time, however, begun pretty well to understand the true position of affairs, and her majesty was prompt and definite enough in her reply in a letter from Balmoral dated September 25th.

"Lord Aberdeen's explanation of the present state of affairs throws an entirely new light upon the position of the question in dispute. The queen has also just seen Count Nesselrode's despatch, stating his reasons for the objections to the modifications made in Vienna note. Hitherto Russia has generally objected to any modification of what had been already accepted by the emperor as an ultimatum.

"But since it appears, as Lord Aberdeen says, that the Russian interpretation of the Vienna note was directly at variance with that of the four powers, and in a great measure confirmed the Turkish objections,' Lord Aberdeen is perfectly right in calling it 'an act scarcely honest upon the part of England and France to ask the Porte to sign a note upon the strength of their interpretation, while they knew perfectly well that this interpretation was entirely different from that put upon it by the power to whom the note was to be addressed.'

"From this moment, however, it becomes also obvious that it will be fruitless further to attempt to settle the dispute by the 'rédaction' (compilation) of notes to be exchanged between Turkey and Russia, or the choice of particular words and expressions in public documents having for their object to avoid naming the real objects in dispute.

It is evident that Russia has hitherto attempted to deceive us in pretending that she did not aim at the acquisition of any new right, but required only a satisfaction of honour and a reacknowledgment of the rights she already possessed by treaty; and that she does intend, and for the first time lays bare that intention, to acquire new rights of interference which the Porte does not wish to concede, and cannot concede, and which the European powers have repeatedly declared she ought not to concede.

"Ought not the points of difference to be now prominently laid before our allies, and in

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conjunction with such as have either the honesty or the courage to avow the same opinion with ourselves ought we not to point this out to Russia, with a declaration that such demands are unsupported by existing treaties, inadmissible by Turkey if she has any regard for her independence, and inadmissible by the powers who have an interest and a duty to guard this independence, and that the continuance of the occupation of the principalities in order to extort these demands constitutes an unwarrantable aggression upon Turkey, and infraction of the public law of Europe?

"If the views of Russia, for instance, with regard to 'Modification III. of the Note' were to prevail, the extension of the advantages and privileges enjoyed by Christian communities, in their capacity as foreigners, to the Greeks generally, with the right granted to Russia to intercede for them to this effect, would simply make foreigners of ten millions of the subjects of the Porte, or depose the sultan as their sovereign, putting the Emperor of Russia in his place."

It is not difficult to trace in this plain declaration the hand of Prince Albert, but at the time or soon afterwards he was accused and suspected of being in effect adverse to England and of acting inimically to the national honour by his foreign sympathies. The "dead-set" made on the prince by a large part of the newspaper press was inexcusable, and for a time he was again the centre of abuse from all quarters, until a short declaration in parliament utterly exploded these scandalous accusations. Of this we shall have a word to say in another page. The line of argument indicated in the queen's reply to the Earl of Aberdeen was adopted and made the substance of a despatch by Lord Clarendon to Sir G. Hamilton Seymour at St. Petersburg, and then followed another move on the part of the Emperor Nicholas.

The French and British fleets had been sent to the Dardanelles for the protection of Turkey as soon as it was known that preparations were being made for the Russian occupation of the principalities. Lord Palmerston had strongly advised that when the occupation did take place the fleets should at once be sent up

to the Bosphorus, and that they should also be at liberty to go into the Black Sea if necessary or useful for the protection of Turkish territory. This he believed would be an encouragement to Turkey, a direct check to Russia, and a stimulus to Austria and Prussia to make increased exertions to bring the Russian government to reason, and that it would also "relieve England and France from the disagreeable and not very creditable position of waiting without venturing to enter the back door as friends while the Russians have taken possession of the front hall as enemies." Palmerston was then convinced that this country expected some such decisive course to be taken, and that it would meet with support from the opposition in parliament; but the Earl of Aberdeen persisted, as Prince Albert wrote in a letter to Stockmar, not only in treating our enemies as if they were honourable men, but in maintaining it was right to think that they were so in fact.

