8 CAUSES IXVOLVIXG FRANCE AND ENGLAND CHAP, the Ambassadors, could be instantly brouglit up ^' to Constantinople without any further orders for that purpose being sent from home. ^Moreover, the very despatch which brought the alarm showed that the Ambassadors knew how to meet the dan- ger, and that they had already called up that por- tion of the lleet which they deemed it prudent to have in the Golden Horn. From first to last the power which France and England had entrusted to their representatives at the Forte had been used with admirable prudence ; and it is hard to understand how it could have seemed right to withdraw, or rather supersede, the discretion hitherto connnitted to the Ambassadors, by send- ing out an absolute order for the advance of the fleets. As it stood, the fleets would go up the moment they were wanted ; and what the French Emperor now required was that, whether they were wanted or not, and in defiance of the treaty of 1841, they should immediately pass the Dardan- its teiKkncy elles. Eitlicr the Queen's Government had lost to bring uii war- its composure, or else, when they gave way to this demand of the French Emperor, and consented to a needless * measure which operated as a sharp provocative of war, the Queen's Government went through the bitter duty of taking a step not right in itself, but forced upon them by the stringency of the new alliance. -f*
- Needless, because the authority to call up the fleets when
they were wanted was already vested in the Ambassadors. + Lord Palinerston personally approved the measure ; and, in- deed, if lie luul not done so, one can hardly believe that lie
