THE TURKISH QUESTION IN THE COMMONS?! 

London, Friday, Aug. 19,’ 1853 

Lord John Russell having postponed his explanations on the 
Turkish question again and again, till at last, the last week of the 
Parliamentary session had happily arrived, came suddenly forward 
on Monday last, and gave notice that he would make his long 
deferred statement on Tuesday. The noble lord had ascertained 
that Mr. Disraeli had left London on Monday morning. In the 
same manner Sir Charles Wood, when he knew Sir J. Pakington 
and his partisans to be out of the House, suddenly brought in his 
India Bill, as amended by the House of Lords, and carried, in a 
thin house, without division, the re-enactment of the Salt- 
Monopoly. Such mean and petty tricks are the nerves and sit.ews 
of Whig Parliamentary tactics. 

The Eastern question in the House of Commons, was a most 
interesting spectacle. Lord J. Russell opened the performances in a 
tone quite conformed to the part he had to play. This diminutive 
earthman, supposed to be the last representative of the once 
powerful Whig tribe, spoke in a dull, low, dry, monotonous, and 
barren-spirited manner—not like a Minister, but like a police 
reporter, who mitigates the horrors of his tale by the trivial, 
commonplace, and business-like style in which he relates it. He 
offered no “apology,” but he made a confession. If there was any 
redeeming feature in his speech, it was its stiffness itself, which 
seemed intended to conceal some painful impressions laboring in 

evidently a slip of the pen because Friday was on August 19, which was also put 
down in Marx’s notebook as the date of sending the article to New York.— Fd. 

the little man. Even the inevitable phrase of “the independence 
and integrity of the Ottoman Empire,” sounded like an old 
reminiscence, recurring, by some inadvertence, in a funeral 
oration over that same Empire. The impression produced by 
this speech, which purported to announce the settlement of 
the Eastern complication, may be judged from the fact that, as 
soon as transmitted by telegraph to Paris, the funds fell imme- 
diately. 

Lord John was right in stating that he had not to defend the 
Government, the Government not having been attacked; on the 
contrary, every disposition had been shown on the part of the 
House to leave negotiations in the hands of the Executive. Indeed 
no motion has been put by any member of Parliament to force 
discussion upon Ministers and there has not been held any 
meeting out of the House to force such a motion upon members 
of Parliament. If the ministerial policy has been one of secrecy and 
mystification, it was so with the silent consent of Parliament and of 
the public. As to the withholding of documents while negotiations 
were pending, Lord John asserted it to be an eternal law 
established by parliamentary tradition. It would be tedious to 
follow him in the narration of events familiar to everybody, and 
infused with no new life by his manner of rather enumerating 
than reciting them. There are, however, some important points 
Lord John was the first officially to confirm. 

Before Prince Menchikoff’s arrival at Constantinople the Rus- 
sian Ambassador* informed Lord John that the Czar” intended to 
send a special mission to Constantinople with propositions relating 
exclusively to the Holy Cross and the immunities of the Greek 
Church connected with them. The British Ambassador at St. 
Petersburg,© and the British Government at home suspected 
no other intention on the part of Russia. It was not until the 
beginning of March, when the Turkish Minister informed Lord 
Stratford (Mr. Layard, however, affirms that Colonel Rose and 
many other persons at Constantinople were already initiated in the 
secret) that Prince Menchikoff had proposed a secret treaty *" 
incompatible with Turkish independence, and that he had 
declared it to be the intention of Russia to consider any 
communication of the fact to either France or England as an act of 
direct hostility against Russia. It was known at the same time, not 

» Nicholas I.— Ed. 
© G.H.Seymour.— Ed. 

The Turkish Question in the Commons 267 

from mere rumor, but from authentic reports that Russia was 
accumulating great masses of troops on the frontiers of Turkey 
and at Odessa. 

As to the note forwarded by the Vienna Conference to the 
Czar, and agreed upon by him, it had been prepared at Paris by 
M. Drouyn de Lhuys, who took the reply of Reshid Pasha to the 
last Russian note?” for his basis. It was afterward taken up, in an 
altered form, by Austria, as her own proposition, on the 24th July, 
and received its final touch on the 3lst of July. The Austrian 
Minister* having previously communicated it to the Russian 
Ambassador at Vienna,” it was already, on the 24th, conveyed to 
St. Petersburg before it was finally arranged, and it was not sent to 
Constantinople till the 2d of August, when the Czar had already 
agreed to it. Thus, after all, it is a Russian note addressed through 
the means of the four Powers to the Sultan, instead of a note of 
the Four Powers addressed to Russia and Turkey. Lord John 
Russell states that this note has “not the exact form of Prince 
Menchikoff’s note,” owning thereby that it has its exact contents. To 
leave no doubt behind, he adds: 

“The Emperor considers that his objects will be attained.” 

