Yesterday week, speaking in reply to Mr. Baillie Cochrane, on
the terms of peace, the Prime Minister made what the Pall Mall has rightly called attention to as a very remarkable and frank confes- sion by England of her isolation and weakness in relation to European affairs,—though in the very same speech Mr. Gladstone quaintly enough declared that, putting aside the dissatisfaction which not one party, but both belligerent parties, feel at our neutrality, he did not believe " there ever was a time when the conduct of Great Britain had received more general assent and approval, or when its result has been less likely to alienate from us the general sympathies of the civilized world." That is certainly not saying that there has been a time when our influence was higher, but rather that there never has been one when we have been deemed more harmless, which is very likely true ; but Mr. Gladstone put it in a way likely enough to be mistaken for an assertion of undiminished and even enhanced political influence, and nothing could be farther from the truth than that.
