Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/99

 IX THE WAR AGAINST RUSSIA. 69 ^veeks, had received the approval of every one of cuAP. the five great Powers. ' . But if these views were only plausible, there ■was another which was sound. It could be fairly maintained that the intrusion of Russia into two provinces lying far away on the south-eastern frontiers of Austria was no cause why England alone, nor why England and Erance together, sliould undertake to stand forward and pierform, at their own cliarge and cost, a duty which at- tached upon Austria in the first place, and next upon Europe at large. Of course, the actual and immediate success of Not for any such struggle for the maintenance of peace oratorical was grievously embarrassed in the way already shown, by the course which had been taken by Lord Aberdeen and Mr Gladstone ; but it is not the custom of the English to be ntterly disheart- ened by political losses ; and it happened that outside the Government Offices the cause of peace was headed by two men who had been powerful in their time, and who retained the qualities of mind and body by which, in former years, they had gained a great sway. Mr Cobden and jNIr Bright were members of the MrCoMen " and Mr House of Commons. Both had the gift of a manly, Bright, strenuous eloquence; and their diction, being founded upon English lore rather than upon shreds of weak Latin, went straiglit to the mind of their hearers. Of these men the one could persuade, the other could attack ; and, indeed, Mr Bright's oratory was singularly well qualified for prevent-