The draft contains not even an allusion to the evacuation of the 
Principalities. 

“Supposing that note,” says Lord John, “to be finally agreed upon [...] by 
Russia and [...] Turkey, there will still remain the great question of the evacuation of the 
Principalities.” 

He adds at the same time, that the British Government 
“considers this evacuation to be essential,” but upon the mode by 
which this object is to be obtained he asks permission to say 
nothing. He gives us, however, sufficiently to understand that 
the fleets of England and France may have to leave Besika Bay 
before the Cossacks shall have left the Principalities. 

“We ought not to consent to any arrangement by which it may be stipulated 
that the advance of the fleets to the neighborhood of the Dardanelles should be 
considered as equivalent to an actual invasion of the Turkish Territories. But, of 
course, if the matter is settled, if peace is secured, Besika Bay is not a station which 
would be of any advantage either to England or France.” 

» Pp. K. Meyendorff.— Ed. 

© Russell’s speech and those of other speakers in the House of Commons on 
August 16, 1853, are quoted from The Times,No. 21509, August 17, 1853.— Ed. 

Now, as no man in his senses has ever supposed the French and 
English fleets are to remain for all time at Besika Bay, or France 
and England to enter into a formal stipulation forbidding them to 
advance to the neutral neighborhood of the Dardanelles, these 
ambiguous and cumbrous phrases, if they have any meaning at all, 
mean that the fleets will retire, after the note shall have been 
accepted by the Sultan and the Cossack promised to evacuate the 
Principalities. 

“When the Russian Government,” says Lord John, “had occupied the 
Principalities, Austria [...] declared that, in conformity with the spirit of the Treaty 
of 1841, it was absolutely necessary that the representatives of the Powers should 
meet in conference, and should endeavor to obtain some amicable solution of a 
difficulty which might otherwise threaten the peace of Europe.” 

Lord Aberdeen, on the contrary, declared some days ago? in the 
House of Lords, and also, as we are informed from other sources, 
in a formal note communicated to the Cabinets of St. Petersburg 
and Constantinople in the course of last June, that 

“the Treaty of 1841 did not in any way impose upon the Powers who signed it 
the obligation of actual assistance in behalf of the Porte [but of a temporary 
abstention from entering the Dardanelles!] and that the Government of Her British 

Majesty” held themselves perfectly free to act or not to act, according to its own 
interests.” 

Lord Aberdeen only repudiates all obligations toward Turkey, 
in order not to possess any right against Russia. 

Lord John Russell concludes with “a fair aspect’ of the 
negotiations approaching their crowning result. This seems a very 
sanguine view of the matter, at the moment when the Russian 
note, arranged at Vienna and to be presented by Turkey to the 
Czar, has not yet been accepted by the Sultan, and when the sine 
qua non of the Western Powers, viz.: the evacuation of the 
Principalities, has not yet been pressed upon the Czar. 

Mr. Layard, the first speaker who rose in response to Lord 
John, made by far the best and most powerful speech—bold, 
concise, substantial, filled with facts, and proving the illustrious 
scholar to be as intimately acquainted with Nicholas as with 
Sardanapalus, and with the actual intrigues in the Orient as well as 
with the mysterious traditions of its past. 

Mr. Layard regretted that Lord Aberdeen had “on several 
occasions, and in several places, declared that his policy is 
essentially a policy based on peace.” If England shrank from 

The Turkish Question in the Commons 269 

maintaining her honor and interests by war, she encouraged on 
the part of a lawless Power like Russia, pretensions which must 
inevitably lead sooner or later to war. The present conduct of 
Russia must not be considered as a mere casual and temporary 
occurrence, but as part and parcel of a great scheme of policy. 

As to the “concessions” made to France and the “intrigues” of 
M. de Lavalette, they could not even afford a pretext to Russia, 
because 

“a draught of the firman making those concessions, of which Russia complains, 

was delivered by the Porte to M. de Titoff some days, if not weeks, before it was 
issued, and [...] no objection whatever was made to the terms of that firman.” 

