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 Switzer- 
land 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 contradic- 
tion 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 

No. 24083, November 6, 1861.— Ed. 

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 concern- 
ing 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 

a “Bulletin”, Le Moniteur universel, No. 309, November 5, 1861.— Ed. 
No. 10, October 2, 1861 (“The Projected Intervention in Mexico’’).— Ed. 

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 govern- 
ment 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 contradic- 
tory. 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. 

New-York Daily Tribune, No. 6462, December 19, 1861.— Ed. 

“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 Ameri- 
can 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 

a “The Case of Mexico”, The Economist, No. 947, October 19, 1861.— Ed. 
reprint in the New-York Daily Tribune, No. 6434, November 16, 1861.— Ed. 

intervention precedent on which they can build later. That is the 
real object of the English-French-Spanish intervention. Its im- 
mediate 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.