thing," he wrote to Sir Hamilton Seymour, and Mr. John Morley acknowledges the justice of the estimate. When, however, the Peelites, and notably Mr. Gladstone, who had been partners in the declaration of war, threw themselves with great inconsistency into the arms of the Peace party, Lord Palmerston saw that the time for resolute action had come. His reply to a speech of Mr. Gladstone's, made on the 30th of July, in deprecation of the continuance of war, was crushing in the extreme.

No man [he said] could have been a party to entering into the great contest in which we are engaged—no man at least ought to have been a party to such a course of policy-without having deeply weighed the gravity of the struggle into which he was about to plunge the country, and without having satisfied his mind that the cause was just, that the motives were sufficient, and that the sacrifices which he was calling upon the country to make were such as a statesman might consider it ought to endure. Sir, there must indeed be grave reasons which could induce a man who had been a party with Her Majesty's Government to that line of policy, who had assisted in conducting the war, who had after full and perhaps unexampled deliberation agreed to enter upon the war, who, having concurred after that full and mature deliberation in the commencement of the war, had also joined in calling upon the country for great sacrifices in order to continue it, and who had, up to a very recent period, assented to all the measures proposed for its continuance; I say, there must, indeed, be grave reasons which could induce a man, who had been so far a party to the measures of the Government, utterly to change his opinions, to declare the war unnecessary, unjust, and impolitic, to set before the country all the imaginary dangers with which his fancy could supply him, and to magnify and to exaggerate the force of the enemy and the difficulties of our position.

His generalship secured ample majorities for the Government in every division during the session.

Of the energy which Lord Palmerston inspired into the operations against Sebastopol, there can hardly be two opinions. He may not have been a Chatham; but a letter of his to Lord Panmure, quoted by Mr. Ashley,

proves at any rate that he paid attention to every detail, and adopted no pennywise measures for raising troops. The addition of the Sardinian contingent to the fighting strength of the Allies had been a very solid gain; Palmerston wished to enlist in addition Germans, Swiss, and Italians. Even more creditable were his precautions for the health of the troops; and his representations to Lord Raglan, to prevent the Sanitary Commission despatched to the Crimea from being thwarted in their recommendations and directions, were most peremptory. No; it is not for being laggard in war that Lord Palmerston can be reproached, but, if at all, for obstinacy in continuing the war. Little exception can be taken to his description of the designs of Russia:

I say the intention of Russia to portion Turkey is manifest as the sun at noon-day, and it is to prevent that that we are contending. That is the object of the war, and not only to defend Turkey, the weak against the strong, but to avert injury and danger from ourselves. Let no man imagine, that if Turkey were destroyed by Russia, and that gigantic power stride like a Colossus from the Baltic on the one hand to the Mediterranean on the other, let no man suppose the great interests of this country would not be in peril; let not the peace-at-anyprice party imagine that their interest will not be deeply injured.

But the point at issue is whether the terms proposed by Austria at the second Vienna Conference were sufficiently binding to secure a permanent peace by safeguarding the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. Now there was considerable doubt at the outset as to the motives of the Austrian Government; the Emperor was well disposed, but the Allies wanted something more substantial than moral support. It was shrewdly suspected that the chief reason for the assembling of the Conference at Vienna was that the remonstrances

vernments.

