simplicity of the statesman refusing to believe the evidence of his senses. We have seldom witnessed so much prevarication, so much barefaced misstatement, as have been exhibited on this question. It was denied in the most positive manner in the House of Lords that Russia had ever required from the Sultan the dismissal of his minister Fuad Effendi; or that the resignation of that minister was voluntary. The repeated warnings in the public press, the official communications of his own agents in Turkey and Russia, went for nothing. The intentions of the Emperor of Russia were in his eyes moderate and pacific, even so late as the end of April. The arrogant language of the Russian Envoy at Constantinople, the menaced occupation of the Principalities, were, because Count Nesselrode pronounced them to be so, not merely exaggerated, but “destitute of any foundation whatever.” The “_beau rôle_” which the wily chancellor of the Russian Empire congratulated Lord Aberdeen for having preferred, was in point of fact the meanest subservience; and we are satisfied that it was to the conviction that this “_beau rôle_”[9] was to be played out to the end, that we owe all that has since taken place. The same truckling spirit characterised even those acts of the Government which had the appearance of energy. When our ships entered the Dardanelles, and anchored before Constantinople, the country was made to believe that their presence in the Bosphorus had no reference to the acts of Russia, but to the protection of British subjects and property, and to the defence of the Sultan from the violence of his own subjects at a moment when it was known that not the slightest danger menaced either the one or the other. Abdul Medjid must have felt indignant at the imputation thus cast by his friends on the loyalty of his subjects, and even Lord Aberdeen’s own ambassador declined to accept such an explanation of movement of the fleet without a pretext. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, while expressing his thanks for the interest taken by the British Government in the preservation of British life and property at Constantinople, said, at the same time, that he applied his gratitude also to that part of the instructions which authorised him to consider the presence of her Majesty’s squadron, if he thought proper to require it, as intended to embrace the protection of the Sultan in case of need: from whom the Sultan most needed protection, no man knew better than the English ambassador. The defence set up for the delays, the hesitations, and the inaction of the Aberdeen Cabinet, was, it seems, the doubt entertained of the co-operation of France. Now, nothing is more clearly shown, even in the _Blue Books_, that the contrary was the fact. It is proved by the despatches of the French Ambassador in London, and of the English Ambassador in Paris. They show, beyond the possibility of doubt, not only that such was not the case, but that every proposition of active