But all my unfavourable remarks touching France are now at an end, for no Government, no army, could have acted more blamelessly—­I should rather say, more admirably—­than that French army and its commanders.  In the first place, can any man doubt that they could have taken Rome long ago if they had not been averse to the effusion of blood?  Little do they know the gallantry of French troops who entertain a contrary notion.  Then they were strongly impressed with the idea that it was not right the innocent should suffer with the guilty.  Again, they felt that they were not going against the Romans, but against those who had usurped and exercised an intolerable tyranny over the Romans, properly so called.  They were marching against Mazzini and Garibaldi, that Garibaldi for whom a noble friend of mine (Lord Howden), whose eulogy is really praise, bespoke your sympathy so strongly a few evenings ago.  But my noble friend, perhaps, is not aware that this person—­a clever man, undoubtedly, of great military talents—­was, like Mazzini, a professional conspirator; that the object of his first plot was, like that of a great conspirator in our own country (Guy Fawkes), who was not, however, quite so popular, to blow up the Royal Family of Sardinia in the theatre of Genoa; and that the discovery of that gunpowder plot drove him out in exile, first to Brazil, and afterwards to the Rio Plata, where he began to act as a partisan, and afterwards acquired considerable influence.  On the breaking out of the last revolution in France he returned to Europe, and shortly afterwards agitated the provinces of Italy, repeating in their northern districts, and in Rome itself, those valorous feats of arms which gained him reputation in the New World.  Mazzini is a man of less courage, though of great ability, for few men are so bold as Garibaldi; but Mazzini, in conjunction with Garibaldi, got possession of Rome, the one eminent for his civil, the other from his military qualifications.  There they established a dictatorship under the name of a Triumvirate, and disciplined several thousand soldiers, of whom scarcely one was a native Roman.  Among them were Frenchmen, Monte Videans, Poles, Italians of the north, but Romans few or none.  Therefore it was, I said, that General Oudinot was cautious how he bombarded Rome, as he could not direct his hostility against one class of men, and yet entirely spare all.  Lastly, my Lords, I cannot shut my eyes to the merits of the French army, of which all ages must testify their sense as long as any regard remains among men for the precious remains of antiquity and for those more inestimable treasures of modern art which form the pride and glory of the Eternal City.  General Oudinot had carried on the siege of Rome as if he would avoid the effusion of a single drop of human blood, and as if he were anxious not to expose the great monuments of art to the injuries of shot and shell.  In this state of things, the delay of the capture took place, while many at Paris were