Russia’s designs with regard to Serbia, Moldo-Wallachia and the 
Christian population of Turkey were not to be misunderstood. 
Immediately after his public entry at Constantinople, Prince 
Menchikoff demanded the dismissal of M. Garaganin, from his 
post of Serbian Minister. That demand was complied with, 
although the Serbian Synod protested. M. GaraSanin was one of the 
men brought forward by the insurrection of 1842, that national 
movement against Russian influence which expelled the then 
reigning Prince Michel from Serbia,”' he and his family being 
mere tools in the hands of Russia. In 1843 the Russian 
Government claimed the right of interference in Serbia. Complete- 
ly unauthorized by any treaty, she was authorized by Lord 
Aberdeen, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, who declared, “that 
Russia had the right to place her own construction on her own treaties.” 

“By her success in that transaction,” says Mr. Layard, “Russia showed that she 
was mistress of Serbia and could check any rising independent nationality.” 

As to the Danubian Principalities, Russia first took advantage of 
the national movement of 1848 in those provinces, compelling the 
Porte to expel from them every man of liberal and independent 
opinions. Then, she forced upon the Sultan the treaty of 
Balta-Liman,”” by which she established her right to interfere in 
all the internal affairs of the Principalities, 

“and her present occupation of them has proved that Moldavia and Wallachia 
are to all intents and purposes Russian provinces.” 

There remained the Greeks of Turkey and the Slavonians of 
Bulgaria professing the Christian religion. 

“The spirit of inquiry and independence has sprung up among the Greeks, and 
this together with their commercial intercourse with the free States of Europe, has 

greatly alarmed the Russian Government. There was another cause, viz., the spread 
of the Protestant faith among the Christians of the East, [...] mainly through the 
influence and teachings of American missionaries, scarcely a considerable town 
exists in Turkey, in which there is not a nucleus of a Protestant community. 
[Another motive for American intervention.] The Greek clergy backed by the 
Russian mission have done all in their power to check this movement, and, 
when persecution was no longer available, Prince Menchikoff appeared at Con- 
stantinople. [...] The great end of Russia has been to crush the spirit of religious 
and political independence, which has manifested itself of late years among the 
Christian subjects of the Porte.” 

As to the establishment of a so-called Greek Empire at Constan- 
tinople, Mr. Layard, meaning of course the Greeks in contradistinc- 
tion to the Slavonians, stated that the Greeks amount hardly to 
1,750,000; that the Slavonians and Bulgarians have been strugg]- 
ing for years to throw off all connection with them, by refusing to 
accept for their clergy and bishops the priests of the Greek nation; 
that the Serbians have created a Patriarch of their own in lieu of 
that at Constantinople; and that establishing the Greeks at 
Constantinople would be playing the whole of Turkey into the 
hands of Russia. 

To the members of the House, who declared that it would 
signify little whether Constantinople was in the hands of Russia or 
not, Mr. Layard replied that, Constantinople being broken, all the 
great Provinces which constitute Turkey, as, for instance, Asia 
Minor, Syria and Mesopotamia, would fall into a state of confusion 
and anarchy. The power into whose hands they were to fall, would 
command India. The power which held Constantinople, would 
ever be looked upon in the East as the dominant power of the 
world. 

Russia, however, was aware that no European State would 
permit her to take possession of Constantinople at this time. 
Meanwhile, 

“her object is to render all independent nationalities in that country impossible — 
to weaken the Turkish power gradually, but surely; and to show to those who would 
oppose her designs, that any such opposition is not only useless, but would entail 

upon them her vengeance; in fact, to render any other government but her own 
impossible in Turkey. In those designs she has entirely succeeded on this occasion.” 

Mr. Layard represented that the Government, after the demand 
of a secret treaty by Prince Menchikoff, and the great Russian 
armaments on the frontier and at Odessa, were satisfied with the 
explanations and assurances given at St. Petersburg, and failed to 
declare that England and France would consider the passing of 

The Turkish Question in the Commons 271 

the Pruth as a casus belli, and that they had not interdicted Russia 
from entering into any treaties or engagements with Turkey 
without their participation. 

“If we had taken that step Russia would never have dared to cross the Pruth.” 

Mr. Layard then exposed how the Principalities, independent, 
united with Bessarabia and leaning on Hungary, would ultimately 
be the only means of preserving Constantinople from the Russians 
and of cutting the great Sclav race in two. He thinks that Russia 
will evacuate the Principalities. 

