The Times of today has a leading article* in its well-known,
confusedly kaleidoscopic, affectedly humorous style, on the French
government’s invasion of Dappenthal and on Switzerland’s protest
against this violation of territory.*° The oracle of Printing House
Square *’ recalls how, at the time of most acute struggle between
English manufacturers and landowners, little children employed in
the factories were led to throw needles into the most delicate parts
of the machinery to upset the motion of the whole powerful
automaton. The machinery is Europe, the little child is Switzerland and the needle that she throws into the smoothly running
automaton is— Louis Bonaparte’s invasion of her territory or,
rather, her outcry at his invasion. Thus the needle is suddenly
transformed into the outcry at the needle’s prick and the
metaphor into a piece of buffoonery at the expense of the reader
who expects a metaphor. The Times is further enlivened by its
own discovery that Dappenthal consists of a single village called
Cressonniéres. It ends its short article with a complete contradiction of its beginning. Why, it exclaims, make so much ado about
this infinitely small Swiss bagatelle, when every quarter of Europe
will be ablaze next spring? One may not forget that, shortly
before, Europe was a well regulated automaton. The whole article
appears sheer nonsense and yet it has its sense. It is a declaration
that Palmerston has given carte blanche in the Swiss incident to his
ally on the other side of the Channel. The explanation of this

a “Some of our middle-aged readers may recollect the time...”, The Times,

declaration is found in the dry notice in the Moniteur’ that on
October 31 England, France and Spain concluded a convention on
joint intervention in Mexico. The article of The Times on
Dappenthal and the note of the Moniteur on Mexico stand as
close together as the Canton of Waadt and Vera Cruz lie far apart.

It is credible that Louis Bonaparte counted on intervention in
Mexico among the many possibilities which he continually has
ready to divert the French people. Surely Spain, whose cheap
successes in Morocco and St. Domingo * have gone to her head,
dreams of a Restoration in Mexico. But it is certain that France’s
project had not yet matured and that both France and Spain were
opposed to a crusade against Mexico under English command.

On September 24, Palmerston’s private Moniteur, the Morning
Post, announced the details of an agreement that England, France
and Spain had reached for joint intervention in Mexico.’ The
following day the Patrie denied the existence of any such
agreement. On September 27 The Times refuted the Patrie,
without naming it. According to The Times’ article, Lord Russell
had communicated the English decision on intervention to the
French government, whereupon M. Thouvenel had answered that
the Emperor of the French had arrived at a like conclusion. It
was now the turn of Spain. In a semi-official organ the Spanish
government declared that it purposed an intervention in Mexico,
but by no means an intervention alongside of England. It rained
dementis. The Times had categorically announced that “the full
assent of the American President had been given to the
planned expedition”. Hardly had the report reached the other side
of the Atlantic Ocean when all the organs of the American
government branded it as a lie, since President Lincoln was going
with and not against Mexico. From all this it follows that the plan of
intervention in its present form originated in the Cabinet of St.
James.”

No less puzzling and contradictory than the statements concerning the origin of the convention were the statements concerning its
points at issue. One organ of Palmerston, the Morning Post,
announced that Mexico was not an organised state, with an
established government, but a mere robbers’ nest. It was to be
treated as such. The expedition had only one object—the
satisfaction of the Mexican state’s creditors in England, France and

Spain. To this end the combined forces would occupy the principal
ports of Mexico, collect the import and export duties on her coast
and hold this “material guarantee” * till all debt claims were satisfied.

The other organ of Palmerston, The Times, declared, on the
contrary, that England was “steeled against plunderings on the
part of bankrupt Mexico by long experience”. It was not a
question of the private interests of the creditors, but “they hope
that the mere presence of a combined squadron in the Gulf of
Mexico and the seizure of certain ports, will urge the Mexican
government to new exertions in keeping the internal peace, and will
compel the malcontents to confine themselves to some form of
opposition more constitutional than brigandage”’.

According to this, the expedition would therefore take place to
support the official government of Mexico. At the same time,
however, The Times intimates that “the City of Mexico was
sufficiently healthy, should it be necessary to penetrate so far’.

The most original means of consolidating a government
indisputably consists in the sequestration of its revenues and its
territories by force. On the’other hand, mere occupation of the
ports and collection of the duties in them can only cause the
Mexican government to set up a more inland-lying line of custom
houses. Import duties on foreign commodities, export duties on
American commodities would in this way be doubled; the
intervention would in fact satisfy the claims of European creditors
by extortions from European-Mexican trade. The Mexican government can become solvent only by internal consolidation, but it can
consolidate itself at home only so long as its independence is
respected abroad.

If the expedition’s ostensible ends are so contradictory, then the
ostensible means to these ostensible ends are still more contradictory. The English government organs themselves admit that if one
thing or another would be attainable by a unilateral intervention
of France or England or Spain, everything becomes unattainable
by a joint intervention of these states.

One may recall that the Libera] Party in Mexico under Juarez,
the official President of the republic, has now the upper hand at
almost all points; that the Catholic Party under General Marquez
has suffered defeat after defeat, and that the robber band
organised by it has been driven back to the sierras of Queretaro
and is dependent on an alliance with Mejia, the Indian chief there.
The last hope of the Catholic Party was Spanish intervention.

“The only point,” says The Times, “on which there may possibly be a difference
between ourselves and our allies, regards the government of the republic. England will
be content to see it remain in the hands of the Liberal Party, while France and
Spain are suspected of a partiality for the ecclesiastical rule which has recently been
overthrown. It would be strange, if France were, in bath the old and the new
world, to make herself the protector of priests and bandits. Just as in Italy the
partisans of Francis II at Rome are being equipped for their work of making
Naples ungovernable, so in Mexico the highways, indeed, the streets of the capital,
are infested with robbers, whom the church party openly declares to be its
friends.”

And just for this reason England strengthens the Liberal
government; in undertaking a crusade against it with France and
Spain she seeks to suppress anarchy by supplying the clerical party
lying at its last gasp with fresh allied troops from Europe!

Save during the short winter months the coasts of Mexico,
pestilential as they are, can only be held by conquest of the
country itself. But a third English government organ, The
Economist, declares the conquest of Mexico to be impossible.

“If it is desired,” says this paper, “to thrust upon her a British prince with an
English army, then the fiercest wrath of the United States is excited. France’s jealousy
would make such a conquest impossible, and a motion to this effect would be rejected
almost unanimously by an English parliament the moment it was submitted to it.
England, for her part, cannot entrust the government of Mexico to France. Of Spain
there can be no question whatever.” ?

The whole expedition is therefore a mystification, the key to
which the Patrie gives in these words:

“The convention recognises the necessity of installing in Mexico a strong
government that can maintain tranquillity and order there.”

The question is simply one of applying to the states of America
through a new Holy Alliance the principle according to which the
Holy Alliance held itself called on to interfere in the internal
governmental affairs of the countries of Europe.’ The first plan
of this sort was drawn up by Chateaubriand for the Bourbons
of Spain and France at the time of the Restoration.” It was
frustrated by Canning and Monroe, the President of the United
States, who declared any European interference in the internal
affairs of American states to be forbidden. Since then the American Union has constantly asserted the Monroe Doctrine as an
international law. The present Civil War, however, created the
right situation for securing to the European monarchies an

intervention precedent on which they can build later. That is the
real object of the English-French-Spanish intervention. Its immediate result can only be and is only intended to be the
restoration of the anarchy just dying out in Mexico.

Apart from all standpoints of international law in general, the
affair has the great significance for Europe that by concessions in
the domain of Continental politics England has purchased the
support of Louis Bonaparte in the Mexican expedition.