Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/123

IN THE WAR AGAINST RUSSIA. would prevent war by its overwheluiiiig force. CHAP. Like the power of the law, it would operate by ' coercion, and not by clangour of arms. This was a merit; but it was a merit fatal to its reception in England. The popularity of such a policy was Tiie bearing nearly upon the same niodest level as the popu- upon the'"' larity of virtue. All whose volitions were gov- uieuovein- erued by the imagined rapture of freeing Poland, or destroying Cronstadt and lording it with our flag in the Baltic, or taking the command of the Euxine, and sinking the liussiau fleet under the guns of Sebastopol ; all who meant to raise Cir- cassia, and cut olf the Muscovite from the glowing South by holding the Dariel Pass, and those also who dwelt in fancy upon deeds to be done on the shores of the Caspian ; — all these, and many more, saw plainly enough that separation from the German Powers and alliance with the new Bonaparte was the only road to adventure. Lord Aberdeen was not one of these, but it was his fate to act as though he were. He was not with- out a glimmering perception that the firmly main- tained union of the four Powers meant peace ; * but he saw the truth dindy ; and, there being a certain slowness in his high intellectual nature, he was not so touched by his belief as to be able to make it the guide of his action. He seems to have gone on imagining that, con- sistently with the maintenance of a perfect union of the four Powers there might be a separate and still more perfect union between two of them, • 129 Hansard, p. 1(350,