We should not have gone so far, and succeeded so rapidly, perhaps, had we not been aided by English politics. Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston did not disappoint my expectations. At the time of our visit to Rome, the government of Louis Philippe was in the zenith of its glory. The wily monarch seemed to have fully confirmed his throne, and his prime minister was successful in urging upon a large number of princes constitutional reforms, and it seemed likely, for a moment, that the revolutionary party would spend its fury harmlessly under the lead of the sovereigns themselves. But he deeply offended England by the Spanish match, the marriage of the Duc de Montpensier with an Infanta of Spain. By this marriage, he seemed to have completed his circle of alliances, and to have made himself too powerful for English politics, and was rendering himself still more so by the constitutional reforms he was urging upon German and Italian princes. It was necessary to thwart him, and put an end to his illegitimate reign. Lord Minto was despatched, and other agents instructed to confer with the chiefs of the revolutionary party in Italy, and also in France, and encourage them to insist on reforms effected by the people from below, and to refuse to be satisfied with reforms effected from above by the princes. These chiefs were assured of the sympathy, perhaps they were promised the assistance, of the English government, which makes it a point to support a revolutionary party in every foreign state. In the mean time, all the batteries we had erected were opened. Exeter Hall, and the Protestant Alliance were in full operation, and I thought it quite certain that a force was accumulated and brought to bear on the Rock of Peter that would shiver it into ten thousand atoms. Our presence was no longer necessary at Rome, and after Easter of 1847, we went to Paris, to fire a train in that city of combustibles. We were not needed there, for having had interviews with the chiefs of the revolutionary party in Geneva, we had already prepared them. They had more than profited by our instructions; they had even improved on them, and stood in closer relation to the Unknown Force than we did ourselves. All we could do to aid on the revolution which broke out the following February, was to persuade some of the leading Liberals to introduce the “peaceful agitation,” reduced to so perfect a system by O’Connell in Ireland, which was done in what were called the “Reform Banquets.”