We
find him running the risk of a war with America, because she demanded,
too unceremoniously, the payment of a just debt, and with England because
she complained of the ill-treatment of a missionary. We find him trying
to ruin the commerce of Switzerland because the Diet arrested a French
spy, and deposing Queen Pomare because she interfered with the sale of
French brandies; and, as his last act, eluding an express promise by a
miserable verbal equivocation, and sowing the seeds of a future war of
succession in order to get for one of his sons an advantageous
establishment in Spain.
'The greatest blot in the foreign policy of Louis Napoleon is the
invasion of Rome, and for that he is scarcely responsible. It was
originally planned by Louis Philippe and Rossi. The expedition which
sailed from Toulon in 1849 was prepared in 1847. It was despatched in the
first six months of his presidency, in obedience to a vote of the
Assembly, when the Assembly was still the ruler of France; and Louis
Napoleon's celebrated letter to Ney was an attempt, not, perhaps
constitutional or prudent, but well-intentioned, to obtain for the Roman
people liberal and secular institutions instead of ecclesiastical
tyranny.
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