E 
 fs\5t 
 
 FEANCE, MEXICO, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 # 
 
 CONFEDERATE ST.^TES. 
 
 BY 
 
 M. M. CHEVALIER 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 WM. HENRY HURLBUT. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 C. B. RICHARDSON, 596 BROADWAY. 
 
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Qass 'c A- '/I 5 
 Rnnk f ^\5 '2^ 
 
FRANCE, MEXICO, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 CONFEDERATE STATES. 
 
 BY 
 
 m'. m. chevalier 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 WM. HENRY HURLBUT. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 C. B. RICHAKDSON, 596 BROADWAY. 
 
 1863. 
 
 A 
 

 E. Craighead, 
 
 PRINIBE, 6TEKE0TYPBK, AND ELEOTEOTYPEB, 
 
 (Taiton 3i5uiH3mfl, 
 81, 83, amd 85 Cmtre Street. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The pamphlet of which the following pages are a ^translation 
 has obtained a world-wide notoriety as embodying the first 
 coherent view which has been made public of the designs of 
 Napoleon III. in the ISTew World. 
 
 It has been c6mmonly attributed to M. MiCHEL Chevalier, 
 one of the first of living French publicists ; but I have reason 
 to believe that this is an error. There can be no doubt, how- 
 ever, that it sets forth with substantial accuracy the general 
 theory of American affairs in favor at the Tuileries, Nor can 
 it be well denied that the actual position of France in Mexico 
 threatens to make the adoption of such a policy towards the 
 United States, as is here sketched out, a m^atter almost of 
 necessity with the Emperor. 
 
 It would seem, therefore, to be important that the public 
 mind should make itself familiar with possibilities which 
 involve issues so vast and so vital to our future welfare as 
 those which are suggested in these few but pregnant pages. 
 
 The Translator. 
 
 New York, Oct 5, 1863. 
 
FRANCE, MEXICO, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 CONFEDERATE STATES 
 
 In France, from the earliest times, distant expeditions, when 
 they began, have always provoked bitter criticism on the part 
 of the Opposition, and have met with but little sympathy 
 among the supporters of order. We are inclined to attribute 
 to this fact the relative inferiority of our country as a commer- 
 cial and colonial power, while it occupies the second and 
 almost the first rank as a naval power. The Frenchman is infi- 
 nitely better fitted for action than for traffic, and in war he 
 commonly considers only its military glory, sometimes its poli- 
 tical results ; never its commercial consequences. In this 
 respect we are at once superior and inferior to onr allies the 
 English— superior by all the greatness of our generosity and 
 our disinterestedness ; inferior by all the depth of their calcula- 
 tions and their mercantile genius. Thus it was that when, after 
 the rupture of the treaty of La Soledad, England and Spain, 
 which had intervened in Mexico under the same pretext as 
 France, retired from the intervention, leaving to France the 
 cost and the consequences of an expedition which had been 
 commenced in common, our country as with one voice de- 
 plored the situation in which we had been left by our alhes. 
 No one then suspected, and no one then chose to suspect, the 
 fruitful results of our intervention in the afi'airs of Mexico. It 
 
was then fosliionable to calculate tlie sums which it would cost 
 to transport a soldier from Cherbourg to Yera Cruz, and it w^as 
 attempted to be shown that our only object was to impose 
 upon the Mexicans a form of government more or less hostile 
 to their taste and to their convictions. President Juarez, not- 
 withstanding his numerous refusals of justice, his open contempt 
 of pledged faith, and the divisions excited by European dema- 
 gogues, remained the sacred representative of the national will 
 of Mexico, the paragon of liberal ideas. It was repeated ad 
 nauseam that the Emperor, yielding to a natural love of adven- 
 ture, had allowed himself to be seduced by fallacious stories of 
 the wealth of the ancient empire of the Montezumas; that hav- 
 ing thrown himself headlong into an expedition which could 
 have no end, he persevered in it through obstinacy, and that 
 our soldiers were marching to an impossible, useless, danger- 
 ous, and ruinous conquest. Unfortunately, the failure of the 
 first attack on Puebla offered the enemies of the expedition a 
 natural opportunity for redoubling their clamors. The echoes 
 of the Palais Bouvhoii^ rang with calumnies which up to that 
 time had been confined to the purlieus of foreign newspaper 
 ofiices, and nothing less than the authoritative eloquence of Mr. 
 Billault was required to clear up> the question and dispel the 
 clouds which masked the future of our intervention. The fruit- 
 less, or even the unfortunate result of a warlike operation proves 
 nothing against the oi'igin and object of a war. The origin of 
 the actual war in Mexico is more than justified by the wrongs 
 which France is bent upon redressing. The object of that war 
 is to aid the Mexicans in establishing, according to their own 
 free will and choice, a government which may have some 
 chance of stability. 
 
