In foreign politics it is not so easy to share Lecky's opinion. The opium war against China, and the Crimean War, were blunders which hardly anyone now defends; and Palmerston's habit of bullying weak foreign powers did not really raise our prestige. For a long time we could not make up our minds whether France or Russia was the potential enemy; a vacillation which proved that the balance of power, which we thought so necessary for our safety, already existed. Our statesmen were blind to the menace from Germany, down to the end of the reign and later. The Crimean War only increased the friction between France and England. The French fortified Cherbourg, and talked openly of invasion. In 1860 Flahault, the French ambassador in London, said bluntly that 'his great object was to prevent war between the two countries.' This prolonged jealousy and suspicion between the two western powers made it impossible for England to exercise much influence on the Continent. The settlement after 1815 handed over central and eastern Europe to governments of the type which it is the fashion to call reactionary. Russia, Prussia, and Austria, acting together, were not to be resisted. And so the disturbances of 1848, once more kindled by Paris, just failed; and democracy had a serious rebuff. Nearly all the despotic governments of Europe were overthrown in 1848, and nearly all were restored a year later. The French indeed got rid of their king, mainly because he was a pacifist; but Germany refused to be unified under the red flag, and began to prepare for a very different destiny. The Pope wobbled and then came down heavily on the side of the old order. Meanwhile, England looked on. Chartism was a very feeble affair compared to the continental revolutions, and it flickered out in this year. The people had got rid of the corn-laws, and were fairly content; there was nothing at all like a class war in this generation. So, while Macaulay was showing how very differently we manage things in England--compare, for example, 1688 with 1848--we decided to invite the world and his wife to London, to envy and admire us in Sir Joseph Paxton's great glass house. We must not laugh at that architectural monstrosity. It was the mausoleum of certain generous hopes. On the Continent men had been shot and hanged for the brotherhood of the human race; we hoped to show them a more excellent way. We had given a lead in free trade; we still hoped that our example would soon be followed in all civilised nations. We had reduced our army to almost nothing; we hoped that militarism was a thing of the past. All these hopes were frustrated. A fanatical nationalism began to foster racial animosity; the _enragés_ of Europe began to preach class-hatred and to find many listeners; protective tariffs were set up on every frontier; international law became a mere cloak for the schemes of violence; and, as has been said, all Europe 'breathed a harsher air.' Worst of all, the mad race of