of the Western Powers had become inconveniently frequent there.* And when the Russian conditions of peace came to be considered, they were found to be highly unsatisfactory by the French and English GoOf the "four points," propounded by the Western Powers, the first, second, and fourth, namely, the continued subjection of the Principalities to the Sultan, who, however, was to grant them autonomy; the free navigation of the Danube; and the independence of the Porte, were never seriously objected to by the Russian Plenipotentiary, Prince Gortschakoff. The discussions were almost entirely on the third point, the abrogation of the Russian supremacy in the Black Sea. The Western Powers demanded the neutralisation of the Black Sea, or a limitation of the number of Russian and Turkish ships of war. Prince Gortschakoff rejected any limitation of the Russian navy as an insult, and proposed plans based on the system of counterpoise which the Allies. at once declared to be inadmissible. It was evident that, unless the Conference was to be wholly sterile, a compromise must be struck out by Austria, the Power which occupied a quasi-mediatorial position. Her first Plenipotentiary, Count Buol, therefore proposed that Russia should agree to maintain the naval status quo of 1853; and that each of the Western Powers should be entitled to station two frigates in the Black Sea, in order to see that Russia did not increase her fleet. At the same time Austria promised to consider it a casus belli if Russia set on float a single ship on the Euxine more than in 1853, and Count Buol agreed that the

*These suspicions were probably unfounded. See the well-considered defence of Austrian statesmanship in Mr Kinglake's last volume.

proposal should be made to Russia in the form of an ultimatum.

As is well known, this compromise was accepted by the first English and French plenipotentiaries, Lord John Russell and M. Drouyn de Lhuys, but they were disavowed by their respective Governments; the Frenchman resigned immediately, Lord John remained Colonial Secretary until threatened by a vote of censure. The Austrian compromise was indeed in itself the sorriest make-shift, though Austrian intervention in the war, in the event of its being rejected by Russia, would have been extremely valuable to the Allies. It simply legalised the prépondérance which had existed before 1854, for the police espionage to be exercised by France and England would have been both costly and vexatious, and the idea that Austria would ever come to the assistance of the Allies was, in reality, as Lord Palmerston wrote to the Queen, a mockery. "What reason," he remarked, "is there for supposing that Austria, who has recently declared that, though prepared for war, she will not make war for ten sail-of-the-line more or less in the Russian Black Sea fleet, will some few years hence, when unprepared for war, draw the sword on account of the addition of one ship-of-war to that fleet?'*

The second Vienna Conference, if it failed to produce a cessation of hostilities, had at least the merit that it laid plainly before the world the irreducible minimum of the British demands. And when negotiations were resumed once more, this time to be brought to a successful conclusion, the five points guided the delibera

*These objections to the Austrian compromise appear to have been overlooked by Mr. Kinglake, who has recently declared himself in its favour. But his explanation of Lord John Russell's motives for retaining office is thoroughly convincing.

tions of the Congress of Paris, and formed the bases of the settlement. In the interval the tendency of events had been steadily in the direction of peace. There was no abatement in the spirit of the nation, or in its readiness to make sacrifices in the cause of honour. Even after the fall of Sebastopol there were many, and Lord Derby was the most eloquent exponent of their views, who, not content with having brought Russia upon her knees, would have laid her on her back. It is more than probable that, in his inmost soul, Lord Palmerston held those views, and trusting in the unimpaired resources of the country, would have liked to risk another campaign in the hope that one of its incidents would be the taking of Cronstadt. It is possible to read between the lines of his letter to the Queen congratulating her upon the tidings that the Czar had accepted the new Austrian proposals, though they were propounded in the especially humiliating form of an ultimatum, the rejection of which would be followed by the appearance of Austria in the arena.

Viscount Palmerston [he wrote] fully concurs in the sentiment of regret expressed by Your Majesty to Lord Clarendon, that the last action of the war in which Your Majesty's troops have been engaged should, if peace be now concluded, have been the repulse at the Redan; but, however, it may suit national jealousy, which will always be found to exist on the other side of the Channel, to dwell on that check, yet Your Majesty may rely upon it that Alma and Inkermann have left recollections which will dwell in the memory of the living, and not to be forgotten in the page of history; and although it would no doubt be gratifying to Your Majesty and the nation that another summer should have witnessed the "fulfilment of the measures contemplated for the next campaign," yet if peace can now be secured on conditions honourable and secure, it would, as Your Majesty justly observes, not be right to continue the war for the mere purposes of prospective victories.

Count Vitzthum, writing many years afterwards, even asserts that Lord Clarendon actually confided to him