So far as the Queen was able to take an active interest in the management of the Foreign policy of the country, the only questions to which she paid close attention were those relating to Poland and the Duchy of Sleswig-Holstein. For two years rebellious agitators had disturbed Poland, and at last the Russian Government, in a moment of irritation, resolved to seize the youth of the upper and middle classes, who represented the discontented sections of the people, and drive them into the Imperial Army as conscripts. The rigour with which this measure was enforced roused a great deal of popular sympathy in England on behalf of the Poles, and strong pressure was put on the Government by the Tories, by some Radicals like Mr. Stansfeld, who were friendly to Continental revolutionary movements, and even by a large section of the Evangelical party, led by Lord Shaftesbury, to interfere on behalf of the Polish insurgents. For in February, 1863, the Committee of the Polish National Insurrection had issued its first proclamation, after which, Mieroslavski raised the standard of revolt on the Posen frontier. A pamphlet, called “Napoleon III. et la Pologne,” had been published in Paris, under the auspices of the French Emperor, and it not only created a sensation on the Continent, but it roused the suspicions of the Queen. Palmerston’s personal sympathies were naturally with the Poles. But, on the other hand, the Queen could not forget that the restoration of Poland was one of the many devices which the Emperor of the French had in reserve for upsetting the Treaties of 1815, in order to give him a pretext for seizing the left bank of the Rhine. It was not, therefore, from any sympathy for the Czar’s autocratic policy of repression that the English Court was averse from encouraging the Polish insurrection, or that the King of Prussia and his Minister, Herr Von Bismarck, actively aided Russia in coercing the Poles by massing troops along the frontier of Posen, and delivering up Polish fugitives who fled to Prussian territory. The Courts of Berlin and St. James’s alike dreaded a general European war--and to that issue the Queen honestly believed a policy of intervention must tend. For a time Lord Palmerston’s Ministry tossed about aimlessly in a vortex of embarrassments. They were afraid to develop a policy of intervention, lest it might encourage an outbreak of anti-Russian opinion in England, and drive them into a war, with Napoleon III. as a self-interested ally. They were equally afraid that a policy of cold neutrality might be resented by the populace, whose sympathies were being roused daily on behalf of Poland. At last they sent a secret agent--Mr. Lawrence Oliphant--to Poland, to discover the real character of the revolutionary movement. His report was very discouraging to Lord Palmerston, but it strengthened the hands of the Queen. Mr. Oliphant found that the conscription enforced by Russia was really an act of precaution against