Pasha of Egypt, who by his son Ismail at length invaded Syria, and after several years' warfare might have broken the empire in two. Nothing seemed more auspicious for the Russian game. With Christian subjects disaffected, and Turkish Pashas ambitious, the Sultan was sure to be submissive to the Czar, and likely indeed to need his aid, which would have been given as zealously, as afterwards to Austria against Hungary. It so hap. pened that the French, who had devoured in imagination the whole north coast of Africa, ever since 1830, when they conquered Algiers -were equally delighted at the successes of the Pasha of Egypt; apparently because they supposed that if he tried to stand up against the Sultan he would need French support. In fact the Egyptian victories reached the point at which the Porte absolutely needed aid from without. In such a condition of things Russia appeared to find her opportunity; but unless actually driven to despair, the Turkish Government would not accept so dangerous a protector, and preferred to ask aid of England. It was granted immediately, energetically, and successfully. Lord Palmerston, then Foreign Secretary, was regarded as the chief author of the policy; and its defence lay in the assertion that it was necessary to prevent Russia from becoming the Sultan's protector. The irritation in France was extreme, and all but involved us in war with her; yet Palmerston seemed to have succeeded in delaying the day at which the Turk should receive orders from St. Petersburg.

Five years later the Emperor Nicolas paid a visit to England (1845) with the express object of sounding the new Cabinet; for Sir Robert Peel had displaced the Whigs since 1842. It is rumoured that on one occasion he startled Lord Aberdeen, then Foreign Se

cretary, by the frank remark, 'I can easily understand that you would like to have Egypt, and perhaps Cyprus or Crete, and to that I shall have no objection.' If it be uncertain whether we ought to believe such rumours, it is an unquestionable fact, which transpired in the opening of the Crimean war, that he left with the Ministry a secret document, embodying the results of their conferences as he interpreted them. Of course they found it expedient not to understand its meaning; but when it was published, no man of common sense doubted that it proposed our connivance in the dismemberment of Turkey. When in 1848 the revolution which ejected Louis-Philippe from Paris excited insurrection in Berlin and Vienna, even the distant Danubian Principalities were moved to entreat or demand of the Sultan various important reforms of a popular character. racter. The Principalities are not Turkish possessions, nor are Turks admissible to their executive government; they are only under Turkish protection. The Sultan readily granted to Wallachia all that was asked, and probably would have done the same to Moldavia. But a Russian army presently invaded the latter province, and Fuad Pasha marched into Wallachia to save it from like invasion. Nevertheless, to avoid war with Russia, the Sultan consented to reverse his word and withdraw his reforms, and—a more galling humiliation still-to banish the patriotic men, the choice spirits of Wallachia, who had headed the movement for reform. Nor was this all. The Russian army of 20,000 men, roving freely through both the Principalities, threw itself into Transylvania to aid Austria, which had already entered into an unrighteous war with Hungary, begun by the foulest treachery. To the questions of Lord Palmerston the Russian Minister replied, that the army had entered Transylvania

without orders from St. Petersburg, in the cause of humanity only, namely, to save the Transylvanians from the atrocities of the Hungarian General Bem. The atrocities were a fiction, and no one believed that the Russian general acted without orders. General Bem drove out the Russian troops, inflicting on them terrible loss; but we never heard of any reproof from St. Petersburg incurred by the Russian commander.

Yet by this proceeding Russia felt the pulse of the West. When it appeared that no strong resentment was excited, she knew that she could safely count on Western inaction: hence, when the Austrian armies, 150,000 strong, retreated from Hungary, disastrously overthrown, Russia came zealously to the rescue, pouring in 192,000 men as the grand total.

As it appeared that no State in Europe would acknowledge Hungary as belligerent, even after she had conquered Austria in a cause transparently just, the Hungarian general Görgey despaired for his country, played the traitor, and forced a surrender of his whole army to the Russians, fancying that this was not to surrender to Austria. The Russians treated the Hungarian generals with marked distinction and honour until they had gathered all who seemed likely to surrender thereupon they were handed over to the Austrians, who hanged them for the instruction of Hungarian patriots. At the same time Louis Batthyani, late Prime Minister of Hungary under the Austrian Crown, who against the advice of Kossuth had gone with a flag of truce to the Austrians, in hope of effecting some compromise which should reconcile the quarrel and save bloodshed, but had been thereupon seized and imprisoned by the Austrians, was now brought out and shot, to warn Hungary that no virtue and no moderation, no goodwill to the dynasty, could

atone for the offence of counting national law more sacred than the caprice of a foreign cabinet-for such was the Austrian Cabinet to Hungary.