 The failure of the first attack on Puebla simply proved that 
 w^e had been ill-informed as to the military resources which inti- 
 midation had enabled Juarez to command. It neither dimi- 
 nished the gravity of our interests nor lessened the importance 
 of our object. It inflicted no damage even upon our military 
 reputation. It was then decided that a complete army corps, 
 armed with formidable artillery and adequate means of trans- 
 portation, should be embarked for Mexico as soon as the season 
 
 * la this palace the Corps Legislatif holds its sessions. 
 
would allow. The money expenditure required by this consider- 
 able movement of troops and warlike material was simply an 
 advance made upon the enterprise. Where so many people in- 
 sisted upon seeing nothing but a little glory to win, E'apoleon 
 III. had already laid the foundations of a completely new sys- 
 tem of policy. While for everybody else the Mexican war was 
 a mere military question, he was limiting and determining the 
 part to be played by our soldiers, our seanien, and our diploma- 
 tists, in this enterprise which is to give to France the commercial 
 rank she has a right to hold. 
 
 " In the actual state of the civilization of the world the pros- 
 perity of America is not a matter of indifference to Europe, for 
 this prosperity feeds our factories aud keeps our commerce 
 alive. It is our interest that the republic of the United States 
 should be powerful and prosperous, but it is not our interest 
 that it should possess itself of the whole Mexican Gulf, that it 
 should thence domineer over the Antilles as well as South 
 America, and that it alone should control the distribution of 
 the products of the New World." This passage, from the in- 
 structions given by the Emperor to General Forey, victoriously 
 answers those who now ask why we have been expending men 
 and money, to found a regular government in Mexico. France 
 must oppose the absorption of Southern America by Northern 
 America ; she must in like manner oppose the degradation of 
 the Latin race on the other side of the ocean ; she must esta- 
 blish the integrity and security of our West Indian colonies. 
 It is the interests which compel France to sympathize with the 
 Confederate States which have led our banners up to the walls 
 of Mexico. 
 
 The recognition of the Southern States will be the consequence 
 of our intervention, or rather our intervention has prepared, 
 facilitated, and made possible a diplomatic act which will con- 
 secrate the final separation and secession of those states from 
 the American Union. The thirty thousand Frenchmen who 
 to-day occupy Mexico or are pursuing Juarez to San Luis Po- 
 tosi, are the advanced guard of an immense commercial army, 
 and their bayonets will open to our commerce harbors whicli 
 have been too long closed upon it. Let us then hear no moi-e 
 of these mendacious outcries over the emptiness of our projects 
 in Mexico. What Napoleon III. means he means distinctly, he 
 
8 
 
 has long meant it, he will continue to mean and to will it nntil 
 it is achieved. He means to regenerate our trans-Atlantic 
 commerce, to restore to it or to create for it profitable avenues 
 and outlets ; he means that our national industry in all time to 
 come shall be able to provide itself with the materials indispen- 
 sable to its success. This is his meaning, and he will pursue 
 this purpose until he has accomplished it. Now that the solu- 
 tion is so near at hand, there would be no particular merit in pre- 
 dicting it, if the easy prophecy were not accompanied with a 
 complete exposition of the advantages which France is to draw 
 from its fulfilment. 
 
 II. 
 
