[176] Alice: Grand Duchess of Hesse, Biographical Sketch and Letters, p. 58.
[177] The Registrar-General, in his Quarterly Report of 30th April, 1863, says: “On comparing the returns of the deaths in the eleven divisions with one exception the deaths were more numerous last quarter than in the March quarter of 1862; and the single exception is found in that division where the staple industry, on which half-a-million of persons are dependent, is overthrown, and for a twelvemonth four-fifths of that number have subsisted, unless the pittance has been aided by previous earnings, or sale of household stock, on less than 4d. a day.”
[178] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXXI.
[179] Lord Malmesbury, who, like most of the Tories, did his best to urge the Government to go to war, at this time makes an observation in his “Diary,” which is refreshing in its frigidity. “It is,” he remarks, “perhaps as well that we did not enter into this contest, as our army was not armed at that time like the Prussians, with the breechloader, and we should probably have suffered in consequence the same disaster as the Austrians did two years later.”—Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., pp. 3-5.
[180] Count Vitzthum’s Reminiscences, Vol. II., p. 285.
[181] Ashley’s Life of Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 248.
[182] In criticising Palmerston’s policy of intervention, it is but just to remember that he was fatally encumbered by his imprudent declaration in the House of Commons on the 23rd of July, 1862, that if the Germans attacked the Danes “it would not be with Denmark alone they would have to contend.”
[183] Cobden’s Speeches, Vol. II., p. 341.
[184] Sir A. Malet’s Overthrow of the Germanic Confederation, p. 96.
[185] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 315.