Notwithstanding the imposing aspect of these azure tomes, technically termed _Blue Books_, we confess we do not look upon them without a feeling of suspicion or incredulity. No doubt the usages of Parliament and the will of the Crown require the production of documents relating to every important transaction connected with our foreign policy, and they are intended to furnish ample and accurate details of our international acts, and to unfold to the public the intricacies of complicated and tedious negotiations. Such is the object of those expensive publications; but, for the attainment of that object, they should be not merely authentic, but complete. And when we say that we do not regard the _Blue Books_ with all the respect that full confidence inspires, it is because we know that the papers they contain are well sifted and culled: those parts which would prove the weakness, the ignorance, and the imprudence of a Minister, are so carefully kept out of sight, and so curtailed, and those in his favour so prominently brought forward, that we have, after all, a very partial, and consequently a very imperfect, view of the manner in which a negotiation has been conducted. Truth, they say, lies at the bottom of a well: the Foreign Office may be that well, but the eye of the public is not always enabled to pierce its depth. Moreover, we have heard it related that some Ministers indulge a vicious habit of communicating instructions to their diplomatic agents in notes or letters marked _private_, or evidently meant to be so from their familiar style and tone; and that some letters contain hints or instructions sometimes contrary to the official despatches. This is unjust to the public, and unfair to the diplomatic agent himself, who, in case his conduct should become subject of inquiry or censure in Parliament, is thus debarred from defending himself, because the real instructions on which he acted bear the stamp of privacy, which delicacy forbids him to violate; and it is quite certain that the _Blue Books_ contain no trace of those confidential missives. There is one personage in particular whose name has been more connected than any other with our foreign policy, who is said to carry this habit to such a point as to force complaints from his own subordinates.