CHAP. II.
Government a means of eluding it. The torrent had so great a volume that it was worthy to be turned against a foreign State. The anger of the English diverted from their own rulers and unjustly brought to bear on the Czar. The blaming of The anger of Ministers and Ambassadors and Admirals, and the endless conflict which would be engendered by the apportionment of censure, all might be superseded by suggesting, instead, a demand for vengeance against Russia. The terms of Count Nesselrode's Circular of the 31st of October[1] had given ground for expecting that, until provoked to a contrary course, the Czar, notwithstanding the Turkish declaration of war, would remain upon the defensive; and the people in England were now taught, or allowed to suppose, that Russia had made this attack upon a Turkish squadron in breach of an honourable understanding virtually equivalent to a truce, or, at all events, to an arrangement which would confine the theatre of active war to the valley of the Lower Danube. This charge against Paissia was unjust; for after the issue of the Circular, the Government of St Petersburg had received intelligence not only that active warfare was going on in the valley of the Lower Danube, but that the Turks had seized the Russian fort of St Nicholas, on the eastern coast of the Euxine, and were attacking Russia upon her Armenian frontier. After acts of this warlike sort had been done, it was impossible to say, with any fairness, that Piussia was debarred from a right to destroy her
enemy's ships ; and it must be acknowledged also,- ↑ 'Eastern Papers,' part ii. p. 226.
