Caustic as this is, it is only too indulgent to the Peace Party. Not that it is of special importance now to crush what is already so depressed and abased as to have lost its power of mischief. The course of the leaders of the party has been such that they could not continue to enjoy any large measure of popularity, except upon the anomalous condition that a great number of Englishmen should join in hating England. For years past no petulant despotism, no drunken republic, could shake its coarse fist in the face of this country, without finding its warmest supporters in those men of the olive branch, who were never weary of urging us to offer both cheeks to the smiter. Their mode of interference in a quarrel is like that of the affectionate friends, who, if a man were attacked, would cling round him and hamper him, reviling him for his pugnacity, while his adversary ran him through the body. Long fallen from their position as oracles, they lie at the base of their tall pedestals, and “none so poor as do them reverence.” But, in granting them honesty of purpose, Mr Kinglake falls, we think, into the now common error of pushing candour to excess. A man’s mistakes are honest when he is led into them by motives irrespective of his interests. The fanatic who sacrifices his own advantage along with that of other people cannot be accused of baseness. But these men had a direct interest in preaching the doctrine of the necessity of national poltroonery. The substitution of a purely commercial policy for that which the nation had hitherto followed, was intimately blended with their own personal advantage. The motive, therefore, that inspired the error renders it inexcusable. Blind, then, to consequences, the Czar continued his course of aggression. He marched his troops into the Principalities. Thereupon, no longer opposed only by England, he finds himself met by the concerted action of the four great Powers. And the question of interest at this particular stage is, Whether the primary object of defending Turkey was to be best attained by the action of the four Powers, or by the increased decision in action of England and France. Now it is to be observed, that the Czar knew long before he occupied the Principalities that Austria would resist the step. Yet the united remonstrance of the four Powers had failed to induce him to abandon it. And it also failed afterwards to induce him to retract it. Through remonstrance, opposition, and the earlier stages of the war, he continued to hold the provinces. It becomes then a question, when we are considering the statement that the peaceful pressure of the four Powers would have attained our object in the most desirable way, whether a course of action so slow was consistent with our engagement to defend Turkey. It is a matter at least open to doubt.