act alone. He said that he was "more fully convinced than ever of
the propriety of a general recognition by the European powers of
the Confederate States but that the commerce of France and the
interests of the Mexican expedition would be jeopardized by a
rupture with the United States" and unless England would stand
by him he dared not risk such an eventuality. In point of fact,
he was like a speculator who is "hedging" on the stock exchange,
both buying and selling, and trying to make up his mind on which
cast to stake his fortune. At the same time he threw out once
more the sinister caution about the ships. He said that the
ships might be built in France but that their destination must
be concealed.

That Napoleon's choice just then, if England had supported him,
would have been recognition of the Confederacy, cannot be
doubted. The tangle of intrigue which he called his foreign
policy was not encouraging. He was deeply involved in Italian
politics, where the daring of Garibaldi had reopened the struggle
between clericals and liberals. In France itself the struggle
between parties was keen. Here, as in the American imbroglio, he
found it hard to decide with which party to break. The chimerical
scheme of a Latin empire in Mexico was his spectacular device to
catch the imagination, and incidentally the pocketbook, of
everybody. But in order to carry out this enterprise he must be
able to avert or withstand the certain hostility of the United
States. Therefore, as he told Slidell, "no other power than
England possessed a sufficient navy" to pull his chestnuts out
of the fire. The moment was auspicious, for there was a revival
of the "Southern party" in England. The sailing of the Alabama
from Liverpool during the previous summer had encouraged the