Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/156

 114 ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF lt53 CHAPTER VIII. chap. When a great country is induced, by virtue or by '— policy, to refrain from using her physical strength •influence." against a Sovereign of a weaker State, she often solaces herself for this painful effort of modera- tion by showing her neighbour the error of his ways and giving him constant advice ; and if it happen that two or more great Powers are thus engaged in tendering their rival counsels to the same State, they will be prone to struggle with one another for the ascendancy, and to do this with a zeal scarcely intelligible to men who have never seen that kind of strife. The prize con- tended for is commonly known by the name of 'influence ;' and although this moral sovereignty over foreign States may be a privilege of small intrinsic worth, the Princes and Statesmen who have once begun combating for the prize, and even the merchants and the travellers who have happened to be on the spot, and to witness with any attention the animating incidents of the Grouti'ls for foreign in- terference in Turkey. ^ow the Ottoman polity is of such a nature as foreign in- conflict, have generally had their zeal kindled. terference