I have no hesitation in affirming, my dear Sir, that this is the greatest and most salutary feature of the first half of this century, and has contributed more than anything else to the revival of principles of equity and justice in the relations between governments and their people, to the increased prosperity of different nations, and to the progress of civilisation in the world. And, new as its rule yet is, this fact has been sufficient to stop, or at least to check in their evil developements, the noxious germs of an ambitious and violent policy, revivified in Europe by the revolutionary crises of 1848. Temptations have certainly not been wanting to governments and parties since that date. But in 1848 the French Republic respected the peace of Europe and the law of nations; in 1852 the French Empire hastened to declare that it was peace; and when, leaving that, she threw herself into the Italian war, is it credible that she would have been contented with Nice and Savoy as the price of the support she gave to the Italians if she had not been restrained by the good modern principle of European policy, the condemnation of the spirit of ambition and conquest? [Footnote: Not to speak of the chance of having to deal with Prussia. Cf. _ante_, p. 27.] It is this legitimate and guiding principle which is at present ignored, attacked, and in great danger. I have no intention of entering here upon the question of German unity, or of inquiring how far the consequences of Sadowa are to be attributed to the real and spontaneous effort of national sentiment amongst the Germans. I waive all discussion on this point. I do not suppose anyone will say that in this great German event Prussian ambition had no share, or that force and conquest did not act side by side with the impulse of national sentiment. But I do not now meddle with what has been done in Germany; that has nothing in common with the present pretensions of Prussia to Alsace and Lorraine. Have these provinces given any manifestation, any appearance, of a desire to be included in the German unity? Is not the Prussian policy in this openly and exclusively a policy of ambition and of conquest, such as would have been followed, from more or less specious motives of royal or national selfishness, by Louis XIV. in the seventeenth, by Frederick II. in the eighteenth, by Napoleon I. in the nineteenth century? such as the modern publicists and moralists have so often condemned and fought against? such, in fine, as all nations, in all ages--and especially Europe in our own times--have so cruelly suffered from? I say no more. I should be ashamed to insist upon what is so clear.