 "When we examine the map of Mexico the fortunate and 
 peculiar geographical situation of this privileged country at 
 once attracts our attention. Bathed by either ocean, it lies at 
 an equal distance between Asia and Europe. It has free com- 
 munication with the richest and most commercial peoples of- 
 the old continent, and were the public mind reassured, and the 
 movements of industry directed by a serious, well established 
 government, Mexico might rival the most commercial nations 
 of the new world. The general temperature of Mexico is 
 hardlj^ more than two or three degrees higher than the average 
 temperature of Rome or Kaples, while the physical conforma- 
 tion of the country is at least as favorable as its maritime posi- 
 tion. With the exception of a narrow coast line on some parts 
 of its frontier, especially about Yera Cruz, the climate is 
 w^iolesome, agreeable, mild ; and traders who, having long 
 inhabited these distant shores, return to Europe, always look 
 back upon them with regret. Mexico, which might furnish 
 the whole world with precious woods and splendid dyes, could 
 nourish France and Spain with its cereals in a year of famine. 
 It is the only tropical country whose soil abundantly yields the 
 finest grains. The generous loins of its mountains, rising eight 
 or nine thousand feet above the level of the sea, are filled with 
 almost inexhaustible mines, which have never yet" been ade- 
 quately worked. The only ones now really opened, and which 
 are able to endure the enormous taxation imposed by autocra- 
 
9 
 
 tic and ephemeral governments, driven to procure money at 
 any cost, belong to English companies ; and the number of 
 them is relatively small. We may be certain that the de- 
 velopment of the mineral wealth of Mexico is still in its 
 infancy. The natives have never succeeded , in it. But v^hat 
 the English never could, we who have shown ourselves their 
 equals, at every international exhibition, in the industrial arts, 
 may teach the natives of Mexico to do. 
 
 When one runs over the catalogue of the riches of Mexico, its 
 wealth in grain and gold — those two vital forces of nations — 
 one is tempted, to ask how it is that its inhabitants make no 
 more of their advantages? Why is it that notwithstanding 
 European aid the movement of industry in that country has 
 never been orderly and regular? It is hardly possible that 
 anarchy should have taken root in the needs and aspirations of 
 a population too sparse for the country it inhabits. In Mexico 
 disorder has never arisen from the lower ranks of society, it 
 descends from the upper and governmental regions. The peo- 
 ple are not the agitators, and brigandage itself has been most 
 commonly undertaken by persons of property, generals, even 
 by the aides-de-camp of presidents. The Indians, not natu- 
 rally industrious, live on the plantations or factories of Euro- 
 peans, whilst the mixed race seeks in tyranny, exactions, and 
 robbery, the facile existence which it does not care to ask from 
 labor. * In short, although there is an actual want of popula- 
 tion in Mexico, there is more idleness there than industry ; and 
 this unfortunate state of things, this destruction of agriculture 
 and industry by the depredations of indolence, will continue to 
 exist till European emigration shall modify the relations of the 
 three races which barely people these immense regions. 
 Mexico waits for — invites — demands emigration ; not the un- 
 healthy foolish emigration which transports from one latitude 
 to another, creatures without industry or intelligence, but the 
 emigration of the capital and the intelligence which find no 
 room in our social system. Such an emigration it is wliich 
 has given to the United States industry, wealth, and courage, 
 and let us add has, at the same time, secured the quiet of Eng- 
 land. Whoever has lived long in England must have been 
 struck with the flagrant and perpetual contradiction between 
 the private genius of the English man, always disposed to 
 
10 
 
 commercial, maritime, and industrial adventm-e, and the pub- 
 lic genius of the English nation, which is radically hostile to 
 all revolutionary ideas. The reason of this is not to be looked 
 for in the perfection of English institutions ; for if we admit the 
 superiority of their representative system, we must also allow 
 that their customs and social laws, particularly in respect to 
 property, are very far from being perfect. We in France, on 
 the contrary, have always been fond of political adventure. 
 Bevolution for revolution's sake was a passion with our fa- 
 thers; and the actual generation of Frenchmen indulged in 
 the same passion in 1848 at no small cost. But we are not 
 easily seduced by private enterprises. The thing which 
 pleases us in politics displeases us in business, and our indi- 
 vidual temperament has not always been so high as our na- 
 tional temperament; nevertheless, for some years past we 
 have been gaining in industrial daring. The calm and the 
 solidity of the institutions which France has recently founded, 
 repel beyond our frontiers those undisciplined and ardent 
 dreamers, who make the very emigrants of whom we have 
 been speaking. Let the certainty of protection lead thig popu- 
 lation to Mexico, and the age of its regeneration will not be 
 long in coming to that country, thenceforth filled with new 
 inhabitants, ready for all progress, familiar w^ith the newest 
 discoveries of modern industry, and supported by the intelli- 
 gent liberalism of the flag of France. It is beginning to be 
 seen that our national interest, much more than the desire of 
 adding a new name to the long list of our military victories, 
 has led France into Mexico. Let us not be troubled, then, 
 with regard to the future of this expedition. Whether Maxi- 
 milian accept or refuse the throne of Mexico; \fhether any 
 other prince accept that throne or not; or whether beneath 
 the wings of our eagles some as yet nameless government be esta- 
 blished there, the influence of France will remain in Mexico. 
 The French soldier takes his country with him. Our army, 
 made up of workmen and laborers who all look forward^ to 
 their return to the workshop or-the plough, is an army of crea- 
 tors, and not of destroyers. It takes into Mexico all that 
 Mexico needs : 1st. Cohesion ; because it is the most complete 
 and sincere expression of modern democracy; 2nd. Order; 
 because it permits all citizens of that unfortunate nation to 
 