“It would not be worth the while of Russia to engage in a war with the Great 
Powers of Europe on account of those provinces, which are already, to all intents 
and purposes, her own. [...] Russia has gained, without firing a shot, what is worth 
to her a bloody and expensive campaign; she has established her power in the East; 
she has humiliated Turkey; she has compelled her to go to all the expense of a 
war, and has exhausted her resources; but, what is more, she has humiliated this 
country and France in the eyes of her own subjects and of the populations of the 
East.” 

The note drawn up by the Vienna Conference will have the 
result that, 

“af the Porte declines to adhere to it, Russia will have turned the tables 
completely upon us, and made us her ally against Turkey in compelling her to 
accept an unjust proposal. If she accept, England has directly sanctioned the right 

of Russia to interfere in behalf of twelve millions of Christians, the subjects of the 
Porte.... Look at the question as we will; it is clear that we have taken the place of a 
second-rate Power in it, and conceded that of a first-rate Power to Russia alone... 
We had an opportunity which, perhaps, will never occur again of settling on a 
proper basis this great Eastern question.... Russia has been enabled to strike a blow 
from which Turkey will never recover.... The result of the policy which this 
country has pursued will not end here. Sweden, Denmark, every weak State of 
Europe, which has placed dependence on the character of this country, [...] will see 
that it is useless any more to struggle against the encroachments of Russia.” 

Sir John Pakington next made some remarks, which were 
important as declaratory of the views of the Tory opposition. He 
regretted that Lord John Russell could not make a statement more 
satisfactory to the House and to the country. He assured the 
Government that its determination to consider the evacuation of 
the Principalities as a sine qua non, will “be supported not only by 
the opinion of this House, but by the almost unanimous opinion 
of the people of this country.” Till the papers should have been 
produced, he must reserve his judgment on the policy of advising 
Turkey not to consider the occupation of the Principalities as a 
casus belli, of not following a more vigorous and decisive policy at 

an earlier period, of injuring and holding in suspense the interests 
of Turkey and of Great Britain, and their commerce, by 
transactions protracted for six months. 

Lord Dudley Stuart indulged in one of his habitual good- 
natured Democratic declamations, which are certainly more 
gratifying to the man who spouts them than to anybody else. If 
you compress inflated balloons or blown up phrases, there remains 
nothing in your hands, not even the wind that made them appear 
like something. Dudley Stuart repeated the often repeated 
statements on the improvements going on in Turkey, and on the 
greater liberality of the Sultan’s rule, whether in regard to religion 
or commerce, when compared with that of Russia. He remarked, 
justly, that it was useless to boast of peace, while the unhappy 
inhabitants of the Danubian Principalities actually endured the 
horrors of war. He claimed for the inhabitants of these provinces 
the protection of Europe against the terrible oppression to which 
they were now subjected. He showed, by facts from Parliamentary 
history, that the members of the House had the right of 
speechifying, even while negotiations were going on. He forgot 
hardly anything, which must be familiar to a true and constant 
reader of The Daily News. There were two “points” in his speech: 

‘Although the explanation of the noble lord” (J. Russell) “had not been very full, 
for he told the House nothing but what it knew before, still, from its very 
omissions, he was afraid that they must come to the conclusion, that the noble lord 
had been doing something of which he ought to be ashamed.” 

As to the Earl of Aberdeen, 

“he had told them that peace had been preserved for thirty years, with great 
advantage to the prosperity and liberty of Europe, but he” (Dudley Stuart) “denied 
that the liberty of Europe had been benefited by the peace. Where, he would ask, 
was Poland? where Italy? where Hungary?—nay, where Germany?” 

Borne along by the power of fluency, that fatal gift of third-rate 
orators, the Democratic lord cannot stop, till he arrives, from the 
despots of the Continent, to his native monarch, “who rules in the 
hearts of her subjects.” 

Mr. M. Milnes, one of those ministerial retainers, on whose brow 
you read: 

“Do not talk of him 
But as a property,”* 

The Turkish Question in the Commons | 973 

did not dare to make a decidedly ministerial speech. He made an 
alternative speech. On the one side he found that Ministers, by 
withholding the papers from the table of the House, “acted with 
very great prudence and judgment,” but, on the other hand, he 
gave them to understand that they would have acted “more 
strongly and firmly” the other way. On the one hand he thought 
the Government might have been right in submitting to the 
demands of Russia, but, on the other hand, it seemed questionable 
to him whether they had not, in some degree, encouraged Turkey 
to pursue a line of policy which they were not prepared to 
support, etc., etc. On the whole, he made out that “the more he 
reflected on those subjects, the more extreme were the difficulties 
which they presented to his mind”—the less he understood those 
subjects, the better he understood the temporizing policy of the 
Government. 

