60 RECOLLECTIONS OF FORTY YEARS. 



make any hostile move, but that, pending an agree- 

 ment between the two Governments, their respective 

 agents should maintain a neutral attitude with regard 

 to an enterprise due to private initiative. 



" Lord Palmerston now publicly declares that < H. 

 B. M.'s Government has, up to the present time, used 

 all its influence to prevent the project of the Suez 

 Canal being carried out.' In view of such an avowal, 

 based upon inveterate mistrust of France a mistrust 

 which it is no longer thought worth concealing need 

 we really await Lord Palmerston' s leave to make a 

 formal demand upon the Sultan for the ratification of 

 the Viceroy 1 s act of concession, especially when we 

 know that the Sultan is disposed to grant this demand ? 

 When we remember that the British Government, 

 without troubling itself as to what an allied govern- 

 ment might think of it, has obtained from Constanti- 

 nople several important concessions, among others that 

 of the Euphrates Bail way, officially supported as being 

 the English military road to Asia, and that it has recently 

 seized Perim, a dependency of Turkey, without even 

 so much as notifying the fact ; and when we further 

 remember that the opinion of the commerce of Great 

 Britain is unanimous in favour of the canal, who could 

 venture to complain if the representative of France 

 was authorised to protect, in agreement with the re- 

 presentatives of the principal Powers who are in favour 

 of the scheme, the interests of the holder of the con- 

 cession, who is a Frenchman, and who has, moreover, 



