The Blue Book on the intervention in Mexico,* just published, 
contains the most damning exposure of modern English diploma- 
cy with all its hypocritical cant, ferocity against the weak, crawling 
before the strong, and utter disregard of international law. I must 
reserve for another letter the task of forwarding, by a minute 
analysis of the dispatches exchanged between Downing street and 
the British representatives of Mexico, the irrefragable proof that 
the present imbroglio is of English origin, that England took the 
initiative in bringing about the intervention, and did so on 
pretexts too flimsy and self-contradictory to even veil the real but 
unavowed motives of her proceedings. This infamy of the means 
employed in starting the Mexican intervention is only surpassed by 
the anile imbecility with which the British government affect to be 
surprised at and slink out of the execution of the nefarious 
scheme planned by themselves. It is the latter part of the business 
I propose dealing with for the present.” 

On the 13th December, 1861, Mr. IstGriz, the Spanish Ambas- 
sador at London, submitted to John Russell a note including the 
instructions sent by the Captain-General of Cuba‘ to the Spanish 
commanders, at the head of the expedition to Mexico. John 
Russell shelved the note and kept silent. On the 23d December, 
Mr. Isturiz addresses him a new note, professing to explain the 

reasons that had induced the Spanish expedition to leave Cuba 
before the arrival of the English and French forces. John Russell 
again shelves the note and persists in his taciturn attitude. Mr. 
Isturiz, anxious to ascertain whether that protracted restraint of 
speech so unusual in the verbose upshoot of the house of 
Bedford, means possibly mischief, urges a personal interview, 
which is granted to him, and takes place on the 7th of January. 
John Russell had now for more than a month been fully 
acquainted with the onesided opening of the operations against 
Mexico on the part of Spain. A month had almost passed since the 
event had been officially communicated to him by Mr. Isttriz. 
With all that, in his personal interview with the Spanish 
Ambassador, John Russell breaks no word breathing the slightest 
displeasure or astonishment at “the precipitate steps taken by Gen. 
Serrano,” nor leave his utterances the faintest impression on the 
mind of Mr. Isturiz that all was not right, and that the Spanish 
proceedings were not fully approved of by the British Govern- 
ment. The Castilian pride of Mr. Isturiz shuns, of course, any 
notion of Spain being played with by her powerful allies and made 
a mere catspaw of. Yet, the time of the meeting of Parliament 
approached, and John Russell had now to pen a series of 
dispatches, especially intended, not for international business, but 
for Parliamentary consumption. Accordingly, on the 16th of 
January, he pens a dispatch inquiring, in rather angry tones, about 
the onesided initiative ventured upon by Spain. Doubts and 
scruples, which for longer than a month had slumbered in his 
bosom, and had not even matured into symptoms of existence, on 
the 7th of January, during his personal interview with Mr. Isturiz, 
all at once disturb the serene dream of that confident, sincere and 
unsuspecting statesman. Mr. Isturiz feels thunderstruck, and in his 
reply, dated January 18, somewhat ironically reminds his Excellen- 
cy of the opportunities missed by him of giving vent to his 
posthumous spleen. He pays in fact his Excellency in his own coin, 
assuming in his justification of the initiative taken by Spain, the 
same air of naiveté Lord John Russell affected in his request for 
an explanation. 

“The Captain-General of Cuba,” says Mr. Isttriz, ““came too early because he 
was fearful of arriving too late at Vera Cruz.” “Besides,” and here he pinches Lord 
John, “the expedition had been for a long time ready on every point,” although 

the Captain-General, till the middle of December, was “unacquainted with the 
details of the treaty, and with the point fixed for the meeting of the squadrons.” 

Now, the treaty was not concluded before the 20th of 
November. If, then, the Captain-General had his expedition for a 

long time “ready in every point before the middle of December,” 
the orders originally sent out to him from Europe for starting the 
expedition, had not waited upon the treaty. In other words, the 
original agreement between the three Powers, and the steps taken 
in its execution, did not wait upon the treaty, and differed in their 
“details” from the clauses of the treaty, which, from the 
beginning, were intended not as a rule of action, but only as 
decent formulas, necessary to conciliate the public mind to the 
nefarious scheme. On the 23d January, John Russell replies to 
Mr. Isturiz in rather a bluff note, intimating to him that “the British 
Government was not entirely satisfied with the explanation offered,” 
but, at the same time would not suspect Spain of the fool-hardiness 
of presuming to act in the teeth of England and France. Lord John 
Russell, so sleepy, so inactive, for a whole month, becomes all life and 
wide awake as the Parliamentary session rapidly draws near. No time 
is to be lost. On the 19th of January he has a personal interview with 
Count Flahaut, the French Ambassador at London. Flahaut broaches 
to him the ill-omened news that his master considered it necessary 
“to send an additional force to Mexico,” that Spain by her precipitate 
initiative had spoiled the mess; that 

“the allies must now advance to the interior of Mexico, and that not only the 
forces agreed upon would now prove insufficient for the operation, but that the 
operation itself would assume a character in regard to which Louis Bonaparte 
could not allow the French forces to be in a position of inferiority to those of 
Spain, or run the risk of being compromised.” 

