Alone half quelled his foe. He struck for Power,
(And power in England is a hero's prize)
Yet he could throw it from him. Those whose eyes
See not for tears, remember in this hour
That he was oft from Homer's page beguiled
To frame some "wonder for a happy child."
The resignation by Lord Malmesbury, formerly Foreign Secretary, of the Conservative leadership of the House of Lords about the same time met with no such consideration. Lord Malmesbury had never been a favourite of Punch, who insinuated that the Tory leader had gone because he was obliged to, and quoted Artemus Ward's saying: "He told me to get out of the office—I pitied him and went."
The fateful year of 1870 opened with the attempt to establish a "Liberal" Empire in France with Ollivier as Prime Minister, a concession which Punch hailed as a "Magna Charta for France"; almost simultaneously Lord Clarendon, our Foreign Minister, with Gladstone's cordial approval, launched his suggestion of a partial simultaneous disarmament, a proposal rendered futile by the attitude of Bismarck. Lord Clarendon died on June 27, and his successor, Lord Granville, was informed by the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office that he "had never during his long experience known so great a lull in foreign affairs." Yet war had already been declared by France when Punch, on July 23, issued his somewhat cynical manifesto of neutrality under the heading: "Prussian Pot and French Kettle":—
In this unhappy event of a war between France and Prussia, we shall of course do all we can to preserve the most perfect neutrality. We certainly feel it. Our sympathies with the one side and the other are, strong as they are, exactly equal.
As regards the Prussians we take a warmly admiring interest in the course of aggrandisement which their King and his Bismarck have been pursuing of late years, but most chiefly do we applaud its first step—the attack on Denmark, and the forcible annexation therefrom of the two Duchies. The immense number of Danes slain by the Prussian needle-guns commands our approbation only less than our wonder; but what crowns the sentiments with which we regard the spoliation and destruction of the Danes is the piety wherewith the author of those achievements solemnly expressed his thankfulness for having been permitted to accomplish them. One brother once knelt with Mrs. Fry in Newgate. The other might have knelt with Mrs. Cole.
On the other hand, with respect to France, we cannot but feel how much we owe to the French Imperial Government for the improvement which, by the menacing armaments it has kept up now for so many years, it has occasioned us to make in our national defences. But we have higher reasons for sympathy with France than considerations which are merely insular and selfish. The great principles of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality have been professed by France more enthusiastically and more loudly than by any other European nation; and we behold their standing reduction to practice in the occupation of Rome, and the declaration that the chief of Italian cities shall never belong to Italy.
The foregoing reasons should satisfy any Prussian and any Frenchman of the perfect impartiality with which Englishmen must contemplate hostilities between their respective nations.