The Press. — London, England, 1855-03-17 00:00:00

262 even that little trifle makes them feel dyspeptic.. They'll starve soon ; what can be the matter? A. glass of cool ginger pop with ice would be refreshing, and soda water is still better. It is too early for wine, and at any rate it's heating, besides being unsoriptural. Some of his remarks upon women are clever : Clack, then, you see is natural to them : talK therefore to them as they like, and they will soon like to talk to you. If a woman was to put a Bramah lock on her heart a skilful man would find his way into it if he wanted to, I know. That contrivance is set to a particular word ; find the letters that compose it, and it opens at once. The moment I heard the Gaelic I knew I had discovered the cypher—l tried it and succeeded. Tell you what, Pilot, love and skill laugh st locks, for them that can't be opened can be picked. The mechanism of the human heart, when you thoroughly understand it, is, like all the other works of nature, very beautiful, very wonderful, but very simple. When it does not work well, the fault is not in the machinery, but in the management. Of all people in the world the Americans are the most squeamish ; but our author is much of the opinion of Dean Swift, if we recollect rightly, that the nicest people are the nastiest. Innocence should not be painted with down cast eyes and a blush, but with open gaze and serene aspect. We like the honest plainness of this passage : There is a horrid sight of hypocrisy now, more than there was a hundred years ago : vice was audacious then, and scared folks. It ain't so bold at present as it need to did to be ; but if it is forbid to enter the drawing-mom, the back staircase is still free. Where there is a will there is a way, and always will be. I hate pretence, and, above all, mock modesty ; it's a bad sign. I knew a clergyman to home a monstrous pious man, and so delicate minded, he altered a great many words and passages in the Church Service : he said he couldn't find it in his heart to read them out in meetin, and yet that fellow. to my sartain knowledge, was the greatest scamp in private life I ever knew. Gracious knows, I don't approbate coarseness, it shocks me, but nervous sensibility makes me sick. .1 like to call things by their right names, and I call a leg a leg, and not a larger limb ; a shirt a shirt, though it is next to the akin, and not a linen vestment ; and a stocking a stocking, though it does reach up the leg, and not a silk host ; and a garter a garter, though it is above the calf, and not an elastic band or a hose suspender. A really modest woman was never squeamish. Fastidiousness is the envelope of indelicacy. To see harm in ordinary words betrays a knowledge, and not an ignorance of evil. His philosophy of a kiss is capital : It tante a thing ever to be forgot. No language can ex• press it, no letters will give the sound. Then what in natur is equal to the flavour of it? What an aroma it has ! How spiritual it is. It ain't gross, for you can't feed on it ; it don't cloy, for the palate ain't required to test its taste. It is neither visible, nor tangible, nor portable, nor transferable. It is not a substance, nor a liquid, nor a vapour. It has neither colour nor form. Imagination can't conceive it. It can't be imitated or forged. It is confined to no clime or country, but is übiquitous. It is disembodied when completed, but is instantly reproduced, and so is immortal. It is as old as the creation, and yet is as young and fresh as ever. It pre-existed, still exists, and always will exist. It pervades all natur. The breeze as it passes kisses the rose, and the pendant vine stoops down and hides with its tendrils its blushes as it kisses the limpid stream that waits in an eddy to meet it, and raises its tiny waves, like anxious lips, to receive it. Depend upon it Eve learned it in Paradise, and was taught its beauties, virtues, and varieties by an angel, there is some thing so transcendent in it. How it is adapted to all circumstances ! There is the kiss of welcome and of parting, the long lingering, loving p r esent one, the stolen or the mutual one, the kiss of love, of joy, and of sorrow, the seal of promise, and the receipt of fulfilment. Is it strange therefore that a woman is in vincible whose armoury consists of kisses, smiles, sighs, and tears? Is it any wonder that poor old Adam was first tempted, and then ruined? It is very easy for preachers to get up with long faces and tell us he ought to have been more of a man. My opinion is, if he had been less of a man it would have been better for him. But lam not agoin' to preach, so I will get back to my story; but, Squire, I shall always maintain to my dying day that kissing is a sublime mystery. Here