The _coup d'état_ of Louis Napoleon did not deserve to be favourably received in England. The restoration of a military Government in France alarmed half of us by a fear of the revival of the Napoleonic traditions. The overthrow of a Constitution exasperated the believers in liberty. All alike were justly shocked by the treachery and violence with which the Man of December had made his way to the throne. The newspapers and popular orators, accustomed to canvass and criticise the actions of statesmen at home, forgot that prudence suggested reticence about the affairs of others with whom we had no right to interfere. The army was master of France, and to speak of its chief in such terms as those in which historians describe a Sylla or a Marius was not the way to maintain peaceful relations with dangerous neighbours. Neither the writers nor the speakers wished for war with France. They wished only for popularity as the friends of justice and humanity; but war might easily have been the consequence unless pen and tongue could be taught caution. Disraeli applied the bit in a powerful speech in the House. He had been acquainted with Louis Napoleon in the old days at Lady Blessington's. He had no liking for him and no belief in him; but he reminded the House and he reminded the nation that it was not for us to dictate how France was to be governed, and that the language, so freely used might provoke a formidable and even just resentment. [Sidenote: THE CRIMEAN WAR] The Crimean war he was unable to prevent, but as good a judge as Cobden believed that if Disraeli and Lord Derby had not been turned out of office in 1852 they would have prevented it, and a million lives and a hundred millions of English money, which that business cost, need not have been sacrificed over a struggle which events proved to be useless. Much was to be said for a policy which would have frankly met and accepted the Emperor Nicholas's overtures to Sir Hamilton Seymour. If a joint pressure of all the European Powers had been brought to bear on Turkey, internal reforms could have been forced upon her, and preparation could have been made peacefully for the disappearance, ultimately inevitable, of the Turks out of Europe. If the state of public opinion forbade this (and Disraeli himself would certainly never have adopted such a course) something was to be said also for adhering firmly from the first to the traditionary dogmas on the maintenance of the integrity of the Turkish Empire, and this the Conservatives were prepared to do. Nothing at all was to be said for hesitation and waiting upon events. The Tzar was deceived into supposing that while we talked we meant nothing, and we drifted into a war of which the only direct result was a waste of money which, if wisely used, might have drained the Bog of Allen, turned the marshes of the Shannon into pasture ground, and have left in Ireland some traces of English rule to which we could look with satisfaction.