Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/13

 PREFACE. Vll Czar, and pressing them, too, with great force ; * still they necessarily uttered their prayer in general terms, saying only, if so one may speak, that they were ready and eager to begin and carry through a crusade. But in England, the angry denouncers got a tighter grasp of the subject. Including amongst them great num- bers of gifted, well-int'uvmed men, with the prince of all orators at tlieir head, they really were not com- mon throngs, but thousands and thousands of Foreign Secretaries, free from any tough doubt about anything, and they entered upon the duties of the invaded De- partment with minds unhampered by the traditions of Office, nay even so unhampered by Policy that, if reminded by some grey-headed clerk of the connec- tion between Turkish ' independence ' and the burn- ing question of 'the Straits,' they all said there was nothing in that. They undertook a grave task. To endeavour to govern the progress of domestic legislation by loud utterances of the public voice — this, we know, is a business familiar enough in our islands ; but what the angry myriads last year undertook to do was something of deeper moment. Roused by just indignation, and helped a little, it seems, by an almost ' syn-orthodox ' section of our Anglican Church, but without the least aid from their temporal institutions. Queen or Parliament, or Army or Navy, they undertook — undertook in a few autumn weeks — to change, nay even reverse, the once settled policy of England ; and, the time, as I have sliowii,
 * Vol. 1. p. xii. et seq.