THE MANSION-HOUSE DINNER.
MUFORCADE, in a restrained but severe attack upon the Imperial policy, complains that France under her present regime, never knows what her foreign policy really is. There is no "system defined and manifested to public opinion," which therefore is powerless to act. We are not yet quite reduced to that position in England. The Ministry do occasionally, as in the Syrian blue book, frankly expose the progress of their foreign policy ; or, as in the China papers, allow us to perceive at least the avowed objects of the country. The press, too, is not silenced, and either knows or gleans some idea of the general view on which the influence of Great Britain is expended abroad. Some broad facts, too, of English policy, such as our relation to Turkey and Syria, are always patent ; are, as it were, fixed beyond the caprice either of Ministers or Parliament. But there exists for the moment a want of leadership, a reticence beyond that involved in secret diplomacy which leads to as great an embarrassment in England as the Imperial silence is said to produce in France. The nation, for example, scarcely knows even the wish of the Ministry with reference to Hungary, hardly comprehends our general relation to Austria in Italy, speculates with inno- cent pertinacity on our probable course in the great American dispute. Speeches like that delivered by Lord Palmerston at the Mansion House do not help to remove the " political dark- ness" of which we, like our neighbours, may complain. The speech, though directed to foreign politics, contained but one distinct sentence, and that is so brief as to be almost unin- telligible. The nation, said Lord Palmerston, earnestly desires that the " glorious consummation of the unity of Italy may be accomplished without any check or hindrance." Is Venetia, in official geography, essential to Italian unity ? If so, that sentence is calculated in the highest degree to encourage those who would attack Austria this spring. Or is the unity of Italy interrupted only by the continued occupation of Rome ? In that case, it is merely a wish in which all Europe may concur; but if so, what need of this more than diplomatic reserve. Upon every other point, the imminent invasion of Denmark, the still more imminent claim for a longer occupation of Syria, the actually present demand for a Christian Protectorate in Constantinople, the Premier remained profoundly silent. He hoped, like every other sane man outside the nationali- ties, that 1861 might be a year of peace. It was to that end that England was exerting her reinvigorated strength. The country has nothing to object. It craves for peace quite as much as Lord Palmerston, more especially if that peace is to be real, and not like the present one, the hush which precedes the grapple for life or death. But it is, we suspect, sensible of a desire for a little more light, for some distant glimmering of the Ministerial view as to the complications which seem to all but diplomatists to threaten endless disorder. A thorough revelation, we admit, cannot be made with safety, but English- men are scarcely accustomed to be driven from their political chiefs back to Mr. Reuter for views on the present politics of the world. The Premier at the Mansion House said just as little as he seems inclined to say to Parliament, and no- body else uttered a word worth the trouble of the reporters.
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