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nment. Louis Napoleon must maintain his position by acts: they will find out that Belgium should belong to France, or Alsace, or Antwerp, or something or other that England will not be able to allow, and then how are we prepared for the consequences?... The more I think of Palmerston's letters, the less I can understand them; every sentence is in direct contradiction to his acts and words. He ridicules the idea of the Constitution; turns to scorn the idea of anything being due to the Members of the Assembly; laughs and jokes at the Club being fired into, though the English people in it were within an ace of being murdered by the soldiers; says that Normanby is pathetic over a broken looking-glass,[34] forgetting that the same bullet grazed the hand of an Englishman, "_a Roman citizen!_" who was between the window and the glass--in short, as I said before, he is quite incomprehensible, except, as I cannot help thinking, he read the private letter Normanby wrote to the Duke of Bedford upon the Kossuth business, wishing to take his advice a little upon a grave question, but which did not actually interfere with his position here. This would account for his extreme irritation.... All at present is quiet in Paris. There are Socialist risings in many parts of the country, but all these will do the President good, and strengthen his hands, for even the people who have been treated with indignity will pardon him if their chateaux are saved from an infuriated and brutal peasantry. The President told Normanby last night that the accounts of the cruelties and attacks in parts of the country were very serious, but he hoped they would soon be put down.... M. NORMANBY.[35] [Footnote 33: Submitted to the Queen by Colonel Phipps.] [Footnote 34: The tone of Lord Palmerston's private letters to Lord Normanby at this time is best illustrated by the following extract:-- "Your despatches since the event of Tuesday have been all hostile to Louis Napoleon, with very little information as to events. One of them consisted of a dissertation about Kossuth, which would have made a good article in the _Times_ a fortnight ago: and another dwells chiefly on a looking-glass broken in a Club-house; and you are pathetic about a piece of broken plaster brought down from a ceiling by musket-shots during the street fights. Now we know that the Diplomatic Agents of Austria and Russia called o
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