Franco-British relations upon their former intimate
footing, and of allaying the irritation which the
Treaty of July had aroused. To attain this end he
was prepared to make far greater concessions than
any to which Palmerston would have consented. No
one was so convinced as he of the truth of the
saying, ascribed to the Duke of Wellington, that the
peace of Europe would remain unbroken, so long as
France and England were united. It was not in
their policies, but in their personal characters, that lay
the real difference between Aberdeen and Palmerston.
Aberdeen was by nature conciliatory. Palmerston was
instinctively combative, and would rarely deny himself
the pleasure of relentlessly exposing the fallacies of
an opponent's arguments. Aberdeen, although in
some respects more of a Liberal than his predecessor,
had a scholar's abhorrence, which had been intensified
by his former relations with Metternich and other
continental statesmen, of all movements of a re-
volutionary character. Palmerston was a man of
coarser fibre, but of wider sympathies, than his grave
and studious successor.

Notwithstanding the earnest desire of both Lord
Aberdeen and of M. Guizot to bring matters to a
successful conclusion, the first important transaction
between the new British government and the French
Foreign Office led to no satisfactory result. In 1831,
and again in 1833, France and England had con-
tracted certain engagements towards each other for
the purpose of suppressing the slave trade. They
had agreed that their cruisers should stop and over-
haul any suspected vessel, whether flying the French
or the British flag. Palmerston, however, had not
been content with an arrangement, which limited the
right of search to ships purporting to be of French or
English nationality. He, accordingly, in combination
with France, made representations on the subject to

-332-