PALMEKSTON POLICY. 491 



ally who formerly saved him in his hour of need instead of cling- 

 ing to that one, who, after having dictated the peace of Adrianople, 

 comes to dearly sell him his treacherous support ? 



Such are the results of our foreign policy the paix a tout prix 

 system. The despots of the Continent could scarcely have gained 

 more by open war than they have done during the most profound 

 peace. We are hated from one end of the Spanish Peninsula to the 

 other, derided in Holland reproached in Belgium invoked in 

 vain in Germany almost forgotten in Italy despised in Turkey 

 treated with open contumely in Russia, and suspected even in France. 

 Great Britain, once the lever of the world, has become the laughing- 

 stock of Europe. If Lord Palmerston be a vain man, we envy him 

 not his feelings he is no match for the admixture of Greek ductility, 

 and Scythian energy of the Russian diplomatists. The wily Pozzo di 

 Borgo and the foxhunting Matucewitz, have played him as skilful 

 anglers do a trout. In his person the Foreign Minister of England, 

 whose voice should have swayed all Europe, has dwindled into a 

 mere automaton, moved at the will and pleasure of Nicholas Paul- 

 ovitch, Czar of all the Russias. 



Months ago we foretold that the struggle between the Sultan and 

 the Pacha of Egypt would become an European question of the first 

 magnitude. Months ago we foresaw the field it would open to Russia 

 for the consummation of her ambitious projects upon Turkey. But 

 our foreign minister has been dazzled by an " ignis fatuus," amid the 

 marshes of Holland. He has been pursuing a political phantom while 

 Russia has been actively and successively undermining our influence 

 in every quarter of the globe. She is at this moment carrying on an 

 active diplomatic correspondence with the Sheic tribes on the north- 

 western frontier of our Indian empire. She has stirred up Persia to 

 make demands upon our Indian governments, that will, in all proba- 

 bility, end in a war. Her agents are every where. They may be 

 found in the highest walks of English society, and amid the phrenzied 

 peasantry of Ireland sowing the seeds of disunion and discord, re- 

 connoitring our vulnerable points, and unfolding the hidden sources 

 of our greatness. While her influence reigns triumphant in the Di- 

 van, while her fleet rides at anchor in the Bosphorus, and while her 

 battalions are advancing, by forced marches, towards the Balkan, our 

 ships have been lying inactive in the Tagus, or cruising, in the dead of 

 winter, in the North Sea. We have been protocoling in the West, while, 

 in the East, Ibrahim Pacha has traversed the desert that separates Egypt 

 from Syria, and advanced from the foot of Mount Taurus to the shores 

 of the Egears, by one of the most extraordinary marches in modern 

 times, the very inverse of that of Alexander the Great. The East, 

 following his victorious steps, has paid back the visit she received 

 from Ancient Greece, twenty centuries ago ; and now as then, civiliza- 

 tion is on the side of the conqueror. Our foreign department has re- 

 mained lamentably in the dark on every point connected with this 

 extraordinary man, the regenerator of Ancient Egypt, the renovator 

 of the empire of the Caliphs, the modern Aroun al Raschid. It is 

 evident that the Egyptian people are rapidly advancing. But who has 

 opened this career to them? Who has the first planted in the barbarous 



