to defend, and I shall certainly not attack, the present Government of France.  The instant that it appeared in its present shape, the Minister of England conducting your foreign affairs, speaking ostensibly for the Cabinet, for his Sovereign, and for the English nation, offered his congratulations, and the support of England was at once accorded to the re-created French Empire.  Soon after this an intimate alliance was entered into between the Queen of England, through her Ministers, and the Emperor of the French.  I am not about to defend the policy which flowed from that alliance, nor shall I take up your time by making any attack upon it.  An alliance was entered into, and a war was entered into.  English and French soldiers fought on the same field, and they suffered, I fear, from the same neglect.  They now lie buried on the bleak heights of the Crimea, and except by their mothers, who do not soon forget their children, I suppose they are mostly forgotten.  I have never heard it suggested that the French Government did not behave with the most perfect honour to this Government and this country all through these grave transactions; but I have heard it stated by those who must know, that nothing could be more honourable, nothing more just, than the conduct of the French Emperor to this Government throughout the whole of that struggle.  More recently, when the war in China was begun by a Government which I have condemned and denounced in the House of Commons, the Emperor of the French sent his ships and troops to co-operate with us, but I have never heard that anything was done there to create a suspicion of a feeling of hostility on his part towards us.  The Emperor of the French came to London, and some of those powerful organs of the press, who have since taken the line of which I am complaining, did all but invite the people of London to prostrate themselves under the wheels of the chariot which conveyed along our streets the revived Monarchy of France.  The Queen of England went to Paris, and was she not received there with as much affection and as much respect as her high position and her honourable character entitle her to?

What has occurred since?  If there was a momentary unpleasantness, I am quite sure that every impartial man will agree that, under the peculiarly irritating circumstances of the time, there was at least as much forbearance shown on one side of the Channel as on the other.  Then, we have had much said lately about a naval fortification recently completed in France, which has been more than one hundred years in progress, which was not devised by the present Emperor of the French.  For one hundred years great sums have been spent on it, and at last, like every other great work, it was brought to an end.  The English Queen and others were invited over, and many went who were not invited.  And yet in all this we are told that there is something to create extreme alarm and suspicion; we, who have never fortified any places;