we part company from Master Sam. A selection from his books would contain more philosophy than is to be found in a volume of metaphysics, and more humour than in all the jest-books from ancient Joe down to modern Punch. London Thirty Years of Foreign Policy. Longmans. Palmerston in Three Epochs. By Washington Wilks. Pp. 63. London : Freeman. [Second Notice.] WHETHER it be accounted a merit or a fault in Lord Palmerston, we must admit that he has exhibited great suppleness of conduct and opinion in the various stages of his career. No governing principle can be detected in it Even on the vital question of the extent to which it is justifiable to interfere in the con• %erne of other States, hie opinions hive often THE PRESS. been contradictory, and his actions more opposite still. When Canning made his stand against any intervention in Spain, Lord Palmerston declared decisively against inter ference : If Spain is divided, our interference is on principle questionable; if she is united, our interference is un• necessary. Yet in the internal affairs of both Spain and Portugal Lord Palmerston has been an incessant meddler. In 1828 he drew what he evidently intended as a broad line of dis tinction between interference with the pen and the sword: — One nation has no right to control by force of arms the will of another nation in the choice of its government or ruler lf by " interference" is meant inter ference by force of arms, such interference, the Govern ment are right in saying, " general principles and our own practice forbade us to exert." But if by " interference' is meant intermediling, and intermeddling in every way, and to every extent short of actual military force, then I must affirm, that there is nothing in such interference which the law of nations may not in certain cases permit. Of this distinction he seems to have been not a little proud, as he repeated it in 1842 : Interference is of two kinds, by friendly counsel and advice, or by force of arms. It is no principle of the present Government, nor ought it ever to be that of any Government of this country, to interfere by force of arms in the internal affeirs of other nations ; but i can not conceive it possible for any Government to profess the principle of never interfering by friendly counsel and advice. The armed interference of England in Por tugal and Spain, two years later, and the invasion of Affghanistan are the commentary furnished by Lord Palmerston's conduct on these opinions. When the civil wars in those countries commenced, the author of " Foreign Policy" states : The English Government gave every encouragement to the restless multitude who were so eager to fight the battles of the Queens on the Peninsula. The Quadruple Treaty followed : By this treaty we engaged to assist the two regents of Spain and Portugal with a naval force to establish the power of their Governments throughout the Peninsula. France agreed to do whatever might be thought necessary to aid in this good work. Nothing was said about con• stitutions in the treaty, though it was understood that it was a constitutional alliance of the Four Courts.—Fureigoi Policy, 184. The British Legion in Spain, at a later date, was another comment on Lord Palmerston's doctrine of non-interference by force of arms. The defence made for Lord Palmerston in this volume is remarkable. It is said that had we interfered in the affairs of Spain in 1822, when France invaded that kingdom with an army of two hundred thousan d men (?), " we must " have gone to war with both France and " Spain," while in 1834 " there were no large " armies to contend against, nor was it neces " sary for England to go to war." That is to say, that principles are to be observed when it would be dangerous to invade them, and broken when they can be violated with safety. Unwittingly the author of " Foreign Policy" has here indicated the key to Lord Palmers ton's policy. He has intcrferred as much as he could without incurring the hazard of serious resistance, and while he has on the most trivial occasions assumed a dictatorial tone towards the weaker States of Europe, he has sacrificed the rights of solemn treaties to the greater powers, and suffered them to assume an attitude irreconcileable with the peace and security of the world. When he has opposed their policy, it has been done by stealth, as when, for instance, he sent guns with the Tower brand upon them to the Sicilian insurgents in 1848, and then endea voured to escape the consequences of his act by disavowing it. The "judicious bottle " holding " of which he boasted to the Fins : bury deputation is perhaps the phrase which most happily describes his foreign policy. In his speech on the Hungarian war in 1849, while professing sympathy with