The recent appearance of the pamphlet of '_Le Pape et le Congrès_,'[1] which has produced such a sensation and so much astonishment, has no doubt been a great thing for us, and rendered our diplomatic course much more easy and promising. Clarendon writes to me: 'This last pamphlet of the Emperor's is important and I am sure authentic, as it is simply a developement of what I have heard twenty times from his own lips. It ought of course to have been reserved for the Congress, but as far as we are concerned it is well timed.' It was a bold, but a clever stroke of policy to give notice to the whole world of the sentiments and intentions with which the Emperor enters the Congress, and it renders a good understanding and joint action between France and England feasible and perhaps easy, unless Palmerston spoils everything by some obstinate and extravagant pretensions which he may insist on his plenipotentiaries bringing forward. But if he should be so ill advised, I believe that he would meet with an insuperable resistance in his own Cabinet and at Court, and that Cowley certainly, perhaps Wodehouse also, would decline being made the instruments of such a vicious and mischievous policy.
Footnote 1: [The object of the Congress proposed by the Emperor Napoleon was to extricate himself from the embarrassments in which he was placed by the terms of the Peace of Villafranca with reference to the affairs of Italy. The proposal to establish a Confederation of the Italian States was found to be impracticable, and the unification of Italy was a more difficult problem than the conquest and cession to Piedmont of the Milanese territory. M. de Cavour was the only statesman who contemplated the entire realisation of this vast scheme, which was at last accomplished by revolutionary means, without the concurrence of France. His views were shared and supported by Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, and Mr. Gladstone.]