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LIFE OF CGBDEN. [oBAP:

1860. contest which he wag every day waging. The financial
Ar. 56. arrangements connected with the Treaty itself, had not beet
carried through Parliament very smoothly, The episode of
the Paper duties in the House of Lords was a curicus in”
berruption to serious business. Lord John Russell had
brought in a Reform Bill, but the Prime Minister was$
notoriously hostile to it, and the Parliament was thoroughly
Palmerstonian at heart. It was a session of confusion
and cross purposes. “The House of Commons is 8%
uncertain sea,” wrote one of the most competent observers
to Cobden, “soon up with any shift of the wind. It gob
disorganized by the proposed Reform Bill. Members were
determined not to pass it, yet they dared not commit themselves
 to a vote against it. Delay became the watchword,
and nothing was passed lest the road should be cleared fof
the Reform Bill. Every day the House fell deeper into disorganization,
 and it seemed unable to recover its balance.”
In the spring and summer, the feeling in England against
France had become more and more deeply coloured with
suspicion and alarm. It had approached what an eminent
correspondent of Cobden’s called a “maniacal alarm.”
There was in this country, he was told, “such a resolute
and one-sided determination to throw all responsibility on
our neighbours, to presume the worst, to construe everything
 in that sense, to take credit for perfect blamelessness,
88 mere argument cannot surmount.” It was observed by
one who was himself a churchman, that among the most
active promoters of the panic and the necessity for immediate
 preparation were the country clergy. A famous
bishop went about telling a story of a Frenchman who had
told him that he knew the Emperor's mind to be quite undecided
 whether to work with England for liberty, or to
work against England for absolutism, beginning the work
with an invasion. The annexation of Savoy had kindled #