11 , 
 
 develop their own interests ; 3d. Industry; because it furnishes 
 to languishing enterprise, workmen, foremen, artisans, mana- 
 gers, because it familiarizes the Mexican people with the 
 wonders of France and of French industry; 4:th. An army; 
 by its example and its instruction. 
 
 Thus, then, and naturally, by a diffusion and profusion of 
 interests and of labor, the desire and need of firmness in the 
 political system will be fortified. In the great movement of 
 our country, industrial and financial interests control and con- 
 duct society. Questions of politics disappear before social 
 questions. Twenty years ago the opposition was l-epublican — 
 to-day it is social. And the theory of human equality no 
 longer assumes to reduce the great to the condition of the 
 lowly, bnt to raise the lowly to the level of the great. The 
 problems of general prosperity, of the increase of wages, of 
 cheap production, of public hygiene, can be much more easily 
 solved under a powerful government. The empire has disci- 
 plined socialism, and put it to use. The empire has conquered 
 and decapitated anarchy. This it is that the empire is to do 
 in Mexico, and this it cannot do securely and properly until 
 the Confederate States have been recognised. 
 
 in. 
 
 If war had not broken out between the ISTorthern and 
 Southern States of America, Europe would not yet have been 
 impressed with the dangers which threaten her from the 
 power of the Union. 
 
 Although she had become tributary to the new world, Eu- 
 rope had taken no precaution to prevent the consummation of 
 a crisis which she had never foreseen, and which for two years 
 she has been enduring. It has cost us something to learn how 
 j)recarious is the fortune of an industry compelled to seek its 
 raw materials in a single market, to all the exactions and all 
 the vicissitudes of which it must necessarily submit. 
 
 In this respect the secession of the Confederate States is an 
 event particularly favorable to France — for England has now 
 no interest in the cessation of hostilities and the consequent 
 constitution of an intermediate power between the Federal 
 Union and the Spanish American States. 
 
12 
 
 England trembles for Canada, to which the l^orth, after the 
 war, may look for the compensation of its losses. The com- 
 merce of England pi;ofits by the misfortunes of American com- 
 merce — she looks with satisfaction on the exhaustion alike of 
 the South and of the North. She supplies both parties with 
 arms, and while the southern export of cotton is suspended she 
 is increasing the cotton culture of India. England, then, will 
 never take the initiative in recognising the Confederate States, 
 and the way in which our propositions of pacific intervention 
 were twice received by her, ought to dispel all doubts on this 
 head. 
 
