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 400 APrEXDix. ' prove to have been impolitic and unwise. My conscience ' upbraids me the more, because, seeing, as I did from the ' first, all that was to be apprehended, it is possible that, ' by a little more energy and vigour, not, indeed, on the ' Danube, but in Downing Street, it might have been ' prevented.' Your reply (March 3) was this : — ' The only course which would have prevented war ' would have been to have counselled acquiescence to the ' Turks. But that was a course to which '....,...., and. . ., and I would ' not have consented ; so that you woidd only have broken ' up your Government, if you had insisted upon it.' There is certainly no hint here that war could have been avoided had a plan of accommodation recommended by yourself been adopted by Lord Aberdeen. My letter is already a long one ; but, as I am writing, I may as well remark upon another sentence in your recent publication which may, I think, be misapprehended, and which to ordinary readers may seem to bear a meaning which I am certain it was not your intention to convey. Those who are not, like yourself, aware that Lord Aber- deen was at all times as eagerly anxious to quit office as any other man ever was to obtain it, may, I think, imagine that by your perfectly truthful statement that ' Lord Aber- ' deen told you that after being Prime Minister for a short ' time he meant to make way for you, but somehow the ' moment never came for executing his intentions,' it is in- tended to imply that Lord Aberdeen, once established in power, was reluctant to relinquish it, and slow to carry out the wish he had expressed. You probably saw at the time the letter written by my father at the end of 1856 to the Duke of Bedford, in an- swer to some inquiries made by the Duke upon this sub- ject; but it conveys so clear and complete a statement of