Taking the present _Blue Books_ at the value set upon them by the Government, we believe that every impartial man who has glanced over their contents, and who has read the debates in Parliament, will be convinced of the blindness, the weakness—we will not say the criminality—of the Cabinet, in all that relates to the Eastern question. It is in vain that we attempt to defend their conduct on the ground of _ignorance_, for there are abundant proofs in the documents before us, however imperfect they may be, that they were not ignorant, and were not unwarned of what was going on. The evidence is too clear even for audacity to deny, or hypocrisy to diminish. They themselves have been forced to admit that they were outwitted and duped as no men were ever duped before; and however a generous and forgiving people may pardon the fault for the frankness of the confession, such imbecility in the past is but poor encouragement for the future. The noble lord who holds the post of Prime Minister is indeed unfortunate in his general estimate of men and things. When the Revolution of February was on the point of bursting forth, he is said to have declared his conviction that King Louis Philippe and his dynasty were firmer than ever on the throne of France. After a long, and, we presume, conscientious study of the President of the new French republic, the same acute intellect pronounced Louis Napoleon to be little better than an idiot, and in contemptuous terms described him as incapable in thought and action. When the votes of millions approved and confirmed the daring illegality of the act of December 1851, he believed that his rule could not last three months: and in the latest exercise of his discrimination and knowledge of the world, our great statesman laughed to scorn the fear that the Emperor Nicholas ever contemplated any attack against the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, and this at the moment when every post was bringing home news of the hostile attitude of Russia; when the newspapers teemed with accounts of the movements of armies in the south of Russia; when that force was placed on a war footing, and provisioned as if on the eve of a campaign; when a fleet was at Sebastopol ready to weigh anchor; when wood was cut down for the construction of pontoons and bridges for the Pruth and Danube; and when Constantinople itself was menaced with a _coup de main_;[8] when the magazines of Odessa were gorged with military stores for the complete equipment of 150,000 men; when troops had already marched to the Turkish frontier; when Prince Menschikoff was outraging the Sultan in his own capital, and dictating who should, or who should not, be his minister. And with the reports of our own diplomatic and consular agents confirming all those facts, the noble Lord at the head of her Majesty’s Government was smiling complacently at the compliments lavished on him by that great master of irony, Count Nesselrode, who chuckled with his imperial master at the