The Demetian Mirror

jFximgn intelligence. THAT inexhaustible subject "The Eastern question" seems destined to furnish food to Foreign Secretaries, Ambassadors, and Diplo- matists, for some time to come, notwithstand- ing it has been for weeks past, a boon to newspapers of every shade of politics, whose scribblers have, with very praiseworthy pa- tience, viewed and reviewed the subject, and dilated upon its merits, until to the majority of them, we doubt not, the mere mention of the East has become tiresome. On Saturday last, however, we were favoured by the London Press, with a copy of a note, on the affairs of the East, addressed on the 31st of August last, by Lord Palmerston, our Foreign Secretary, to Mr. Henry Lytton Bulwer, our representative at that time at the Court of France in the ab- sence of Earl Granville. As to the infliction on our readers of the task of reading this "note," it will certainly be spared to them, although we are compelled to say it is by far the most perspicuous paper that has been written on the subject, but it would be next to an impossibility for us to copy it, seeing that it would occupy at least one-fourth part of our paper: an abstract, indeed, of it would take up a large portion of our space. Lord Palmerston insists that the four powers evinced an earnest desire for the co-operation of France in the Treaty of London, of the 15th of July, and confidently refers to the persevering efforts made by the four powers to obtain such co- operation during many months of negotiation. At the same time his Lordship observes that the value of such co-operation, although very great in regard to the particular object then in view, as well as with reference to the general and permanent interests of Europe, was esti- mated chiefly by its being made available for the purposes of peace and for the attainment of future security to Europe. His Lordship, after commenting on the voluntary separation of France from the four powers, which he very shrewdly hints was evinced not merely by the course of the negotiations in London, but un- less her Majesty's Government were greatly misinformed, it had also taken place in a more decided manner by the course of the negotia- tions at Constantinople,—proceeds to argue that in the course pursued by England, the views and opinions of her Majesty's Govern- ment on the affairs of the Levant have never varied except by such a modification or adapt- ation of them as suggested the probability of tending to obtain the co-operation of France and further, that those views and opinions had at all times been frankly and unreservedly ex- plained to the French Government, and had been earnestly pressed on that Government by arguments which the British Ministers thought conclusive. His Lordship proceeds to shew, very satisfactorily as it appears to us, that the objections of France have applied not to the end in view but to the means for accomplish- ing it, her opinion being that the end was good, but that the means were either insuffi- cient or dangerous; and from these premises Lord Palmerston draws the fair inference that the separation of France from the other fo r powers cannot be of long duration as, C-4 such an arrangement being effected between tl»