I hold with respect to alliances, that England is a Power sufficiently strong, sufficiently powerful, to steer her own course, and not to tie herself… - Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston

My dear John Russell, Till lately I had strong confidence in the fair intentions of Napoleon towards England, but of late I have begun to feel great distrust and to suspect that his formerly declared intention of avenging Waterloo has only lain dormant and has not died away. He seems to have thought that he ought to lay his foundation by beating with our aid or with our concurrence, or our neutrality first Russia and then Austria: and by dealing with them generously to make them his friends and in any subsequent quarrel with us.

...he thinks that peace is, of all things, the best, and that war is, of all things, the worst. Now, Sir, I happen to be of opinion that there are things for which peace may be advantageously sacrificed, and that there are calamities which a nation may endure which are far worse than war. This has been the opinion of men in all ages whose conduct has been admired by their contemporaries, and has obtained for them the approbation of posterity. The hon. Member, however, reduces everything to the question of pounds, shillings, and pence, and I verily believe that if this country were threatened with an immediate invasion likely to end in its conquest, the hon. Member would sit down, take a piece of paper, and would put on one side of the account the contributions which his Government would require from him for the defence of the liberty and independence of the country, and he would put on the other the probable contributions which the general of the invading army might levy upon Manchester, and if he found that, on balancing the account, it would be cheaper to be conquered than to be laid under contribution for defence, he would give his vote against going to war for the liberties and independence of the country, rather than bear his share in the expenditure which it would entail.

I must make a protest against the sort of exaggerations in which the noble Lord has indulged. He has described the railway launching 2,000 or 3,000 ruffians upon some quiet neighbourhood in a manner that might lead one to imagine the train conveyed a set of banditti to plunder, rack, and ravage the country, murder the people, burn the houses, and commit every sort of atrocity...they may conceive it to be a very harmless pursuit...Some people look upon it as an exhibition of manly courage, characteristic of the people of this country. I saw the other day a long extract from a French newspaper describing this fight as a type of the national character for endurance, patience under suffering of indomitable perseverance, in determined effort, and holding it up as a specimen of the manly and admirable qualities of the British race...I do not perceive why any number of persons, say 1,000 if you please, who assemble to witness a prize fight, are in their own persons more guilty of a breach of the peace than an equal number of persons who assemble to witness a balloon ascent. There they stand; there is no breach of the peace; they go to see a sight, and when that sight is over they return, and no injury is done to any one. They only stand or sit on the grass to witness the performance, and as to the danger to those who perform themselves, I imagine the danger to life in the case of those who go up in balloons is certainly greater than that of two combatants who merely hit each other as hard as they can, but inflict no permanent injury upon each other.