xxary.) TO MR. BRIGET ON THE WAE. 877%

on the Treasury bench, and it is especially important that 1863.
they should be so restrained on this occasion, I hope Zim 59
therefore that you will find yourself in a situation to come
for one night.”
“Sept. 8,1868. ( , )—The tide of battle seems to have
set in so strongly for the North, that I don’t think the
friends of freedom need feel any anxiety about the result so
far as fighting is concerned. There is, of course, a tremendous
 difficulty beyond, but there is something more than
accident which seems in the long-run to favour the right
in this wicked world, and I have a strong persuasion that
we may live to see a compensating triumph for humanity
a8 the result of this most gigantic of civil wars.
“I confess I cannot penetrate the mystery of French politics
in connexion with the United States question. I suppose
the Emperor has been very strongly pressed by Slidell and
other interested parties to take some step to encourage the
South. His unwise Mexican expedition, about which he
must have daily more of doubt and misgiving, has placed
him in a false and dangerous position on the continent of
North America; and we all know how in public, as in private
 life, one false step seems only to necessitate another.
I have no doubt that his Mexican embarrassment is plied
with consummate tact and unscrupulous daring by the Confederate
 agents. The Richmond government will offer any
terms for the French alliance. Fortunately they are in such
straits themselves, that they have little fo offer as a temptation
 to an ambitious but cautious mind like Napoleon’s.
The influential people who surround the Emperor, such as
Fould and Rouher, are of course opposed to any interference
in the American quarrel. . . . . After all, our chief reliance
for the maintenance of & non-intervention policy by France
and England is not in the merits or justice of that course,
but—it is sad to say it—in the tremendous warlike power