London, March 6. Today’s Morning Herald has surprised London 
by the following announcement: 

“We have excellent authority for stating that the French Emperor has 
remonstrated against the committee for inquiring into the conduct of the war, and 
that he has said, that, in the event of its continuing to sit, the armies of the two 
nations cannot act together, although they may act for the same object. In order 
[...] to satisfy Louis Napoleon, without affronting the English people, a dissolution 
of Parliament will [...) take place* as soon as possible.” 

Without attributing too much importance to this paragraph in 
the Herald, we record it as one of the many symptoms which 
indicate that secret forces on both sides of the Channel are working to 
bring about a dissolution of the Anglo-French alliance. 

In this context the statements made by ex-minister Sir James 
Graham should be recalled’: under pressure from the’ Committee 
of Inquiry our Admiral‘ would be forced to reveal all the 
considerations which led to the postponement of the blockade, and 
the inquiry would include our relations with our great and: 
powerful ally at a time when it is of the utmost importance that 
there should not be the least misunderstanding. 

Sidney Herbert: He challenged the Committee to get to the 
bottom of the affair without taking the risk of insulting our army 
in the Crimea and possibly shaking the confidence of our ailies. 
Unless one of its members were able to check the Committee when 

Herald, No. 22372, March 6, 1855.— Ed. 

it stepped on dangerous ground, great injustice would be done, 
and even the officers summoned by it might perhaps be sacrificed, 
since incriminating questions might be put to them, while they 
would not be permitted to answer because in so doing they might 
have to make dangerous and delicate revelations. He for one 
thought it his duty to prevent officers of the British army being 
placed in a position where they would be made the object of 
accusations while their hands were tied and they were unable to 
defend themselves. 

Gladstone: Among other things, a committee would have to 
examine why a road from Balaklava had not been constructed 
earlier! If the Committee did not investigate this, it would achieve 
nothing. If however it investigated this question, the reply would 
be: shortage of labour. If it then asked what caused this shortage 
of labour, the reply would be that the men were digging trenches 
and that these were extensive owing to the proportion in which the lines had 
been distributed between the French and the English. I further declare that 
an investigation would be empty pretence unless you probed the 
question of the roads, and, if you probed that, the defence of the 
accused parties would directly disturb the most intimate relations 
between England and France. 

Understandably these ministerial statements have forced the 
widely scattered seeds of distrust into abundant growth. National 
pride had already been severely wounded by the relegation of the 
British army in the Crimea to guard duty at Balaklava. Then came 
the semi-official article in the Moniteur with its “imperatorial” 
remarks on the British Constitution.” It called forth caustic replies 
in the weekly press here. Then came the publication of the 
Brussels Mémoire, in which Louis Bonaparte is represented as the 
originator of the Crimean expedition on the one hand, and of the 
concessions to Austria on the other.” By their ruthlessness, the 
comments on this Mémoire—as, for instance, that in The Morning 
Advertiser—remind one of the “Letters of an Englishman” on the 
coup d’état of December 2.° The following extract from the Chartist 

* Le Moniteur universel, No. 48, February 17, 1855.— Ed. 

Expedition” (The Morning Advertiser, No. 19875, March 3, 1855) and the 

organ, The People’s Paper, will illustrate the repercussions of all this 
in the true popular press’: 

“He [Bonaparte] it was that lured England to the Crimea. [...] Our army, once in 
that snare, was placed by him in such a position, that it broke the edge of Russia’s 
strength before that strength could reach his own. [...] At Alma, at Balaklava, at 
Inkermann, at Sebastopol, the British were played into the post of danger. They 
had to bear the brunt—they had to suffer the chief loss; [...] England engaged to 
send only one-third as many nien as France. That one-third had to fight nearly the 
whole of the battles. That one-third had to take more than half the lines before 
Sebastopol. Our army was destroyed, because they could not get the food and 
clothes which lay rotting at Balaklava. They could not get them because there was 
no road from Balaklava to Sebastopol, and there was no road from Balaklava to 
Sebastopol because Napoleon insisted that the British with less than one-third of 
the force [...] should do more than half the work in the trenches; and, therefore, 
they had no men to spare to make the road.[...] This is the secret at which Graham, 
Sidney Herbert, and Gladstone hinted.... Thus he, Napoleon, has deliberately 
murdered 44,000 of our soldiers, etc.” 

All these signs of suspicious vexation with the French ally gain 
importance because Lord Palmerston is at the head of the 
government—a man who on each occasion has reached his 
position by climbing up the ladder of the French alliance, then 
suddenly turned this alliance into almost unavoidable war between 
France and England. Thus it was in the Turko-Syrian affair of 1840, 
and the treaty of July 15° with which he crowned his ten-year-old 
alliance with France. In reference to this, Sir Robert Peel remarked 
in 1842 that 

“he had never clearly understood why the alliance with France of which the noble lord 
had always pretended to be so proud, had been broken.” 

And thus, once again, in 1847, on the occasion of the Spanish 
marriages.” At the time, it was asserted by Palmerston—who, in 
1846, was allowed to resume his post only after he had paid his 
respects to Louis Philippe, become reconciled to him with great 
ostentation, and flattered the Frenchman in a speech in the House of 
Commons—that it was Louis Philippe who had dissolved the alliance 
because the Treaty of Utrecht’ had been violated (a treaty lapsed in 
1793 and never renewed since that time) and because he had 
committed an “act of perfidy” against the English Crown. As to the 
“act of perfidy” it was really committed, but, as the documents 

No. 148, March 3, 1855.— Ed. 

subsequently published proved, Palmerston had manoeuvred the 
French Court into this act of perfidy in the most cunning manner so 
as to obtain a pretext for the break. While the wily Louis Philippe 
thought he was outwitting him, he simply fell into the carefully laid 
trap of the “facetious” viscount. The February revolution alone 
prevented the outbreak of war between England and France at that