The _secret_ way in which the arrangement about the arbitration of the Turco-Egyptian affairs has been signed, the keeping out of France in an affair so _near_ it and touching its interests in various ways, has had here a very _disastrous_ effect.[26] I cannot disguise from you that the consequences may be very serious, and the more so as the Thiers Ministry is supported by the movement party, and as _reckless of consequences_ as your own Minister for Foreign Affairs, even much more so, as Thiers himself would not be sorry to see everything existing upset.

He is strongly impregnated with all the notions of fame and glory which belonged to part of the Republican and the Imperial times; he would not even be much alarmed at the idea of a Convention ruling again France, as he thinks that _he_ would be the _man to rule_ the Assembly, and has told me last year that he thinks it for France perhaps the _most powerful_ form of Government.[27] The mode in this affair ought to have been, as soon as the Four Powers had agreed on a proposition, to communicate it officially to France, to join it.

France had but two ways, either to join or to refuse its adhesion.

If it had chosen the last, it would have been a free decision on her part, and a secession which had nothing offensive in the eyes of the nation.
But there is a material difference between leaving a company from motives of one's own, or being _kicked out_ of it.

I must beg you to speak seriously to Lord Melbourne, who is the head of your Government, on these important affairs; they may upset everything in Europe if the mistake is not corrected and moderated.
I shall write again to you next Friday from hence, and on Saturday, 1st August, we set off.