After the alternative juggle and perplexed mind of Mr. 
Monckton Milnes we are refreshed by the rough straightforward- 
ness of Mr. Muntz, M.P. for Birmingham, and one of the 
matadors of the Reform-House of 1831. 

“When the Dutch Ambassador made to Charles II some very objectionable 
proposition, the King replied: ‘God bless me! you never made such a proposition to 
Oliver Cromwell.’ ‘No,’ said the Ambassador, ‘you are a very different man from 
Oliver Cromwell.’ If this country had had now such a man as Oliver Cromwell, we 
should have had a different Minister, and a very different Government, and Russia 
would never have marched into the Danubian Provinces. [...] The Emperor of 
Russia knew, that nothing would make this country go to war: witness Poland, 
witness Hungary. This country was now reaping the benefit of its own conduct in 
those instances. {...] He considered the state of this country in relation to its foreign 
affairs was a very objectionable and a very unsatisfactory one. And he believed that 
the people of England felt that their character had been degraded, and that all 
sense of honor on the part of the Government was absorbed in consideration of 
mere pounds, shillings and pence. The only questions mooted by the Government 
now were simply what would be the expense, and would war be agreeable to the 
different tradesmen of the nation?” 

Birmingham happening to be the center of an armament- 
manufacturing and musket-selling population, the men of that 
town naturally scoff at the Manchester Cotton-Peace-Fraternity. 

Mr. Blackett, the member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, did not 
believe that the Russians would evacuate the Principalities. He 
warned the Government 

“not to be swayed by any dynastic sympathies or antipathies.” 

Assailed on ali sides, from all shades of opinion, the Ministers 
sat there mournful, depressed, inanimate, broken down; when 

Richard Cobden suddenly rose, congratulating them for having 
adopted his peace doctrines and applying that doctrine to the 
given case, with all the sharp ingenuity and fair sincerity of the 
monomaniac, with all the contradictions of the idéologue, and with 
all the calculating cowardice of the shop-keeper. He preached 
what the ministry had openly acted, what the Parliament had 
silently approved, and what the ruling classes had enabled the 
ministry to do and the Parliament to accept. From fear of war he 
attained for the first time to something like historical ideas. He 
betrayed the mystery of middle-class policy, and therefore he was 
repudiated as a traitor. He forced middle-class England to see 
herself as in a mirror, and as the image was by no means a 
flattering one, he was ignominiously hissed. He was inconsistent, 
but his inconsistency itself was consistent. Was it his fault if the 
traditional fierce phrases of the aristocratic past did not harmonize 
with the pusillanimous facts of the stockjobbing present? 

He commenced by declaring that there was no difference of 
opinion on the question: 

“Still, there was apparently very great uneasiness on the subject of Turkey.” 

Why was this? Within the last twenty years there had been a 
growing conviction that the Turks in Europe were intruders in 
Europe; that they were not domiciled there; that their home was 
Asia; that Mohammedanism could not exist in civilized States; that 
we could not maintain the independence of any country, if she 
could not maintain it for herself; that it was now known that there 
were three Christians to every Turk in European Turkey. 

“We could not take a course which would insure Turkey in Europe as an 
independent power against Russia, unless the great bulk of the population were 
with us in our desire to prevent another power from taking possession of that 
country.... As to sending our fleets up to Besika Bay, and keeping out the Russians, 
no doubt we could do that, because Russia would not come into collision with a 
maritime power; but we were keeping up these enormous armaments, and were 
not settling the Eastern Question.... The question was, what were they going to do 
with Turkey, and with the Christian population of Turkey. Mohammedanism could 
not be maintained; and we should be sorry to see this country fighting for 
Mohammedanism in Europe.” 

Lord Dudley Stuart had talked about maintaining Turkey on 
account of commerce. He (Cobden) never would fight for a tariff. 
He had too much faith in free trade principles to think that they 
needed fighting for. The exports to Turkey had been overrated. 
Very little of it was consumed in the countries under the 
dominions of the Turks. 

