Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/149

 IN TJIE WAR AGAINST KUSSIA. 119 which was to bring France and England into a chap. .separate course of action, and place them at last in a state of war, had been signed by the English Minister for Foreign Affairs, and was already on the way to St Petersburg.* On the same 27th of March a message from the Messase Queen announced to Parliament that the negoti- Queen to ations with llussia were broken off, and that Her Majesty, feeling bound to give active aid to the Sultan, relied upon the efforts of her faithful sub- jects to aid her in protecting the states of the Sultan against the encroachments of Eussia. On the following day the English declaration Declaration of war was issued. The labour of putting into writing the grounds for a momentous course of action is a wliolesome discipline for statesmen ; and it would be well for mankind if, at a time when the question were really in suspense, the friends of a policy leading towards war were obliged to come out of the mist of oral intercourse and private notes, and to put their view into a firm piece of writing. It does not follow that such a document ought necessarily to be disclosed, but it ought to exist, and it ought to be official. In the summer of 1853 the draft of a document, fairly stating the grounds of that singular policy of alliance within alliance which was shadowed out in the Koyal Speech at the close of the ses- sion, would have been a good exercise for the members of Lord Aberdeen's Cabinet, and would Emperor's Speech from the Throne.
 * The messenger hail reached Berlin on the day of the Freucli