It must have been difficult to support this high opinion after the Emperor of Russia had declared that the occupation of the provinces was to be explained by the presence of the fleets in the Dardanelles, and would only cease when they retired. "It is the robber who declares that he will not leave the house until the policeman shall have first retired from the courtyard," said Palmerston in a memorandum sent round to the members of the cabinet. "The position of England and France was already sufficiently humiliating; but this insolent pretension, published to all Europe even before it was communicated to us, seems to me to make that position no longer tenable consistently with a due regard to the honour and character of this country." He still advised the despatch of the fleets to the Bosphorus, with an intimation that Count Nesselrode's note, dictating to us where we should send our fleet, left us no alternative but to station that fleet at the very heart of that empire whose integrity and independence had been unwarrantably threatened by a Russian invasion of its territory.

It will be seen that Palmerston was already playing a very prominent part as adviser in foreign affairs in addition to his duties as

home secretary, and it cannot be doubted that he was interpreting the feeling of the country; but he must seriously have embarrassed the patient and, as most people thought, the timid and hesitating policy of the Earl of Aberdeen, who clung to the opinion that negotiations for peace might be successful after all if we could only go on acting as though we gave Russia credit for honesty and good faith. But the Russian people as well as the Turkish people were regarding the impending struggle from a fanatical point of view; and though the emperor sometimes seemed ready to make another effort to set himself right with England, it was evidently only for the purpose of gaining his end, and without regard to the truth of his statements. He had declared at Olmutz that he sought no new right, privilege, or advantage, but solely the confirmation of the legal status quo. If he had been sincere in this there ought to have been no difficulty in concluding a peace. He was reported to be depressed and out of spirits at the position in which he found himself. The four great powers had declared him in the wrong; they all felt sore that the rash and unjustifiable invasion of the principalities had brought them to the verge of an European war. Prussia and Austria, moreover, had reason to dread a power so arbitrary in its demands and its manner of enforcing them by seizing what territory it pleased. If Moldavia, why not any other province under the pretext of some equally unfounded claim? Seeing the attitude adopted by England and France, the emperor had tried to engage Austria and Prussia in a league, offensive and defensive, against them. Austria would have yielded had Prussia done so; but Prussia, under the firm guidance of Baron Manteuffel, refused. Thus the emperor stood alone, with the public opinion of Europe arrayed against him, and two of its greatest powers virtually pledged to support the sultan by their whole combined strength. The prospect might well have made him pause; but by this time the religious fervour of the Russians was roused in favour of what they deemed a crusade in support of the true faith, and this element, with others, more than

outweighed the suggestions of policy and prudence.1

The Emperor of Russia felt himself impelled to a difficult war in which he would have to stand alone, and at the last moment he was still plotting and contriving how he might secure some kind of support. There are even evidences that he would have receded if he could have done so with substantial advantage in the direction of a protectorate which would make it appear that he was, as he professed to be, acting only in the interests of national honour. But the time had passed. He had gained nothing by his efforts to hoodwink Europe, and though he made overtures for a triple alliance with Austria and Prussia, the governments of these countries could neither of them venture to go to that extent of perfidy after they had ever so faintly protested against the assumptions of the czar. Either they had promoted a treaty by the clauses of which they had been deceived, or they were playing into the hands of Russia.

The old Asiatic party in Turkey, led by Redschid Pacha, who held by a prophecy that the Turks were to be driven out of Constantinople and would be confined to a territory in Asia, were anxious to secure peace by almost any concessions; but they were no longer tolerated when Russia commenced hostilities by crossing the Pruth, and the war party were called to power with Omar Pacha as commander-in-chief of the Turkish armies for the Danubian Principalities. Omar Pacha was an Austrian subject, a Croatian, who had entered the Turkish service in 1830 when he was twenty-nine years old, and whose reputation had been sustained by his great military ability and some brilliant exploits in Syria, Albania, Koordistan, and Bosnia. He had professedly embraced the Mohammedan tenets, but it needed all his great talents and repeated successes to enable him to hold his own against the jealousy of the Turkish officers, who looked upon him for some years with dislike and suspicion. The war on which he was about to enter gave him another opportunity of asserting his superiority as a general. As

Sir Theodore Martin, Life of the Prince Consort.

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soon as the Russian troops entered the principalities Turkey issued a manifesto, and on the 5th of October declared war. The four western powers, desiring still to avert decided hostilities if possible, sent to the Turkish general desiring him not to cross the Danube or to commence an appeal to arms; but Omar Pacha was already in action:-his army had crossed the river and taken a firm position in spite of the resistance of the Russians.

