through manufactures and commerce, and could no longer be induced to fight for a principle, a sentiment, or an ally. Even after Lord Aberdeen had been impelled to take action directly tending to war, the Czar still believed that a community which made the exaltation and worship of trade the mainspring of its policy, and which listened complacently to the denunciation of war as an unmixed evil, would never be roused into armed resistance to his projects. How far a more determined tone on the part of our Ministry, at an early stage of his course of aggression, would have effectually checked it, may be matter of speculation. But there can be no doubt, judging from his own language and his own acts, that his not unreasonable persuasion of the degeneracy of our national character was a main element in producing the state of mind which rendered him so fatally domineering and precipitate in the pursuit of his ends, and so regardless of the decencies of public law.
At the time of MenschikofFs mission, Lord Stratford, having resigned his post, was in England. But the difficulties which that mission was creating seemed again to demand his commanding influence on the spot, and he had been desired to resume his functions. The instructions given to him, conceived in a spirit of conciliation to Russia, in a matter which, on the surface, did not vitally concern us, were to admonish the Porte to show increased consideration for its Christian'subjects. But, at the same time, remembering what lay under the surface, the Government empowered him, in case of imminent danger to Turkey, to request the Commander of our
14 England supports Turkey.
Mediterranean Squadron, then lying at Malta, to hold it in readiness to move, though he was not to call it up without orders from the Home Government. But when Menschikoff, on the removal of his first grievance, put forth his other and more dangerous claim, the British Government perceived that it could no longer rest in any degree on the good faith of the Czar. At the end of May 1853, when Menschikoff departed from Constantinople, breathing war, Lord Clarendon instructed Lord Stratford that it was indispensable to take measures for the protection of the Sultan, and to aid him by force, if necessary, in repelling an attack upon his territory, and in defence of the independence of Turkey, which England, he declared, " was bound to maintain." At the same time, in a despatch to St Petersburgh, he required to be informed what object the Czar had in view, " and in what manner, and to what extent, the dominions of the Sultan, and the tranquillity of Europe were threatened ? " A few days afterwards the Allied squadrons moved up the Mediterranean, and anchored in the neighbourhood of the Dardanelles, which the Sultan was bound by treaty to keep closed to the fleets of other Powers so long as Turkey was at peace. On the 22d October, the day before Turkey declared war, the fleets entered the Dardanelles. The Ambassadors had been instructed to call them up to Constantinople, " for the security of
British and French interests, and, if necessary, for the protection of t "
by the appreh Turkish capital.
protection of the Sultan." The step was precipitated by the apprehension of fanatical disturbances in the
Why Louis Napoleon joined with England. 15