CHAP. II.
portance not alone to the united action of the two Governments, but to the instructions addressed to their respective agents being precisely the same, that they are prepared to adopt the specific mode of action now proposed by the Government of the Emperor.'[1] Orders to execute the scheme and to announce it at St. Petersburg. With the addition of a proviso that for the present the Sultan should be engaged to abstain from aggressive operations on the Euxine, instructions exactly in accord with the French Emperor's proposal were forthwith sent out to the Bosphorus, and at the same time the French and English representatives at St Petersburg were ordered to communicate this resolution to Count Nesselrode.
Lord Palmerston's exclusion from office at the time when this decision took place. But who was the statesman removed by some cause from our Cabinet before the critical day, and who again was the statesman then seen to be so clothed with power that the very apprehension of having him for an adversary weighed heavily on the decision of that Thursday (the 22d of December)? The two were one. Only a few days before, Lord Palmerston had been a member of the Government. Thinking fit, and intending to meet the desire of the Tuileries for a close and concerted action between France and England, he in those days had power, great power over Louis Napoleon; and, unless for some reason of his own, he would hardly, I think, have allowed the French Emperor to press indecorously upon any Cabinet to which he himself belonged, still less to apply such a pressure with the object of making it
- ↑ 'Eastern Papers,' part ii. p. 321.
