The Congress is almost certainly at an end, and at
an end in consequence of the action of England. What we lament most of all, however, is that the coup de grace has been given by a statesman who has proved himself so hearty a friend of peace as Lord Derby, and whose last official act as Foreign Secretary it has nevertheless been to scatter the hopes of a European settlement to the winds. In the House of Lords on Thursday night he declared his belief that it would be of very little use for England to go into Congress unless we are assured that the discussion which was there to take place was to be one " of a real, and not an illu- sory kind ;" " and if we were to choose between the two alterna- tives, I am bound to say I think that in the interests of European peace, it would be the less misfortune of the two that the Con- gress should not meet at all, rather than that having met, and serious difficulties having arisen at the outset of its sitting, it should break up without any result having been arrived at."
