If gentlemen will read over the correspondence about our offer of mediation, with this key, they will understand exactly the meaning of the difference of tone between the Duke M. de Montmorency and M. de Chateaubriand: they will observe that when I first described the question respecting Spain as a _French_ question, the Duke de Montmorency loudly maintained it to be a question _toute européenne_; but that M. de Chateaubriand, upon my repeating the same description in the sequel of that correspondence, admitted it to be a question at once and equally _toute française, et toute européenne_: an explanation the exact meaning of which I acknowledge I do not precisely understand; but which, if it does not distinctly admit the definition of a, question _française_, seems at least to negative M. de Montmorency's definition of a question TOUTE _européenne_. In thus unavoidably introducing the names of the French Ministers, I beg I may be understood to speak of them with respect and esteem. Of M. de Montmorency I have already said that, in voluntarily relinquishing his office, he made an honourable sacrifice to the sincerity of his opinions, and to the force of obligations which he had undertaken but could not fulfil. As to M. de Chateaubriand, with whom I have the honour of a personal acquaintance, I admire, his talents and his genius; I believe him to be a man of an upright mind, of untainted honour, and most capable of discharging adequately the high functions of the station which he fills. Whatever I may think of the political conduct of the French Government in the present war, I think this tribute justly due to the individual character of M. de Chateaubriand. I think it further due to him in fairness to correct a misrepresentation to which I have, however innocently, exposed him. From a dispatch of Sir W. A'Court, which has been laid upon the table of the House, it appears as if M. de Chateaubriand had spoken of the failure of the mission of Lord F. Somerset as of an event which had actually happened, at a time when that nobleman had not even reached Madrid. I have recently received a corrected copy of that dispatch, in which the tense employed in speaking of Lord F. Somerset's mission is not _past_ but _future_; and the failure of that mission is only anticipated, not announced as having occurred. The dispatch was sent _in cipher_ to M. Lagarde (from whom Sir W. A'Court received his copy of it), and nothing is more natural in such cases than a mistake in the inflection of a verb.