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 IN THE WAR AGAINST RUSSIA. 109 ship of Lord Aberdeen and Mr Gladstone. They chap. began to see that for near eight months the Gov- ' crnnient had been foHowiiig a convsc of action which was gently leading towards war. Thuy did not, however, make out the way in which the deflection began. They did not see that the way in which the Government had lapsed from the paths of peace, was by quitting the common ground of the four Powers for the sake of a closer union with one, and by joining with the Erench Emperor in making a perverse use of the fleets. Mr Cobden fastened upon the 'Vienna Note,' and, with his views, he was right in drawing attention to the apparent narrowness of the dif- ference upon which the question of peace or war was made to depend ; but he surely betrayed a want of knowledge of the way in which the actions of mankind are governed when he asked that a country now glowing with warlike ardour should go back and try to obtain peace by re- suming a form of words which its Government had solemnly repudiated four months before. Of course this effort failed : it could not be other- wise. Any one acquainted with the tenor of the negotiations, and with enough of the surround- ing facts to make the papers intelligible, may be able to judge whether there were not better grounds than this for making a stand against the war. The evil demanding redress was the in- trusion of the Eussian forces into Wallachia and Moldavia ; and it would seem that the judgment