 France, on the other hand^ cannot hope to find the cotton 
 which her factories need elsewhere than in the South. Every 
 attempt at the culture has failed, and it is unfortunately proba- 
 ble that every such attempt will continue to fail. The cotton 
 culture, like the grape culture, is a qilestion of soils. A vine 
 from Bordeaux or the Khine, transplanted under the same lati- 
 tudes and climates, will yield neither a Chateau Margaux nor a 
 Johannisberg. The wine changes with the soil : so it is w^ith 
 cotton — its quality degenerates with the soil. Furthermore, 
 the question is not to produce some sort of cotton, good, bad, 
 or " ordinary," but to produce it at fair prices. Now, as well 
 in respect to cheapness as to quality, the cotton of the South 
 surpasses all others. The Federals are so w^ell aware of this, 
 that the war which they are waging is really and mainly a w^ar 
 of interest. The producing, agricultural South was the com- 
 mercial vassal of the North, which insists upon keeping its best 
 customer : emancipation is merely a skilful device for entrap- 
 ping the sympathies of European liberalism. If the North 
 were victorious it would never probe the slavery question to 
 the core. Once masters of the negro race, northern men would 
 be slow to compromise the cotton culture, for the sake of which 
 they are so savagely maintaining an unjust war; they would 
 then hasten to admit that it is impossible to change the vital 
 economical condition of an immense region by a battle or a 
 stroke of the pen. The northern idea of the abolition of slavery, 
 by making the negro food for powder or by exiling him from 
 his home to die of hunger, is now thoroughly understood in Eu- 
 rope. Our notions of philanthropy and our moral sense alike 
 revolt from these ferocious exaggerations of the love of liberty. 
 
IS 
 
 Honest and intelligent men are no longer to be doped hj these 
 coarse devices, and Mr. Lincoln's abolition cry finds no 
 echo. 
 
 If there be sceptics on this point, let us remind them of the 
 Lynch law which prevails in the JSTorth ; of the way in which 
 the Indians are still hunted down ; of the decree published but 
 the other day by the Governor of Minnesota, offering a reward 
 of twenty-five dollars for every Indian scalp. These are disa- 
 greeable things to happen among a people who profess to be 
 fighting for the abolition of slavery ; and were that people to 
 triumph, the poor negroes would find their way to liberty a 
 path of thorns. 
 
 But the first European power which shall recognise the Con- 
 federate States will have a right to obtain much more for the 
 negro than the Federals could secure for him through their 
 '' Union by victory." This first power being France, we may 
 be sure that the cause of civilization, humanity, and progress, 
 will not be forgotten by her. All that is difficult, even impos- 
 sible, while the conflict rages, will become easy with the 
 return of peace. The emancipation of the blacks, the complete 
 abolition of slavery, can only be the work of peace and of time ; 
 and an alHance with the South will effect that great social 
 renovation which England, with her " right of search," has 
 so vainly sought to bring about. 
 
 Moreover, slavery cannot possibly be made a serious argu- 
 ment against the recognition of the South. France and Eng- 
 land live on good terms with Spain and Brazil ; they even pro- 
 tect Egypt and Turkey, and these countries maintain slavery 
 with no show of a disposition to abolish it. France will use 
 her influence to secure the gradual emancipation of the slaves 
 without making slavery a ground for refusing recognition. 
 
 The North, made keen-eyed by selfishness, has certainly 
 foreseen this ; and the famous Monroe doctrine is nothing more 
 nor less than a policy of insurance against civilization. What 
 has become of those glorious days when the fierce and touchy 
 patriotism of the Americans boasted of a confederacy free from 
 public debt, of those days when political liberty in nowise 
 trammelled individual liberty, and the free citizen of a free 
 state roamed freely over a free soil ? What has the ITorth done 
 with the prestige and the glory which it used for ever to parade 
 
14 
 
 "before the dazzled' eyes of European populations, scarce able 
 to believe in the existence of so much happiness and liberty ? 
 
 They have all been sacrificed to the Union ! 
 
 ^' Perish liberty, rather than v^e should lose the provinces that 
 support us! Let us mortgage the finances of the future, but 
 let us not give up the states which fill the coflers of the trea- 
 sury ! What though they long to leave us : we, we, the men 
 of the [N'orth, will never consent to it !" 
 
 And so, were the Union reconstructed to-day, its debt would 
 almost equal the debt of England : the free soil of the Republic 
 has been disgraced by daily and audacious attacks upon per- 
 sonal liberty: the title of American citizen ofi'ers no protection, 
 and imposes no sacred duties upon him who wears it. 
 
 The "model republic" exists only as a memory, and those 
 who love it are left to cherish the image of a greatness and a 
 grace for ever gone. 
 
