* Vide “la Politique de tous les Cabinets de L’Europe.”

This is one of the few disadvantages attendant upon constitutional states in negotiation; but, per contra., such states also enjoy some pre-eminent advantages. In such states foreign powers do not co-operate with domestic factions, as they sometimes do in more absolute monarchies.

Presence of mind, coolness, and firmness, tell oftener in negotiations than mere talent and learning. The presence of mind of Augustus, who was of doubtful valour, obtained an ascendancy over Marc Antony, a brave soldier, but wanting in proper firmness.

Richelieu preferred firmness and patience in a negotiator to any other qualities. Suppleness, no doubt, often supplies the place of patience, and the man who can tack and veer was formerly not without his value; but the time for using these small wares has now passed for ever. They have been worn threadbare by a politician of our day, and are foul in the nostrils of every civilized nation. In the middle ages, and in Italian courts, such tricks may have been necessary, but they are unsuitable to constitutional states. A pope of Rome is recorded to have said of the Abbé Polignac:—“This young man always appears to be of my opinion at first, but at the end of the conversation, I find I am of his.” Such an “artful dodge” and dissembler would be disrelished now by all pure and honest men. An attempt has been made by some French writers to attribute the science of negotiation to Mazarin. But the science existed before the time of the wily cardinal, or even of that good King Dagobert who, according to the old rhyme, “Mit sa culotte à l’envers;” and France, and other modern countries, as well as Egypt, Greece, and Rome, had produced great negotiators.

On the 14th of August parliament was prorogued, and soon after the ministry showed renewed activity in the work of diplomacy, without any advantage to the nation. The policy of the prorogation was much arraigned by the public; but the evening on which it took place tidings arrived of the bombardment of Sweaborg, which drew away the public attention to a real and brilliant, although partial, triumph.

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THE CONDUCT OF THE WAR—OPERATIONS IN THE CRIMEA AND BLACK SEA.

January opened upon the starving British army still more terribly than the December of 1854 closed. The French also suffered, but their superior military organization, commissariat, and care of the sick, spared them many miseries which afflicted the whole of the British lines. It was remarkable in the British army that very few officers perished of cold, none of hunger, while their men fell in such numbers. Very few officers died from sickness, unless such as fell victims to cholera, which smote with impartial hand the poor private and his titled chief. Various sick and wounded officers died in consequence of not having been removed in sufficient time to the Bosphorus, or to such other quarters as were not only possible, but convenient, had it not been for the heartless and stupid routine by which the heads of departments, at home and abroad, civil and military, were guided. It was the more remarkable that so few officers died in the camp in proportion to the men who perished, as the proportions were reversed in combat. The facts were, that the officers in battle exposed themselves more gallantly than the men, nobly, although, the latter fought and fell; but in the lines, and at Balaklava, out upon the plain below the plateau, and in the trenches, the officers had such comforts as were procurable for money, and which were unattainable to the men. Stores sent to the soldiers were plundered at Balaklava, and sold in the trenches by Turks, Greeks, Tartars, and rogues of all nations who had followed the army. Those who had money purchased, and fared comparatively well; the poorer soldiers hungered and died. The medical regimental officers behaved nobly; but, generally, they were unwilling to complain of any want of stores and medicines, as they, by doing so, incurred the resentment of the medical chiefs, and their promotion was suspended, or prevented altogether. It became necessary at last to introduce the civil element into the medical care of the army. Among the efforts put forth to this end was the establishment of a civil hospital at Smyrna. The government encouraged various medical men of eminence to abandon their professional prospects in London and go to the East. These men were regarded with jealousy by their brethren in the military service, and with indifference and want of courtesy very frequently by military men in high official positions, The government which, like preceding ministers, had in its contracts for the public service obtained such unenviable notoriety for breach of faith, signalized itself in an especial manner in violating honour and duty with the medical civil officers. This was especially seen in the requital of the officers attached to the hospital at Smyrna. In “Nolan’s History of the War against Russia” there is incorporated an account of the Smyrna hospital, by a very gifted and learned man,* which is too long for quotation here, but which will exemplify all that is here stated of an evil so great, and injustice so flagitious.