52 CAUSES INVOLVING FRANCE AND ENGLAND CHAP. ' unworthy of your ^Majesty — nothing Avhicli can VL ' wound your honour ; but if, from a motive ' diificult to understand, your Majesty should ' refuse this proposal, then France as well as ' England will be compelled to leave to the fate
- of arms ami the chances of war that which
' might now be decided by reason and justice.'* The French Emperor permitted himself to write this at a time wiien, so far as is known, no threat like that which he chose to utter in the name of the Queen had been addi-esscd by the English Cabinet to the Court of St Petersburg. With the feelings which niiglit be expected from them, English Ministers of State have gen- erally been slow to use threatening words ; and they have been chary, too, in putting forward the name of their Sovereign. Our Government could not have been willing that England should be thrust upon the attention of the world in a way which the too fastidious Court of St Petersburg ^vould be sure to regard as grotesque. No one can doubt the pain with which the members of Lord Aberdeen's Cabinet must have seen the French Emperor come forward upon the stage of Europe, and pidilicly menace the Emperor of Russia in the name of their Queen. The process by which they were brought to suffer tliis is un- known to me. What seems probable is that a draft of the letter was submitted to tliem, ac- companied with significant representations of the • 'Annual Kogi.stcr,' 1S54.