No event had moved England so profoundly since the peace of 1815. The overthrow of the Spanish constitution by French armies in 1823, at the bidding of the Congress of Verona, was a deed having some outward similarity; but the case of Hungary had great peculiarities. The liberties of Hungary were as old as those of England. Her position towards Austria was conservative, and her contest fundamentally legal. She demanded nothing but that the dynasty should keep treaties, execute the law, observe the coronation oath and the solemn personal contract which was added to it; and that the King should not usurp the powers of government before he was legally invested with them. Also, the Diet disowned the deposition of their lawful king, Ferdinand, effected only by the private act of the Austrian Cabinet. It was believed that he had been deposed because he conscientiously refused to perjure himself by making war upon Hungary, and that Francis Joseph, a youth of eighteen, was put on the throne because he was sure to do what his mother the Archduchess Sophia bade him. The Hungarian Diet claimed to see the document by which Ferdinand was said to have abdicated, and did not believe that he had ever executed it, since no attempt was made to convince them of it.

Hence, until the entrance of the Russians, they fought against the Austrians in the name of their legal king, Ferdinand of Hungary, illegally deposed by an Austrian Cabinet. Moreover the war had been begun by the most outrageous perfidy of that Cabinet. The King was in fact almost imbecile. The Cabinet stirred up Jellachich, Ban

Hun

of Croatia, to make war upon gary, and also by secret agents excited the Hungarian Serbs (a small immigration from Turkish Servia) to make marauding inroads on the Hungarian villages, which they burnt by night. The Archduke Stephen, Palatine of Hungary, gave solemn assurance to the Diet that such things went on without his cognisance, and urged the Hungarians to arm against the insurrection. The Emperor at Vienna, on the application of the Hungarian Prime Minister, Louis Batthyani, issued a proclamation denouncing Jellachich asa rebel and outlaw. Nevertheless, the Hungarians intercepted despatches from Jellachich which thanked the Austrian Minister for his supply of money, ammunition, and officers: nay, they captured Austrian officers fighting at the head of the Serbs with Austrian commissions in their pockets: finally, when Jellachich was defeated, he fled to the protection of an Austrian general, who received him openly as an ally. This exposure of their perfidy forced the Austrian Cabinet to throw off the mask, and to enter war publicly against Hungary, for which they had prepared; armies being in position already, to march in from five points. But Ferdinand, though an imbecile, understood that this was wrong, and refused to sign the necessary documents. Hereupon the Cabinet deposed him; put on the throne, not his brother, but his brother's young son; and denounced the Hungarians as rebels, for fighting against insurgents in the war, to which the Austrian Archduke, representative of their king, had solemnly called them.

The effect of such outrageous proceedings was to cement all orders of Hungary, except a few of the nobility who had become denationalised. The mass of the peers, all the commoners, rich and poor, Magyars and Slovacks, Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Gipsies,

were united in defence of their hereditary laws and of treaties bought by rivers of blood. As Lord Palmerston confessed in Parliament, beyond question it was a national war. Moreover it so happened that Hungary was in many respects like to England, and intensely admired England. In Hungary, as in England, a great aristocracy survived many struggles, which the King could not deprive of independent political action. In Hungary, as in England, a national hierarchy retained vast estates. One would have expected the English aristocracy to be shocked at seeing the Hungarian nobility ousted from their hereditary rights by the treacherous conduct of the Crown; yet, strange to say, the peerage and the official statesmen were the only part of England which did not sympathise with Hungary. Two peers are known to have come near to Kossuth while he was in this countryno more. Besides, the Hungarians were eager for free trade with England, and had abundance of corn to sell; while the avowed policy of Austria was to keep her poor-to choke Hungary with her own fat,' as an Austrian statesman expressed it. In Hungary Protestants and Catholics lived harmoniously, but Austria was an hereditary persecutor. On every ground, therefore, the utmost indignation was natural in England at the events in Hungary. While the war went on, petitions innumerable were made to Lord Palmerston to recognise Hungary as belligerent; but the Ministry had been forewarned by Lord Ponsonby, their ambassador at Vienna, that Russia was in the background to aid, if Austria required it; and that (as he expressed it) the Russians would march into Italy, if necessary,' to suppress the Roman Republic. Our Ministers were too much afraid of a Russian war to be willing to do their plain duty as ministers of peace-I say their plain