Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/55

 BETWEEN THE CZAR AND THE SULTAN. 13 every false step, and, in short, bringing down to chap. the superintendence of our foreign affairs some __^ of that all -enlightening wisdom which he and his friend Baron Stockmar were accustomed to ascribe to each other; but no disclosures to that effect have been hitherto made ; * and accord- ingly, in the pages which follow, 1 shall have to show our ministers from time to time straying aside from what was the right, prudent course without yet being able to say that any one of those deviations was pointed out at the time by the Crown or the Royal Consort. On the other hand, I decline to maintain that the interference of the Prince in our foreign affairs brought England into the war. Many reasoners, it is time, have believed that the hos- tility of the Crown to Lord Palmerston in the middle part of this century forged links in the chain of causation which brought about the quar- rel with Russia ; but discarding on the Avhole that conclusion, because overstrained and far-fetched, I have no ground left me for saying that the inter- position of the Sovereign or the Prince in foreign affairs, either helped to bring on the war, or con- tributed any means for averting it.-f- Whether practical significance. It was more than four months too late. + The Prince, as we know, was honestly desirous for the maintenance of an honourable peace, and combining that fact with the circumstances stated in the text, it becomes clear that the question of his Royal Higliness's aptitude for the super- vision of our foreign affairs must depend upon disclosures not hitherto made — upon disclosures showing what steps he took when each of the ministerial ' deviations ' was in progress.
 * The Prince's memorandum of the 21st of October had no