1854,
Air. 50.

614

LIFE OF OOBDEN,

Tuaal.

macy in preventing strife. Diplomacy in their hands
always meant either veiled mensce or tart lecturing
instead of being the great, the difficult, the beneficent art
which it has been in the hands of its worthiest masters, of
so reconciling interests, soothing jealous susceptibilities;
nllaying apprehensions, organizing influences, inventing
solutions, that the world may move with something like
steadiness along the grooves of deep pacific policy, instead
of tossing on a viewless sea of violence and passion. If this
ideal had prevailed, nobody would have sanctioned the despatch
 of a British Minister to Constantinople who was the
bitter personal enemy of the Czar. The Peelites, on the other
hand, had strong general leanings towards non-intervention
but not sufficently definite to give them energy and determination
 in working out a policy that should avert war-Then
 the tide of popular passion rose with extraordinary
rapidity. The tardiness of the diplomatists gave time for
all that deep anger with which the people of England had
watched the Czar’s proceedings in Hungary five years before,
to burst forth with a vehemence that soon became uncontrollable.
 The statesmen who ought to have exercised &
counteracting control over it, were hurried off their feet.
Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston were rivals for
popularity, and neither could endure to surrender the prize
to the other by making a stand against the public frenzy.
The consequence was that England became the cat’s-paw of
Austria, Prussia, and the Emperor of the French.!
War was declared in whe spring of 1854. Before the
summer of 1855 an extraordinary series of changes
took place. The Coalition Government had fallen tO
pieces, Lord Palmerston had hecome Prime Minister, the
Peelites had resigned, Lord John Russell had resigned and

! We must remember that even the modern Road-to-India argument for
the defence of Turkey had not then been invented.