Now, Flahaut’s argumentation was anything but conclusive. If 
Spain had overstepped the convention, a single note to Madrid 
from the quarters of St. James and the Tuileries would have 
sufficed to warn her off her ridiculous pretensions, and drive her 
back to the modest part imposed upon her by the convention. But 
no. Because Spain has broken the convention—a breach merely 
formal and of no consequence, since her premature arrival at 
Vera Cruz changed nothing in the professed aim and purpose of 
the expedition—because Spain had presumed to cast anchor at 
Vera Cruz in the absence of the English and French forces, there 
remained no other issue open to France but to follow in the track 
of Spain, break also the convention, and augment, not only her 
expeditionary forces, but change the whole character of the 
operation. There was, of course, no pretext needed for the Allied 
Powers to let the murder out, and, on the very outset of the 
expedition, set at naught the pretexts and purposes upon which it 
was ostensibly started. Consequently, John Russell, although he 

“regrets the step” taken by France, indorses it by telling Count 
Flahaut that “he had no objection to offer, on behalf of her 
Majesty’s Government, to the validity of the French argument.” In 
a dispatch dated January 20, he forwards to Earl Cowley, the 
English Ambassador at Paris, the narrative of this his interview 
with Count Flahaut. The day before, on the 19th January, he had 
penned a dispatch to Sir F. Crampton, the English Ambassador at 
Madrid—that dispatch being a curious medley of hypocritical cant 
addressed to the British Parliament, and of sly hints to the Court 
of Madrid as to the intrinsic value of the liberal slang so freely 
indulged in. “The proceedings of Marshal Serrano,” he says, “are 
calculated to produce some uneasiness,” not only because of the 
precipitate departure of the Spanish expedition from Havana, but 
also “of the tone of the proclamations issued by the Spanish 
Government.” But, simultaneously, the bon homme suggests to the 
Madrid Court a plausible excuse for their apparent breach of the 
Convention. He is fully convinced that the Madrid Court means 
no harm; but, then, commanders, at a distance from Europe, are 
sometimes “rash,” and require “to be very closely watched.” ‘Thus, 
good man Russell volunteers his services, in order to shift the 
responsibility from the Court at Madrid to the shoulders of 
indiscreet Spanish commanders “at a distance,” and even out of 
the reach of good man Russell’s sermonizing. Not less curious is 
the other part of his dispatch. The Allied forces are not to 
preclude the Mexicans from their right “of choosing their own 
Government,” thus intimating that there exists “no Government” 
in Mexico; but that, on the contrary, not only new governors, but 
even “a new form of Government,” must so be chosen by the 
Mexicans under the auspices of the Allied invaders. Their 
“constituting a new Government” would “delight” the British 
Government; but, of course, the military forces of the invaders 
must not falsify the general suffrage which they intend calling the 
Mexicans to for the installation of a new Government. It rests, of 
course, with the commanders of the armed invasion to judge what 
form of new government is or is not “repugnant to the feelings of 
Mexico.” At all events, good man Russell washes his hands in 
innocence. He dispatches foreign dragoons to Mexico, there to 
force the people into “choosing” a new Government; but he hopes 
the dragoons will do the thing gently, and be very careful in 
sifting the political feelings of the country they invade. Is it 
necessary to expatiate one moment upon this transparent farce? 
Apart from the context of good man Russell’s dispatches, read The 
Times and The Morning Post of October, six weeks before the 

conclusion of the sham convention of Nov. 30,* and you will find 
the English Government prints to foretcll all the very same 
untoward events Russell feigns to discover only at the end of 
January, and to account for by “the rashness” of some Spanish 
Ambassadors at a distance from Europe. 

The second part of the farce Russell had to play was the putting 
on the tapis of the Archduke Maximilian of Austria as the 
Mexican King held in petto by England and France. 

On the 24th of January, about ten days before the opening of 
Parliament, Lord Cowley writes to Lord Russell that not only Paris 
gossip was much busied with the Archduke, but that the very 
officers going with the re-enforcements to Mexico, pretended that 
the expedition was for the purpose of making the Archduke 
Maximilian King of Mexico. Cowley thinks it necessary to 
interpellate Thouvenel upon the delicate subject. Thouvenel 
answers him, that it was not the French Government, but Mexican 
emissaries, “come for the purpose, and gone to Vienna,” that had 
set on foot such negotiations with the Austrian Government. 

Now, at last, you expect unsuspecting John Russell, who even 
five days ago, in his dispatch to Madrid, had harped upon the 
terms of the convention, who even later yet, in the Royal speech of 
Feb. 6, had proclaimed “the redress” of wrongs sustained by 
European subjects the exclusive motive and purpose of the 
intervention »—you expect him now at last to fly into a passion and 
to fret and foam at the very idea of his kind-natured confidence 
having been played such unheard-of pranks with. Nothing of the 
sort! Good man Russell receives Cowley’s gossip on the 26th of 
January, and on the following day he hastens to sit down and 
write a dispatch volunteering his patronage of the Archduke 
Maximilian’s candidature for the Mexican throne.‘ 

He informs Sir C. Wyke, his representative at Mexico, that the 
French and Spanish troops will march “at once” to the City of 
Mexico; that Archduke Maximilian “is said”? to be the idol of the 
Mexican people, and that, if such be the case, “‘there is nothing in 
the convention to prevent his advent to the throne of Mexico.” 

There are two things remarkable in these diplomatic revelations: 
first, the fool Spain is made of; and secondly, that there never 
passes the slightest thought through Russell’s mind that he cannot 

a This probably refers to the treaty signed on November 20, 1861.— Ed. 

No. 24163, February 7, 1862.— Ed. 

wage war upon Mexico without a previous declaration of war, and 
that he can form no coalition for that war with foreign Powers, 
except on the ground of a treaty binding upon all parties. And 
such is the people who have fatigued us for two months with their 
hypocritical cant on the sacredness of, and their homage to, the 
strict rules of international law! '*°