[142] Nesselrode, Orloff, and Kisseleff.
[143] “Russia, as I can guarantee, will prove herself in 1854 what she was in 1812.... My conditions are known at Vienna.”
[144] Observe not “a day,” as Kinglake has it.
[145] “L’Empereur ne juge pas convenable de donner aucune réponse à la lettre de Lord Clarendon.”—Eastern Papers. Consul Michele’s Despatch to Lord Clarendon, dated St. Petersburg, 19th March, 1854.
[146] Mr. Kinglake blames the London Press, especially the Times, for manufacturing this passion. Mr. Cobden took much the same view. Educated people who were rich, but ignorant of geography and military history, however, all clamoured for war. “I have had the satisfaction of seeing the rascally Czar defeated by the unassisted Turks, and obliged to cross the Pruth. Now for Sebastopol!” Thus wrote Lord Campbell in his Journal on the 14th of August.—See Mrs. Hardcastle’s Life of John, Lord Campbell, Vol. II., p. 326.
[147] “In proposing success to the guest of the evening, he (Palmerston) made a speech in that vein of forced jocularity with which elderly gentlemen give the toast of the bridegroom at a wedding breakfast.”—Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXII.
[148] Compare this with almost the identical expression in Mr. Bright’s speech in the House of Commons of the 13th of March, for delivering which Lord Palmerston jeered at him as “the honourable and reverend gentleman.”
[149] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LII.
[150] “For if the hostilities continue, if the Powers, released from all apprehension in Turkey, should be free either to pursue us on the evacuated territory, or to employ all their disposable forces in invading our European or Asiatic dominions, with a view to impose on us conditions which could not be accepted, it is evident that the demand made by Austria was that we should weaken ourselves morally and materially by a sacrifice wholly useless.”—Count Nesselrode’s Despatch to Count Buol Schauenstein of 29th of July, 1854.
[151] See Lord Clarendon’s Despatch to the Earl of Westmoreland, dated the 22nd of July, 1854.