Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/130

 100 CAUSES INVOLVING FRANCE AND ENGLAND CHAP, ally, Lord Palmerston, with a majority of only ___! two or three in the House of Commons, but having a bold heart and a firm, steady hand, had been able to gather up the elements of the great alliance of 1814, and to prevent a European war by the very might and power and swiftness with which he executed his policy ; but at the end of eleven more years, when his career at the Foreign Office was drawing to a close, his energy had cleared a space round him, and he seemed to be left standing alone.* His system by that time had fairly disclosed its true worth. Pursued with great vigour and skill, it had brought results corresponding with the numerous aims of its author, but corresponding also with his avowed disregard of a general guid- ing principle. Without breaking the general peace of Europe, it had produced a long series of diplomatic enterprises, pushed on in most instances to a successful issue ; but, on the other hand, it had ended by making the Foreign Office an object of distrust, and in that way withdraw- ing England from her due place in the composition of the European system ; for the good old safe clue of 'community of interests' being visibly period Lord Aberdeen was at the Foreign Oflice, but he was of course mucli bound by what his predecessors had been doing before him ; and, speaking rougldy, it may be said that, from the spring of IS^'> until the close of 1851, our foreign policy bore the imjiress of Lord Paliiu iston's nnnd. In the period between November 1830 and the autumn of 1834, it was much governed by the then Prime Minister, Lord Gre}'.
 * It is not forgotten that during a large portion of this last