And although those persons have not hitherto come prominently forward, yet their voice would have made itself heard, when the question of peace or unprovoked war came practically to be discussed.
With regard to internal revolution, there is undoubtedly in France a large floating mass of Republicans and Anarchists, ready at any moment to make a disturbance if there was no strong power to resist them; but the persons who would lose by convulsion are infinitely more numerous, and the National Guard of Paris, consisting of nearly 60,000 men, are chiefly persons of this description, and are understood to be decidedly for internal order, and for external peace.
It is very natural that the French Government, after having failed to extort concessions upon the Turkish Question, by menaces of foreign war, should now endeavour to obtain those concessions, by appealing to fears of another kind, and should say that such concessions are necessary in order to prevent revolution in France; but Viscount Palmerston would submit to your Majesty his deep conviction that this appeal is not better founded than the other, and that a firm and resolute perseverance on the part of the Four Powers, in the measures which they have taken in hand, will effect a settlement of the affairs of Turkey, which will afford great additional security for the future peace of Europe, without producing in the meantime either war _with_ France, or revolution _in_ France.
France and the rest of Europe are entirely different now from what they were in 1792.

The French nation is as much interested now to avoid further revolution, as it was interested then in ridding itself, by any means, of the enormous and intolerable abuses which then existed.

France then imagined she had much to gain by foreign war; France now knows she has everything to lose by foreign war.
Europe then (at least the Continental States) had also a strong desire to get rid of innumerable abuses which pressed heavily upon the people of all countries.

Those abuses have now in general been removed; the people in many parts of Germany have been admitted, more or less, to a share in the management of their own affairs.

A German feeling and a spirit of nationality has sprung up among all the German people, and the Germans, instead of receiving the French as Liberators, as many of them did in 1792-1793, would now rise as one man to repel a hateful invasion.