There is, in fact, a strong feeling, both in Parliament and the country, against all that has been done at Canton, and this is the more remarkable because the press has, upon the whole, taken the opposite side. I never could understand why Palmerston and Clarendon were in such a hurry to identify themselves with Bowring's proceedings, and to send out without delay a full approbation of all he had done, till Granville told me that both of them had been under the extraordinary delusion that the Canton affair had been very well done and would be received with great applause and satisfaction here; in point of fact, that it was a great _hit_, from which the Government would derive considerable advantage, he (Granville) himself showing his good sense by taking exactly the opposite view. He tells me that George Lewis does so likewise, and I dare say, if the truth were known, that the majority of the Cabinet coincide with them. It is remarkable that the defence of the Government in the Lords should have fallen on a man who was speaking all the time against his own opinion, and I should think Labouchere, who took up the defence in the House of Commons, was the most unlikely man in the world to approve of such proceedings. Political necessities which compel men to act thus insincerely, and to strive to make the worse appear the better cause, with the full consciousness that they are fighting against truth, appear to me frightfully demoralising, a sad sealing of the political conscience, the spectacle of which is enough to scare honourable minds from entering into an arena where the contest is to be carried on in such a manner.
If the Government should be beaten on the pending question, they will dissolve, at least if the state of their financial affairs will allow them; but at all events they will not resign without an appeal to the country, and this appeal they will make not on this or that question, but on the great one of all, whether the country desires that Palmerston should continue to be its minister, and on this it is impossible to doubt what will be the reply. His popularity is a fact beyond all doubt or cavil, and it is the more decisive, because not only is there no rival popularity, but every one of the other public men who have been, are, or might be his rivals are absolutely unpopular. Nobody cares any longer for John Russell; everybody detests Gladstone; Disraeli has no influence in the country, and a very doubtful position with his own party. He and Derby have made up their minds to coalesce with Gladstone on the first good opportunity, but it seems not unlikely that they will make such a split among their own followers by so doing as to lose more than they will gain by the junction. Palmerston's popularity does not extend to his colleagues, for not one of whom does anybody care a straw. It is purely personal, and I do not think he would strengthen himself by any other alliance he could form. This fact of his popularity just at the end of his strange and chequered career is most remarkable and not a little unaccountable; but innumerable circumstances prove this to be the undoubted truth, and that it is manifested more decidedly out of the House than in it, for in the House of Commons it does not amount to a certainty of his having always a majority. It is curious that a session which not long ago looked like being a very quiet one, in which there would be ample leisure for consideration of legal and other practical reforms, should in the first weeks be a scene of tremendous conflict, in which the very existence of the Government is trembling in the balance.