 The pride of the North will never stoop to admit the supe- 
 riority of southern men : and yet it is from these that the Union 
 drew its best statesmen and the majority of its Presidents. The 
 pride of the l^orth will bend only to necessity, because it has 
 not kept pace with the progress of the age. To-day the Ameri- 
 cans of the ISTorth are as completely foreign to the family of 
 nations as they were twenty years ago. Tliey understand no- 
 thing but the narrowest and most mechanical mercantilism, the 
 art of purchase and sale ; and they long to annihilate the Con- 
 federate States in order that the South, by its intelligence, its 
 enterprise, and the talents of its statesmen, may not throw down 
 the rampart they have built up against EurojManisvi. It was 
 by Northern men that Juarez was and is encouraged to per- 
 severe in his resistance — but the other day, at Frankfort, their 
 consul on a public and solemn occasion raised the flag of the 
 fallen President of Mexico ; and, although the changes which 
 have taken place in Mexico have not yet been diplomatically 
 published and recognised, this suspicious piece of bravado 
 proves that the sympathies of the North would seize on peace 
 as the opportunity for throwing men and money upon the 
 country in which France is seeking to found a new empire. 
 
 The American war, from which France has snfi'ered more 
 than England, can be useful to us only if the North and South 
 part company definitively ; and for these reasons : 
 
15 
 
 1. The Confederate States will be our allies, and will guarantee 
 us against attack by the North. 
 
 2. Mexico, developed by our efforts, and sheltered from the 
 attacks of the North, will reward all our hopes. 
 
 3. Our factories will be insured the supplies which they 
 absolutely require. 
 
 Were the American war to end otherwise, all the adventurers 
 whom peace would let loose would simply iling themselves into 
 Mexico, and all that we have gone so far to secure would be 
 gathered in by the men of the North. 
 
 lY. 
 
 The American question is not one of those v/hich can be 
 deferred for solution to a more convenient season. 
 
 It has been put to us point-blank : it must be settled per- 
 emptorily. 
 
 Every one now admits that Europe can live in peace under 
 a perpetual imminence of questions — Eastern, Koraan, Ducal- 
 Holstein, and others — because no one can see his way to any 
 sharp and definite solution of these great international problems. 
 
 Moreover, the interests disturbed by these questions are either 
 religious or political : they are not commercial ; and they can 
 be discussed. Now, in politics, whatever can be discussed need 
 not be peremptorily dealt with. Time is the great allayer of 
 political and rehgious emotions. 
 
 The American question, we repeat, has been peremptorily 
 put, and will be completely answered. Now^, there is no pos- 
 sible peace in the reconstruction of the Union. The two elements 
 have disengaged themselves, and cannot be recombined. 
 
 The North, whether in the domain of arms, of ideas, or of 
 production, cannot and will not absorb the South. 
 
 We see, then, that neither peace nor absorption nor conquest 
 is possible. There is nothing left but secession at the end of 
 the war. 
 
 While the Americans 'of the North could make Europe be- 
 lieve they w^ere fighting against rebels it was the duty of Europe 
 to let them go on, despite the sufferings to which Europe was 
 exposed by the contest ; but the states of the South have set 
 
16 
 
 forth their policy, their purposes, their rights ; they desire 
 separation ; they refuse to enrich tlie North ; they are tired of 
 always giving and never receiving; they have determined to 
 live their own life. The ISTorth American exaggeration of com- 
 mercial interests has borne its fruits, and the South proposes to 
 reconstitute its national system with an eye to its own interests, 
 l^ow, since those interests conform to those of France ; since the 
 cause of the South is not only just, but logical; France does not 
 hesitate to declare her sympathies, and her first act of sympathy 
 naturally must be the recognition of the Confederate States. 
 
 Recognised by France, the strength of those states is quintu- 
 pled at once ; and their adversaries lose all that they gain. For 
 other states are waiting to follow the example of France ; among 
 the commercial powers of the second rank many desire the 
 establishment of a confederate republic as a means to the 
 decentralization of the Union. These powders, hitherto kept aloof 
 by the phantom of slavery, will follow France, because the 
 whole world knows that France lends her aid only to works of 
 social progress. 
 
 These powers will naturally be joined by Spain, which pos- 
 sesses Havana. Austria, which will be more directly involved 
 in the affairs of the new world if she accepts the Mexican throne 
 for Maximilian, must likewise recognise the Confederate States. 
 
 And England will then do what we have done. She will 
 recognise the South. 
 
 The Northern States will no longer persevere in a strife 
 thenceforth become hopeless and useless. 
 
 The navy of France is an argument which, in case of neces- 
 sity, would support her diplomatic action. 
 
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