of London) for “it did not affect the independence of Denmark, and it went very little beyond what she herself had agreed to.” Now, Lord Russell had pledged himself not to support any arrangement that went “beyond what she [Denmark] had agreed to” when she accepted the compromise arrived at in his house by the plenipotentiaries of the neutral Powers, and Lord Palmerston’s additional explanation that it turned “simply on the question to whom a portion of territory should belong,” provoked a contemptuous titter in the House. But the real truth had to be confessed at last. Ministers, said Lord Palmerston--who had led the War Party in Lord Aberdeen’s Cabinet--in advising their sovereign to levy war, “could not possibly lose sight of the magnitude of the object--the magnitude of the resistance which would have to be overcome, and the comparative means which England and its supposed antagonist would have to bring to bear upon the contest.” They had discovered that neither France nor Russia would help England in supporting Denmark. “The whole brunt, therefore,” said Lord Palmerston, “of the effort to dislodge the German troops, and those who might come to their assistance, from Sleswig and Holstein, would fall upon this country alone.” Hence, he continued, “we have not thought it consistent with our duty to give our Sovereign advice to undertake such an enterprise.” The whole scheme of Palmerstonian diplomacy seemed revealed, as if by a lightning-flash, in all its impotent meddlesomeness. In a matter of no very great importance concerning a foreign country, England was to talk daggers, but use none, if her antagonist chanced to be too strong to be cowed by menaces. The House of Commons instinctively felt that this was not a policy worthy of a great nation. It received the Prime Minister’s statement in a manner that convinced him that his spell over it was broken. He made one final effort to regain his influence by appealing to its foibles. He accordingly uttered dark and terrible threats of vengeance if Austria and Prussia attacked “the existence of Denmark as an independent Power in Europe,” and did other things which everybody knew they had no temptation to do. “If,” said he, “we should see at Copenhagen the horrors of a town taken by assault--the destruction of property, the sacrifice of the lives, not only of its defenders but of peaceful inhabitants, the confiscation which would arise, the capture of the Sovereign as a prisoner of war, or events of that kind--I do not mean to say that if any of these events were likely to happen, the position of this country might not possibly be a fit subject for reconsideration.” Then he paused to see if his old trick of rhetoric would do its work. It failed him, however, and, instead of the cheers for which he waited, his declamation was greeted with shouts of contemptuous derision. The cheers did not come till Mr. Disraeli condemned the utterance as “a continuation of those senseless and