Russia--the natural enemies of England--to join them in going to war with Germany--her natural ally. But having failed they ceased to menace the German Powers, who were too strong to be intimidated by Lord Palmerston. The resolution was only a party device to drive Ministers from office by drawing a sensational picture of the degradation to which England had been exposed by Ministerial diplomacy. Mr. Kinglake, however, interfered, and proposed a resolution drafted by Cobden evidently for the purpose of humiliating Palmerston, and yet offering a loophole of escape from a vote of censure that must, if carried, have cut short his career, and brought a Tory Ministry with violent anti-German sympathies back to power. This resolution ironically expressed the satisfaction of the House that the Queen had been advised not to aid Denmark by force of arms. Mr. Kinglake then showed Lord Palmerston a list of the Liberals who intended to vote for Mr. Disraeli’s motion, in the event of the Government declining to accept what Count Vitzthum calls Mr. Cobden’s “humiliating absolution,” so that the Prime Minister had but little choice. “He was bound either to retire from office, or swallow the bitter pill offered to him by the Manchester School and pledge himself to maintain the strictest neutrality.”[209] He agreed to swallow the pill, which Mr. Cobden refused to gild; for in his speech of the 6th of July Cobden delivered a scathing attack on the futility of Lord Palmerston’s whole scheme of foreign policy, which had subjected England to humiliation in all parts of the world. The final demonstration of its failure, he argued, was the complete justification of those principles of non-intervention which he and Mr. Bright had preached for many long and weary years. It was admitted that he laid down with a masterly hand the foreign policy which future Governments, whether Whig or Tory, would be compelled by the people to follow. “Our country,” said Cobden, amidst cheers from every part of the House, “requires peace. Some people think it is very degrading and very base that an Englishman should speak of his country as requiring peace, and as being entitled to enjoy its blessings; and if we allude to our enormous commercial and industrial engagements as a reason why we should avoid these petty embroilments, we are told that we are selfish and grovelling in our politics. But I say we were very wrong to take such measures as were calculated to extend our commerce, unless we were prepared to use prudential precautions to keep our varied manufacturing and mercantile operations free from the mischief of unnecessary war.” England had no armies to spare for Continental interference. She had 79,000 troops locked up in India. In China she had two little armies separated by thousands of miles; she had another detachment in Japan; she had 10,000 men “fighting somebody’s battles” in New Zealand; she had from 10,000 to 15,000 troops in North