Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/226

 184 ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1853 CHAP, three months before, the dismemberment of the XL Turkish Empire had been thought a fair subject to bring into question, and now the firmness and the strange moderation with which the Turks stood, resisting the demands of their assailant, was drawing the English people, day by day, into a steadfast alliance with the Sultan. But if Lord Stratford had succeeded in gaining over to his cause the general opinion of Europe, or rather in adapting the policy of the Divan to what he knew would be approved by the people of the AVest, lie did not neglect to use such means as he had for moving the Governments of the four Powers ; and the concerted action to which he had succeeded in bringing them on the 21st of May was a beginning of the peaceful coercion with which it was fitting that Europe should withstand the encroachments of a wrong-doer. But this was not all that was effected by the diplomatic transactions of the spring. It cannot be concealed that, without the solemnity of a treaty — nay, without the knowledge of Parliament, and perhaps without the knowledge of her Prime Minister — England, in the course of a few weeks, had slided into all the responsibility of a defensive alliance with the Sultan against the Emperor of Russia. It may seem strange that this could he ; but the truth is, that the general scope of a lengthened official correspondence is not to be gathered by merely learning at intervals the import of each despatch. Taken singly, almost every despatch composed by a skilled diplomatist