Writing on New Year’s Day in 1857, Lord Malmesbury says in his Diary, “The Conference opened yesterday on the questions of Bolgrad and the Isle of Serpents, which the Russians falsely claim as being included in the Treaty of Peace. The Swiss are making energetic preparations for resisting the threatened invasion of Neufchâtel by Prussia; whilst England and France are using their utmost exertions to prevent a war. England has declared war against Persia, and Admiral Seymour has bombarded Canton to avenge an insult offered to our flag.”[293] The Queen, in a letter conveying her greetings to the Emperor of the French, also observes, mournfully, that “the New Year again begins amid the din of warlike preparation;” and there was undoubtedly a feeling of disappointment in England that the Peace of Paris had not brought peace to the world. Yet the general condition of the country was prosperous. Crime, however--especially fraud and murder--had increased shockingly, and severe moralists in Pall Mall went about predicting that Parliament must now devote a Session to social legislation--especially penal legislation--so as to purge a corrupt people of its wickedness. But the corrupt people, much to the Queen’s regret, was of quite another opinion--and so were the political factions. The constituencies were beginning to murmur against taxation. Now that war was over, they demanded sweeping reductions in the income and other taxes, which involved the diminution of the army and navy to such slender dimensions, that her Majesty felt certain they would be as unfit to cope with a sudden emergency as they were when the Crimea was invaded. As for the factions, they were determined to turn out the Government, which they knew existed solely on the credit Palmerston had obtained by carrying on war when the nation wanted it, and ending it when the nation was getting sick of the struggle. The Queen was hostile to any abrupt change of Government at a time when she could see no means of replacing Palmerston’s Cabinet by a stronger one, and she viewed with disapprobation the subterranean intrigues which were going on between the Tories and the Peelites. That Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli were attempting, through the medium of Lord Stanley, to form a Coalition, was known at the Court; nay, it was even said that Mr. Gladstone was to take the leadership of the Tory Party in the House of Commons. Sir William Jolliffe, the Tory Whip, when pressed on the point in December, 1856, told Mr. George Byng that this was “not true at present; that he could not say what might or might not happen hereafter, but that he (Mr. Gladstone) could not be accepted as a leader, and must, in any case, first serve in the ranks.” Only a short time before that some of the younger members of the Party had visited the drawing-room of the Carlton Club with the amiable intention of throwing Mr. Gladstone out of the window. That they had now modified their repugnance to him indicates how