[132] Annual Register for 1853.
[133] Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 13. For Lord Aberdeen’s answer to Palmerston’s bellicose special pleading, see Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLVIII.
[134] This letter, dated the 14th of November, was not sent till it had been submitted to Lord Aberdeen and Lord Clarendon for their approval. The precedent should be noted, because, as Sir Hamilton Seymour told Count Nesselrode at the time, “these correspondences between sovereigns are not regular, according to our Constitutional notions.” At the same time, when personally addressed by a foreign sovereign, the Crown cannot, as a matter of courtesy, reply through a Minister of State. The course taken by the Queen in this instance is obviously the prudent one.
[135] Cobden’s Collected Writings, Vol. II., p. 269.
[136] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. L.
[137] Letters of Sir G. C. Lewis, p. 276.
[138] It is only just to the memory of Mr. Cobden to state that towards the end of his career some suspicion of the truth crept into his mind. Speaking on the American Civil War, he said:—“From the moment the first shot is fired or the first blow struck in a dispute, then farewell to all reason and argument; you might as well reason with mad dogs as with men when they have begun to spill each other’s blood in mortal combat. I was so convinced of the fact during the Crimean War; I was so convinced of the utter uselessness of raising one’s voice in opposition to War when it has once begun, that I made up my mind that so long as I was in political life, should a war again break out between England and a great Power, I would never open my mouth upon the subject from the time the first gun was fired till the peace was made.”—Cobden’s Speeches, Vol. II., p. 314. See also Mr. John Morley’s masterly defence of the Cobdenites in 1854, in his Life of Cobden, Chap. XXII.
[139] Count Nesselrode’s Despatch to the Russian Ambassador in England, dated the 16th of January, 1854.
[140] See Sir H. Seymour’s Despatch to Lord Clarendon, dated the 30th of January, 1854.
[141] Amongst other things, she demanded that some fresh arrangement should be made as to the right of asylum granted to political refugees in Turkey. This obviously pointed at Turkey’s refusal to surrender the Hungarian patriots after the Revolution of 1848 was suppressed; and, knowing the opinion of England on the subject, it was absurd to add such stipulations to new preliminaries of peace.