Panics appear to have become in these latter days as regular 
incidents of English political life, as they long ago were of the 
English industrial system. Panics, if properly managed, form a 
great resource for governments in so-called free countries. When 
people are frightened out of their senses their minds are easily 
diverted from dangerous crotchets. Take, for instance, the Reform 
question in England. At the very time when England was 
considering whether she would resign forever the control of North 
America, Lord Grey proposed a sweeping Reform bill which was 
to do away with all the traditional influence of the Lords on the 
Lower House. In 1780 the Duke of Richmond brought in a 
Reform bill which positively went the length of demanding annual 
Parliaments and universal suffrage. Pitt, himself, whose centenary 
birthday has passed away without being noticed by his country- 
men, then just occupied in celebrating the secular anniversary of 
Handel’s death—this same Pitt had originally inscribed on _ his 
banners the words: “Parliamentary Reform.” 4’? How, then, came 
it to pass that the Reform movement of the eighteenth century, 
having seized the most intellectual representatives of the govern- 
ing classes, even died away without leaving any traces behind? It 
was swept away by the French Revolution panic, in the train of 
which followed the Anti-Jacobin war, the Public Debt monster, and 
the ignominious Gagging Acts.*'!* Some years ago, the Russian 
panic killed two Reform bills,*’* and now-a-days the French 
invasion panic is likely to do the same service. We can, therefore, 
estimate at their just value the dark apprehensions of the English 
Radicals, under Mr. Bright’s leadership, who profess to consider 
the oligarchs and their organs in the public press as interested 

panic-mongers, bent upon defeating Reform, and perpetuating 
misrule, by the specter of a French invasion.* There are, indeed, 
upon the face of the thing some ugly, suspicious-looking features. 
The Palmerstonian -press is the main vehicle of the invasion panic, 
while Palmerston is apparently Louis Bonaparte’s most intimate 
friend. The same man who was dismissed from one Cabinet 
because he acknowledged the coup d’état, without the sanction of 
his colleagues, and was driven from another Cabinet because he 
introduced the French Conspiracy bill, would he be the most 
proper personage to cross Bonapartist schemes? At the same time 
that the Palmerstonian press warns the English people against 
Bonaparte’s perfidy, it calls upon them to embark with the same 
man into a new Chinese expedition. 

Nevertheless it cannot be denied that the present war panic in 
England, though it may turn to the profit of aristocratic party 
policy, is not altogether divested of rational grounds. Whenever 
Bonaparte concludes a new peace, England asks herself instinctive- 
ly whether her turn for bearing the brunt of war has at last come. 
Thus a war between France and England appears a question of 
time only. For fear of the revolution, official Europe accepted the 
regimé of Louis Bonaparte, but a periodical renewal of war is one 
of the vital conditions of that regimé. It only delivers the Cabinets 
from the bugbear of revolution on the express understanding that 
they allow themselves to be successively conquered. He had hardly 
sat two years upon his usurped throne when the Russian war had 
become necessary to his prolonged tenure of power. Two years 
had not yet elapsed since the conclusion of the Russian peace 
when the Italian adventure alone could save him from an 
ignominious catastrophe. His difficulties have certainly not de- 
creased by a succession of wars, resulting in nothing but delusions 
on the one hand, in public debts, and the growing insolence of a 
Pretorian guard on the other, not to speak of the opposition of 
the clergy, added to the other elements of internal insecurity 
already existing. After the Russian war, some time elapsed before 
Orleanist disaffection dared to mutter its sarcasms, and revolu- 
tionary despair to launch its grenades. The evidence of disappoint- 
ment that characterized the last war shows most conspicuously in 
the dead lock of Frenth commerce, the complete failure of the 
Imperial amnesty,” the recrudescence of severity against the press, 

a The Times, No. 23473, November 25, 1859 (leading article).— Ed. 

and the revived hopes of the Orleanists. While the mass of the 
French people grumble at a barren war that has cost them the 
savings of peace, the mass of the army rail at a peace that, in their 
judgment, has cheated them out of the fruits of war. Some 
months more will develop to their full extent the difficulties Louis 
Bonaparte labors under, and from which there is only one 
issue—that of a new war. The successive wars, however, which his 
position compels him to enter upon grow gradually more 
dangerous for himself and for Europe, as whose most powerful 
representative England may be regarded. The war in the Crimea 
was hardly carried on on European soil. The war in Italy could 
only be localized by its abrupt termination. A war on the Rhine, 
and still more an invasion of England, would in its very beginning, 
be tantamount to a general European war. But it is only between 
Prussia and England, as the respective objects of his next attack, 
that Louis Bonaparte has to choose. In both cases England will 
become a party, in the one as principal, in the other as subsidiary. 
The latter eventuality is the more probable, but it is impossible to 
foresee what direct collisions between France and England may 
grow out of a war between France and Prussia. On another 
occasion we propose reviewing the military preparations England 
is making with an eye to the impending conflict. 

Written on November 25, 1859 

Tribune, No. 5813, December 9, 1859