Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/98

 C8 CAUSES INVOLVING FRANCE AND ENGLAND C H A P. VU. It was not for want of ani|ile grounds to stand upon, that their cause was brought to ruin. will honestly recall the state of his own feelings and opinions in the year 1853, lie will find perhaps that he himself at the time was carried down by the flood of events ; and when he has submitted to this self-discipline, he will be the better able to understand that others, though honest and able, might easily lose their footing. At all events, the errors of Lord Aberdeen and Mr Gladstone, if errors they were, were only errors of judgment. The scrupulous purity of their motives has never been brought into question. But if these were the causes which inclined the bulk of the English people to desire or to assent to the war, they hardly yield reasons sufficing to show why the lesser number of men, who honestly thought that peace ought to be maintained, should suffer themselves to be overpowered without mak- ing stand enough to prove that they clung to their old faith, and that England, however warlike, was, at all events, not of one mind. The hottest de- fenders of the war-policy could hardly refuse to acknowledge that there was much semblance of reason on the side of their adversaries. No one could say that the interest which England had in the perfect independence of the Ottoman Empire was so obvious and so deep as to exclude all ques- tioning ; and even if a man were driven from that first ground, still, M'ithout being guilty of paradox, he might fairly dispute, and say that the inde- pendence of the Sultan was not really brought into peril by a form of words which, during some