How stand we with regard to the Continental powers? For the first time, for many years, the British Sovereign has been unable to state "that she continues to receive from all foreign powers assurances of their friendly relations." Instead of that we are simply told, what no one doubts, that her Majesty is desirous to maintain the most friendly relations with the other members of the European family. Unfortunately, however, desire does not always imply possession. Are we to attribute this omission of the usual paragraph to mere inadvertence? or are we indeed to conclude that, abroad, there has arisen a feeling so unfriendly that to hazard the assertion of former relationship would really be equivalent to a falsehood? It is painful to allow that we must arrive at the latter conclusion. The moral weight and influence which Britain once exercised on the Continent has utterly decayed in the hands of Whig administrations. Instead of maintaining that attitude of high dignified reserve which becomes the first maritime power of Europe, we have been exhibited in the light of a nation of interfering intriguers, whose proffered mediation is almost equivalent to an insult. Mediators of this kind never are, nor can be, popular. The answer invariably is, in the language of holy writ--"Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian?" and, in consequence, wherever we have interfered we have made matters worse, or else have been compelled to submit to an ignominious rebuff. Every one knows what were the consequences of Lord Palmerston's impertinent and gratuitous suggestions to the crown of Spain. "What," said Lord Stanley, "is the state of our relations with that court? You have most unwisely, through your minister, interfered in the internal administration of the affairs of that country. That offence has been visited by the Government of that country upon our ministers in a manner so offensive that, great as was the provocation given by the British minister, no man in your Lordship's House, with the information we possess, could stand up and say that the Government of Spain was justified in the course they had pursued, however much the magnitude of the offence might have palliated it. But the state of affairs in Spain is this: Your minister has been ignominiously driven from Madrid, and you have quietly and tacitly acquiesced in the insult which the Spanish Government have put upon you." The immediate consequences of Minto negotiation in Italy have been assassination and rebellion, the flight of the Pope from his dominions, and the surrender of the sacred city to the anarchy of the Club propagandists. But perhaps the worst instance of our interference is that with the Neapolitan and Sicilian affairs. We have thus chosen openly to countenance rebellion: we have gone the length of negotiating with insurgents, for securing them an independent government. We held out a threat, which we did not dare to fulfil.