Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol 7.djvu/292

 248 THE WTNTF.U TlJOUPiLES. CHAP. IX. The lasting harm done to their country by Knglislmii^n depreciating her power. Question whether the outcry did any counter- baiancini? good. citizens chose for announcing aloud — and quite wrongly — the administrative collapse of England was one when, having her army engaged in close strife with an enemy hugely greater in numbers, she had need, bitter need, of her warlike repute for the purpose of that lasting struggle ; but had need of it also for the maintenance of fitting rela- tions with the difficult ally at her side, and, more- over, for the support of negotiations she was then carrying on with more than one neutral State. There was yet furtlier mischief to be wrought by the same provoking cause. The time already approached when France and England would meet the enemy in conference with the hope of there wringing from his fears the conditions of an honourable peace ; but the very air of the Continent, when breathed for a week at Vienna, was destined to teach our negotiator that the stress put on Eussia by arms had been singularly lightened by words — by tbe words of our writers and speakers declaring before all the world that, for the purposes of war administration, their coun- try was an incapable State. The effect that our railers produced by decry- ing the military power of their country has not yet been effaced on the Continent ; and in any mouienious negotiations undertaken at this day by England the confessions of warlike incom- petence she was thus, as it were, made to utter, still tend to weaken her envoys. Thus the outcry did harm to our country, did her harm at the time, did her harm of a lasting kind ; but may it not also have wrought some