’The greatest blot in the foreign policy of Louis Napoleon is the invasion of Rome, and for that he is scarcely responsible.  It was originally planned by Louis Philippe and Rossi.  The expedition which sailed from Toulon in 1849 was prepared in 1847.  It was despatched in the first six months of his presidency, in obedience to a vote of the Assembly, when the Assembly was still the ruler of France; and Louis Napoleon’s celebrated letter to Ney was an attempt, not, perhaps constitutional or prudent, but well-intentioned, to obtain for the Roman people liberal and secular institutions instead of ecclesiastical tyranny.

’His other mistake was the attempt to enforce on Turkey the capitulations of 1740, and to revive pretentions of the Latins in Jerusalem which had slept for more than a century.  This, again, was a legacy from Louis Philippe.  It was Louis Philippe who claimed a right to restore the dome, or the portico, we forget which, of the Holy Sepulchre, and to insult the Greeks by rebuilding it in the Latin instead of the Byzantine form.  Louis Napoleon has the merit, rare in private life, and almost unknown among princes, of having frankly and unreservedly withdrawn his demands, though supported by treaty, as soon as he found that they could not be conceded without danger to the conceding party.

’With these exceptions, his management of the foreign relations of France has been faultless.  To England he has been honest and confiding, to Russia conciliatory but firm, to Austria kind and forbearing, and he has treated Prussia with, perhaps, more consideration than that semi-Russian Court and childishly false and cunning king deserved.  He has been assailed by every form of temptation, through his hopes and through his fears, and has remained faithful and disinterested.  Such conduct deserves the admiration with which England has repaid it.

’We cannot praise him as an administrator.  He is indolent and procrastinating.  He hates details, and therefore does not understand them.  When he has given an order he does not see to its execution; indeed, he cannot, for he does not know how it ought to be executed.  He directed a fleet to be prepared to co-operate with us in the Baltic in the spring.  Ducos, his Minister of Marine, assured him that it was ready.  The time came, and not a ship was rigged or manned.  He asked us to suspend the expedition for a couple of months.  We refused, and sailed without the French squadron.  If the Russians had ventured out, and we either had beaten them single-handed, or been repulsed for want of the promised assistance, the effect on France would have been frightful.  We have reason to believe that it was only in the middle of February that he made up his mind to send an army to Bulgaria.  They arrived by driblets, without any plan of operations, and it was not until August that their battering train left Toulon.  It ought to have reached Sebastopol in May.  In time, however, he must see the necessity