more seriously affected than he appears to be with the gravity of the circumstances, and should not look with more anxiety (if not apprehension) to the possible results; but he talks in the most off-hand way of the clamour that broke out at Paris, of his entire conviction that the French Cabinet have no thoughts of going to war, and that if they were to do so, their fleets would be instantly swept from the sea, and their armies everywhere defeated. That if they were to try and make it a war of opinion and stir up the elements of revolution in other countries, a more fatal retaliation could and would be effected in France, where Carlist or Napoleonist interest, aided by foreign intervention, would shake the throne of Louis Philippe, while taxation and conscription would very soon disgust the French with a war in which he did not anticipate the possibility of their gaining any military successes. Everything may possibly turn out according to his expectations. He is a man blessed with extraordinary good fortune, and his motto seems to be that of Danton, 'De l'audace, encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace.' But there is a flippancy in his tone, an undoubting self-sufficiency, and a levity in discussing interests of such tremendous magnitude, which satisfies me that he is a very dangerous man to be entrusted with the uncontrolled management of our foreign relations. But our Cabinet is a complete republic, and Melbourne, their ostensible head, has no overruling authority, and is too indolent and too averse to energetic measures to think of having any, or to desire it. Any man of resolution and obstinacy does what he will with Melbourne. Nothing was ever so peremptory and determined as John Russell about Poulett Thomson's peerage, which the others did not at all like, but which he not only insisted upon, but actually threatened to resign unless it was done by a given day. It was with the greatest difficulty they could prevail on him to defer its being gazetted till Parliament was up, Duncannon and others dreading that it would excite the choler of the Duke of Wellington, and very likely provoke him to fall foul of some of their Bills. [11] [The Treaty between England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia for the settlement of the affairs of the East, by compelling the Pasha of Egypt to relinquish Syria, and to restrict his dominion in Egypt, was signed in London on July 15, 1840. France having declined to concur in this policy, the Treaty was signed without her, and without her knowledge. This event was of the gravest consequence, and brought Europe to the brink of war.]