the Hungarian cause, and his desire to mediate b e tween the contending parties, he said At the same time I am quite ready to admit that inter- Nrence ought not to be carried to the extent of endanger ing our relations with other countries We are not entitled to interfere in any manner that will commit this country to embark in these hostilities. His interference with other nations has, in fact, been always regulated by the amount of res istance he was likely to inset with, SATURDAY, On the first intimation that was given of the intention of Russia to send an army into Hungary, Lord Palmerston was incredulous. " The Russians," he said, " had entered Tran " sylvania only for the protection of the fron " tier towns." For this incredulity he had, however, some grounds, as in a despatch to Sir Stratford Canning he wrote (April 24, 1849) : I have to acquaint you that Baron Brunow has stated to me that it is nut the intention of the Emperor of Russia, in consequence of the retreat of the Russian detachment from Herrnaustadt, to order his troops to advance i n onto Transylvania, or to take any part in the civil war w raging in that province or in Hungary. But only a fortnight later came the Vienna Gazette, announcing that Austria had asked for the assistance of Russia, and that it had been " promised by his Imperial Majesty with " the most noble promptitude." To the notifi cation from the British Minister at St. Peters burg of this intended interference, Lord Palmerston contented himself with this dry reply : VISCOUNT PALMERSTON TO MR. BUCHANAN. Foreign-otlice, May 17, 1849. Much as her Majesty's Government regret this inter• Terence of Russia, the causes which have led to it, and the effects which it may produce, they nevertheless have not considered the occasion to be one which at present calls for any formal expression of the opinions of Great Britain on the matter. Then came the question whether Turkey should submit to her provinces being tra versed by the Russian troops on their way to Hungary, and it is tr ul y stated by Mr. Watt that Lord Palmerston counselled neutrality and submission. He wrote to Sir Stratford Canning (July 7, 1849) The Porte ought, for its own sake, to maintain and assert the neutrality of the Turkish territory as far as it is able to do so without coming into hostile collision with its stronger neighbours. As the result of Lord Palmerston's versa tility, he is enabled to disarm the hostility he has provoked by one course of policy, by rapidly changing it for another. When the Hungarian contest was ended, the Porte, which had been counselled to submit quietly to the invasion of its territory for the purpose of crushing the Hungarian cause, was encouraged to resist the demand of the victors for the delivery of the refugees who claimed the pro tection of her soil. The British fleet anchored in Besika Bay to support the Porte in its refusal ; but the success achieved by Lord Palmerston in this his first and only effort to oppose Russian influence was counter balanced by his failure in attempting to com pel the Government of Greece to submit to the extortionate demands of Don Pacifico—an attempt which endangered our alliance with France. Count Nesselrode repaid with in terest the repulse he had sustained in Turkey, and Lord Palmerston was again saved by one of those dextrous acts of submission which no one is more skilful in performing. That policy of absolute concession to Russia which up to this date had marked Lord Palmerston's dealings with Turkey was yet more conspicuous in his administration of foreign affairs when he yielded to Russian in fluence in Persia, and when, contrary to the faith of treaties, Poland was incorporated with Russia in 1832, and the independence of Cracow was extinguished in 1836. It was when Lord Palmerston first became Foreign Secretary that Mr. Mc Neil. the British Envoy in Persia, pointed out the sys tematic attempts of Russia to undermine English influence at the Court of the Shah ; but he was simply told to act in concert with the Russian envoy, and that "the interests of " Russia were the same as those of England." Later, when the throne of Persia was dis puted, England afforded aid in troops and money to the Russian nominee ! And, finally, on some insult offered to the British embassy, Mr. Mc Neil was recalled, and the field was left open to Russian intrigue. The outbreak of the Polish insurrection in 1832 was a critical period in the existence of Russia. Its success would raise an effectual barrier against her aggression ; its failure would enable her to achieve her long medi tated design of making Poland an integral part of her empire. The attitude to be assumed by the other European powers be• came therefore a consideration of the hifhest t.