Page:Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy, 1738-1914 - ed. Jones - 1914.djvu/250

 to join us against Russia. Turkey, we were told by the hon. and learned member, with 200,000 cavalry, was ready to carry demonstration to the very walls of St. Petersburg—perhaps to carry off the Emperor himself from his throne. What was the state of Turkey then? In 1831 she had engaged in a war with Russia, in which, after two campaigns, her arms were repulsed and driven back into their own empire, so that she was compelled at Adrianople to accept conditions of peace, hard in their nature, and demanding a sacrifice of an important part of her territory, but to which she was advised in friendly counsel by the British Ambassador to submit, for fear of having to endure still worse. We are told that, two or three years after this great disaster, Turkey was of such amazing enterprise and courage, and was furnished with such a wonderful quantity of cavalry, that she was prepared to send 200,000 horse (which she never had in all her life) over the frontiers of Russia, and sweep her territory. Now this is, of all the wild dreams that ever crossed the mind of man, one of the most unlikely and extraordinary. But supposing all this had been true, and that Turkey really was prepared to do all the hon. and learned gentleman said she was, I should have given her just the same advice that I should have offered Sweden under the same circumstances, and should have said, 'Have you not been beaten enough? Are you mad? Do you want the Russians to get Constantinople instead of Adrianople? Will nothing satisfy you? We cannot come and defend you against your powerful neighbour. She is on your frontiers, and do not give her any just cause for attacking you.' Then the hon. and learned