(5.): To W. Hargreaves

The state of Europe.

“Paris, May 7, 1860—I have given a note of introduction to you to an old friend, Mr. Dunville, from the neighbourhood of Belfast, who with his mother and sister are stopping a fortnight in London, on their way From this to Ireland. They are first-rate people in our sense, and you will be very much pleased if you pass an evening in their society.

“We are now beginning the labours of the commission. If I were to judge by the programme setting forth our plan of proceedings, the task might last a couple of years. But I take it for granted that all the intended inquiries into every article of the French tariff will very soon shape itself into a rule of thumb, and that the Government, which has already all the information at its fingers’-ends, will undertake to act on its own responsibility. Whatever may be the result, I have made up my mind to be well abused for a year or two. In the end, after a few years’ trial, the Treaty will justify itself. This assumes that we remain at peace, which the Times and its patrons seem bent on preventing.

“The state of Germany is very unsatisfactory. Enormous sums are being wasted by a very poor people in preparations for war. There is a great uneasiness both with respect to their internal and external relations. The worst of it is that, as I learn, influential politicians in Prussia are beginning to hold this language: ‘We must have a war with France sooner or later, and it is the only way in which we can get rid of our internal discords, and swamp the small States under the Rule of Prussia.’ These people say: ‘We should be beaten back by France at the first shock, but we should recover everything with interest’. My belief is, that at this moment Louis Napoleon is about the most peaceable person in Europe. Everybody in France is well satisfied with the Savoy business, and the Emperor was never so popular. But he knows that he is mistrusted by all Europe, and that it would be dangerous to attempt any fresh extension of his boundaries. However, it must not be supposed that he has any love for the present territorial arrangements in Europe. There is no doubt that he would like to give Mr. Wyld an excuse for publishing another map of France. But he would not like it at the expense of a war with England.

“I am not very proud of the spectacle presented by our merchants, brokers, and M.P’s., in their ovations to the pugilist Sayers. This comes from The brutal instincts having been so sedulously cultivated by our wars in the Crimea and especially in India and China. I have always dreaded that our national character would undergo deterioration (as did that of Greece and Rome) by our contact with Asia. With another war to two in India and China, the English people would have an appetite for bull-fights, if not for gladiators.”