104 CAUSES INVOLVING FRANCE AND ENGLAND CHAP, scarcely wise to believe that the relations which • had subsisted between Lord Palmerston and the President of the French Eepublic would be closed by the fact that they had led to I^rd Pahnerston's dismissal from the Secretaryship of Foreign Af- fairs. On the contrary, it was to be inferred that communications of a most friendly kind would continue to pass between the French Em- j)eror and an English Minister who had suffered for his sake ; and the very same manliness of dis- position which would prevent him from engaging in anything like an underhand intrigue against his colleagues, would make him refuse to sit dumb when, in words brought him fresh from the Tuil- eries, an ambassador came to talk to him of the Eastern Question — came to tell liim that the new Emperor had an unbounded confidence in his judgment, wished to be governed by his counsels, and, in short, would disi)0se of poor France as the English Minister wished. Here, then, was the real bridge by which French overtures of the more secret and delicate sort would come from over the Channel. Here was the bridge by which England's acceptance or re- jection of all such overtures would go back to France, Thus, from the ascendancy of his strong nature, from his vast experience, and from his command of the motive power which he could bring at any moment from Paris, Lord Palmerston, even so early as the spring of 1853, was the most puissant member of Lord Aberdeen's Cabinet; and when,
