IN THK WAR AGAINST KUSSIA. 103 lisli Policy of upholding the Ottoman Empire; chap. and the price of this was a price which, far from ' grudging, he would actually delight to pay ; for, desiring to have the Governments of France and England actively united together for an English object — desiring to prevent a revival of the Erench Republic — and, above all, to prevent a restoration of the House of Bourbon — he was only too glad to be able to strengthen the new Emperor's hold upon France by exalting his personal station, and giving him the support of a close, separate, and published alliance with the Queen of England. And in regard to the dislocation which such a new policy might work, he seems not to have set so high a value upon the existing framework of the European system as to believe that its destruction would be a portentous evil. If he thought it an evil at all, he thought it one which a strong man might repair. Lord Palmerston had been at the head of the Foreign Office during so many years of his life, and he had brought to bear upon its duties an activity so restless, and (upon the whole) so much steadfastness of purpose, that the more recent foreign policy of England, whether it had been right or whether it had been wrong, was in him almost incarnate. It was obvious, therefore, that whilst he was in the Cabinet, he would always be resorted to for counsel upon foreign affairs b)' any of his colleagues who were not divided from him by strong difference of opinion, by political an- tagonism, or by personal dislike. Again, it was
