"France is still, next to England, the first naval power in Europe; she has more ships than she requires to destroy, if necessary, the naval forces of Russia. "Would England furnish us with subsidies? "England has no money; France has more than she, and the French have no need to be in the pay of the British Parliament. "Would England assist us with soldiers and arms? "France is in no lack of arms, still less of soldiers. "Would England assure us an increase of insular or continental territory? "Where shall we secure that increase, if we make war on Russia on behalf of the Grand Turk? Shall we attempt descents on the coasts of the Baltic, the Black Sea and Behring's Straits? Could we have any other hope? Should we expect to attach England to ourselves so that she should hasten to our assistance if ever our internal affairs came to be embroiled? "Heaven protect us against any such prevision and against foreign intervention in our domestic affairs! England, besides, has always held kings and the liberty of nations cheap; she is always ready remorselessly to sacrifice monarchy or republic to her own interests. Only lately she proclaimed the independence of the Spanish Colonies at the same time that she refused to recognise that of Greece; she sent her fleets to support the Mexican insurgents and caused a few paltry steamboats destined for the Hellenes to be seized in the Thames; she admitted the legality of the rights of Mahmud and denied that of the rights of Ferdinand; she is devoted by turns to despotism or democracy according to the wind which brings the ships of the City merchants to her ports. "Lastly, if we associated ourselves with the warlike projects of England and Austria against Russia, where should we go in search of our old adversary of Austerlitz? He is not on our frontiers. Should we then send out at our cost a hundred thousand men, fully equipped, to succour Vienna or Constantinople? Should we have an army at Athens to protect the Greeks against the Turks, and an army at Adrianople to protect the Turks against the Russians? Should we fire grape-shot on the Osmanlis in the Morea and embrace them on the Dardanelles? Nothing that lacks common-sense in human affairs succeeds. [Sidenote: On Eastern affairs: Part II.]