The Turkish Question in the Commons 275 

“All the commerce which we had in the Black Sea, was owing to the 
encroachments of Russia upon the Turkish coast. Our grain and flax we did not 
now get from Turkey, but from Russia. And would not Russia be as glad to send 
us her tallow, hemp and corn, whatever aggressions she might make on Turkey? 
[...| We had a trade with Russia in the Baltic.... What prospect had we of a trade 
with Turkey? It was a country without a road. [...} Russia was the more commercial 
people. Let us look at St. Petersburg, at her quays and wharves, and warehouses... 
What natural alliance then could we have with such a country as Turkey?... 
Something had been said about the balance of power. That was a political view of 
the question.... A great deal had been said about the power of Russia, and the 
danger to England in consequence of her occupying those countries on the 
Bosphorus. [...] Why, what an absurdity it was to talk of Russia coming to invade 
England! Russia could not move an army across her own frontiers, without coming 
to Western Europe for a loan.... A country [...] so poor, [...] a mere aggregate of 
villages without capital and without resources, as compared with England, never 
could come and injure us, or America, or France.... England was ten times more 
powerful than she had ever been, and far more able to resist the aggressions of a 
country like Russia.” 

And now Cobden passed to the incomparably greater dangers of 
war to England in her present condition than at former epochs. 
The manufacturing population had greatly increased. They were 
far more dependent on the export of their produce and on the 
import of raw materials. They possessed no longer the monopoly 
of manufacture. The repeal of the Navigation Laws?” had thrown 
England open to the competition of the world in shipping as well 
as in everything else. 

“He begged [...] Mr. Blackett to consider that no port would suffer more than 
that which he represented. [...] The Government had done wisely in disregarding 
the cry of thoughtless men.... Their taking up a position for maintaining the 
integrity of the Turkish Empire he did not blame, as that was a traditional policy 
handed down to them.... The Government of the day would obtain credit for 
having been as peaceable as the people would allow them to be.” 

Richard Cobden was the true hero of the drama, and shared the 
fate of all true heroes—a tragical one. But then came the sham 
hero; the fosterer of all delusions, the man of fashionable lies and 
of courtly promises; the mouthpiece of all brave words that may 
be said in the act of running away; Lord Palmerston came. 
This old, experienced and crafty debater saw at once that the 
criminal might escape sentence by disavowing his advocate. He saw 
that the Ministry, attacked on all sides, might turn the tables by a 
brilliant diatribe against the only man who dared to defend it, and 
by refuting the only grounds on which its policy possibly might 
have been excused. There was nothing easier than to show the 
contradictions of Mr. Cobden. He had stated his perfect concur- 
rence with the precedent orators,and ended by differing from 

them on every point. He had defended the integrity of Turkey, 
and did everything to show that she was worth no defence. He, 
the preacher of peace, had advocated the aggressions of Russia. 
Russia was weak, but a war with Russia would be inevitable ruin to 
England. Russia was a conglomerate of mere villages, but St. 
Petersburg being a finer city than Constantinople, Russia was 
entitled to possess them both. He was a Free Trader, but he 
preferred the protective system of Russia to the free-trade system 
of Turkey. Whether Turkey consumed herself, or was a canal 
through which passed articles of consumption to other parts of 
Asia, was it indifferent to England that she should remain a free 
passage? Mr. Cobden was a great advocate for the principle of 
non-intervention, and now he would dispose, by parliamentary 
enactments, of the destinies of the Mohammedans, Greeks, 
Slavonians, and other races inhabiting the Turkish Empire. Lord 
Palmerston exalted the progress Turkey had made, and the forces 
she now commanded. “Turkey, it is certain, has no Poland and no 
Siberia’ *Because Turkey possessed so much strength, Lord Palmer- 
ston would, of course, compel her to suffer a few provinces to be 
invaded by the Russians. A strong empire can suffer anything. Lord 
Palmerston proved to Richard Cobden that there existed not one 
sound reason for adopting the course adopted by Lord Palmerston 
and his colleagues, and, interrupted at each sentence by enthusiastic 
cheers, the old histrion contrived to sit down, with the impudent and 
self-contradictory phrase: 

“T am satisfied that Turkey has within itself the elements of life and prosperity, 
and I believe that the course adopted by Her Majesty’s Government is a sound 
policy, deserving the approbation of the country, and which it will be the duty of 
every English Government to pursue.” (Cheers.) 

bf 

Palmerston was great in “fearful bravery,” as Shakespeare calls it.? 
He showed, as Sidney said, “a fearful boldness, daring to do that 
which he knew that he knew not how to do.”