, The Lord John Russell. The enclosure was as follows: WELLINGTON. Paris, 9 Rue du Helder: Monday, March 7, 1848. My Lord Duke,-According to your directions I left London on Saturday evening. I reached Paris on Sunday. I called immediately upon M. de Lamartine, who received me at five, after post hour. I delivered your Grace's letter. M. de Lamartine expressed great satisfaction at the nature of your Grace's communication. His Excellency manifested a strong desire to obtain your Grace's leave to acquaint the public with the feelings he told me your Grace had expressed. He added that such was the respect entertained in France for your Grace's opinion, so strong was the belief of the honest and enlightened part of the French community at large that your Grace's feeling was, and ever had been, the expression of that of the true majority of the aristocracy and people of England, that the public would receive your letter as a guarantee for peace and future security. M. de Lamartine desired me to call upon him on Wednesday evening to receive his answer to your Grace's letter. I shall, of course, immediately take it over.-I have, &c., His Grace the Duke of Wellington. J. WELLESLEY. London March 11, 1848. My dear Lord,-Mr. Wellesley returned from Paris last night, and brought me a letter from M. de Lamartine, of which I enclose a copy. He certainly places me in an anomalous position, and he has greatly aggravated the difficulties thereof by the course which he and the Provisional Government have taken, and by the publication of his intentions to the diplomatic representatives of France at the different Courts of Europe! The Provisional Government, endowed with the powers of peace and war, exercises the same to the full extent without hesitation. To insist that the Government de facto, and eventually the Republic to be appointed, shall succeed to all the rights and privileges of the King of the French, under the provisions of the several treaties of peace and alliance and the various diplomatic acts, is one thing, and may be and is reasonable, provided the French Government undertakes to perform its part of the several engagements. But not only is the intention avowed of proposing alterations in the treaties of peace by which all the powers of Europe are bound, but of making such alterations as may give to France a right to interfere in the internal government of other States and their dependencies. Such an arrangement would lead to little less than perpetual war. If such pretension had been admitted into the treaties of 1814-15 we should have had King Louis Philippe interfering in the insurrection in Canada in 1837, and in Ireland in 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842, 1843! Then I am called upon to promote an alliance between her Majesty and the French Republic. I don't know that I can have any influence upon such a question. But if I had, neither I, nor, as I believe, any Englishman could desire to see her Majesty allied with the French Republic in interference in the interior government of other countries. I think it best to give no answer to M. de Lamartine. Nor shall I, unless your Lordship should think it useful that I should. Ever, my dear Lord, yours most faithfully, The Lord John Russell. The following was the enclosure: Monsieur Lamartine présente ses respectueux sentimens à S. E. le Duc de Wellington et lui accuse réception du billet qu'il a bien voulu lui adresser par Monsieur Wellesley. Il prie S. E. le Duc de Wellington d'être bien convaincu que les intentions pacifiques exprimées par M. Wellesley ne sont pas seulement celles de Monsieur Lamartine et du Gouvernement Provisoire, mais celles de la nation entière, et que si la Grande-Bretagne comprend aujourd'hui comme la France que les destinées du monde sont dans l'union des deux nations, rien ne pourra plus s'opposer à ce que la Grande Alliance de 1789 entre les têtes supérieures des deux pays ne devienne aussi vraie qu'elle sera durable. Monsieur Lamartine fait les voeux les plus ardents pour que sa Grace le Duc de Wellington appuie de sa haute influence une idée si heureuse pour le genre humain, et pour que le Héros de la guerre en Angleterre devienne pour les deux pays le lien de la paix. Lord John replied— LAMARTINE. St. Leonards: March 12, 1848. My dear Lord,-M. Lamartine puts us all in a difficult position. In conversation with Lord Normanby he entirely assents to the maxim of the law of nations that no changes in the internal form of a government can change the obligations contracted towards foreign powers, and he disclaims all intention of interfering in the internal concerns of other States. At the same time his circular lays down the freedom from the treaties of 1815, which M. Lamartine declares is too popular in France to be resisted, and some strange phrases about 'Providence sounding the hour of independence' give scope for interference at any moment when the Government or the National Assembly may declare that hour to have sounded. I see no course open to us but to take M. Lamartine's professions in the most pacific sense without relying too much on his power of making good his meaning. On the other hand, the destruction of the free State of Cracow last year gave M. Guizot ground for saying that, as other powers had violated the Treaty of Vienna, France was only bound so long as she chose to be so. I think your Grace need not write again to M. Lamartine, but it may be as well that your Grace should send him a civil message that you had received his letter, which did not require any answer on your part.-I have, &c., J. RUSSELL. This curious overture of M. Lamartine must have convinced Lord John that, whatever consequences were likely to ensue from the Revolution of February, danger to England could not be included in the number. France, however, was only one of the countries which felt the full force of the revolutionary movement. On the 13th of March, less than a fortnight after the flight of Louis Philippe, the fate which had fallen on the youngest throne in Europe overtook its oldest dynasty. The people in Vienna rose; defeated the troops; forced M. Metternich, who had grown old in the service of the Empire, to fly; and obliged the Emperor to promise constitutional institutions. In the next ten days the people of Milan, after a terrific combat in the streets, compelled Marshal Radetzky and the Austrian garrison to evacuate the city. Almost on the same day Signor Manin seized the arsenal at Venice, drove out the Austrians, and proclaimed a Provisional Government. The cause of Italian freedom, which had been apparently secured by these successes, had been very dear to Lord John from the days in which, little more than a boy, he had first visited the peninsula; and during the preceding months had been closely occupying his attention. In July 1846, when Lord John was resuming office, the death of Gregory XVI. led to the election of Cardinal Ferretti, a prelate of liberal opinions, to the pontifical chair. The friends of progress both in Italy and elsewhere were elated at the evident desire of the new Pope to promote liberal measures. For some months it seemed possible that Italy might realise the dream of moderate reformers, and that autocracy might everywhere be replaced by self-government. From the first, however, the cause of constitutional reform was beset by two dangers. On the one hand, the party of Young Italy, with M. Mazzini at its head, desired to go much further than moderate reformers were willing to travel. On the other hand, the Old Catholic party, which had the direct support of Austria, persisted in declaring that there was no halting-place between moderate and extreme measures. The new Pope hesitated in painful uncertainty between the advice which he received on the one hand from M. Rossi, |