At this time Prince Albert had sent a circular, or what may be called a series of notes on the situation, to the Earl of Aberdeen, in which he represented as his opinion that though we were most anxious for the preservation of the peace of Europe, which could not fail to be endangered by open hostilities between Turkey and Russia, by the order to our fleet to protect the Turkish territory, and by the declaration of war issued by the Turks, this the perhaps most important object of our policy had been decidedly placed in jeopardy. In acting as auxiliaries to the Turks we ought to be quite sure that they had no object in view foreign to our duty and interests; that they did not drive at war whilst we aimed at peace; that they did not, instead of merely resisting the attempt of Russia to obtain a protectorate over the Greek population incompatible with their own independence, seek to obtain themselves the power of imposing a more oppressive rule of two millions of fanatic Mussulmans over twelve millions of Christians; that they did not try to turn the tables upon the weaker power, now that, backed by England and France, they had themselves become the stronger.

If our forces were to be employed for any purpose, however defensive, as an auxiliary to Turkey, we must insist upon keeping not only the conduct of the negotiation, but also the power of peace and war, in our own hands, and that, Turkey refusing this, we could no longer take part for her.

It would be said that England and Europe had a strong interest, setting all Turkish considerations aside, that Constantinople and the Turkish territory should not fall into the hands of Russia, and that they should in the last extremity even go to war to prevent such an over

throw of the balance of power. This must be admitted, and such a war might be right and wise. But this would be a war, not for the maintenance of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, but merely for the interests of the European powers of civilization. It ought to be carried on unshackled by obligations to the Porte, and would probably lead, in the peace, which must be the object of that war, to the obtaining of arrangements more consonant with the well-understood interests of Europe, of Christianity, liberty, and civilization, than the reimposition of the ignorant barbarian and despotic yoke of the Mussulman over the most fertile and favoured portion of Europe.

This memorandum from the prince was approved by the foreign minister Lord Clarendon, and by Sir James Graham, while Lord John Russell said he "agreed very much with it;" but Lord Palmerston differed considerably from its conclusions, and his reply is worth attention, because it may be said to have relation to a dispute which has been renewed at a comparatively recent date and is by no means settled. He said: "According to my view of the matters in question the case is simple and our course is clear. The five great powers have in a formal document recorded their opinion that it is for the general interest of Europe that the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire should be maintained; and it would be easy to show that strong reasons, political and commercial, make it especially the interest of England that this integrity and independence should be maintained. But Russia has attacked the independence and violated the integrity of the Ottoman Empire; and Russia must, by fair means or foul, be brought to give up her pretensions and withdraw her aggression. England and France, urged by common interests to defend Turkey against Russia, have given Turkey physical assistance and political and diplomatic support. They undertook to obtain for Turkey, by negotiation, a satisfactory and honourable settlement of her difficulties with Russia, and failing that, to support Turkey in her defensive war. Hitherto our efforts at negotiation have failed, because the arrangement which we proposed was declared both by Turkey

and by Russia to be such as Turkey could not honourably nor safely adopt. The Turkish government, seeing no apparent prospect of better results from negotiation, and aware that lapse of time was running to the disadvantage of Turkey, at length, after having for some considerable time yielded to our advice to remain passive, came to a determination not unnatural and not unwise, and issued that declaration of war which we had officially and publicly said that the sultan would have been justified in issuing the moment the Russians invaded his territory.

"This declaration of war makes no change in the position of England and France in relation to Turkey. We may still try to persuade Russia to do what she ought to do, but we are still bound, by a regard for our own interests, to defend Turkey. Peace is an excellent thing, and war is a great misfortune; but there are many things more valuable than peace, and many things much worse than war. We passed the Rubicon when we first took part with Turkey and sent our squadrons to support her; and when England and France have once taken a third power by the hand, that third power must be carried in safety through the difficulties in which it may be involved. · England and France cannot afford to be baffled, and whatever measures may be necessary on their part to baffle their opponent, those measures must be adopted; and the governments of the two most powerful countries on the face of the earth must not be frightened either by words or things, either by the name or by the reality of war. No doubt when we put forth our whole strength in defence of Turkey we shall be entitled to direct in a great measure the course and character of the war, and to exercise a deciding influence on the negotiations which may afterwards lead to peace. And it was with that view that some time ago I proposed to the cabinet that, negotiation failing, England and France should conclude a convention with Turkey, by which, on the one hand, the two powers should engage to afford Turkey naval assistance, and to permit their respective subjects to enter the sultan's service, naval and military; and by which the sultan, on the