The 'Morning Chronicle' opened a fire upon the American Treaty in the beginning of last week, which has been well sustained in a succession of articles of very unequal merit. To these the 'Times' has responded, and in my opinion successfully. It was amusing to me to read in the columns of the 'Chronicle' all that I had been hearing Palmerston say, _totidem verbis_; his articles were merely a repetition of his talk, and that as exactly as if the latter had been taken down in shorthand. As far as I can judge, he will, however, fail to carry public opinion with him; he will not be entirely supported by the writers on his own side, nor by his political adherents. Sir James Kemp, an excellent authority, both civil and military, approves of the Treaty and attaches no importance to the objections that are urged against it. The 'Examiner' writes in its favour. The Ministers think they stand on very strong grounds, and the fact is that Palmerston's determination to find fault with everything that is done in the Foreign Office, and the indiscriminate abuse which he heaps upon every part of our foreign policy, deprives his opinion of the weight which it would be entitled to, if he was only tolerably impartial. I never saw so much political bitterness as that which rankles in the hearts of himself and his wife. He abuses the acts of the Government, but he always does so with an air of gaiety and good humour, and, to do him justice, he never expresses himself with any coarseness or asperity, never so as to make social intercourse impossible, or even disagreeable, between him and his opponents, but under this gay and gallant exterior there burns a fierce hostility, and a resolution to attack them upon every point, and a more unscrupulous assailant never took the field. She talks a great deal more than he does, and it is easy to see, through her graceful, easy manner and habitual urbanity, how impatient they are of exclusion from office, and how intolerant of any dissent from or opposition to his policy and opinions. They have never forgiven Lords Holland and Clarendon for having thwarted him on the Syrian question. She alluded, at Broadlands, to the supposed desire of the latter to supplant him at the Foreign Office, which she said she did not believe, though she evidently does, and she said that Clarendon had done himself an injury which he would never get over. She talked of their opposition as if they had been the only dissentients in the Cabinet, and then, forgetting this, she discussed the conduct of others, particularly of Melbourne, and John Russell, both of whom she described as alarmists, and the former as all along disinclined to the bold course which Palmerston was pursuing. [Sidenote: THE STADE DUES.]