But we are now in a peculiar position with regard to that war; for if I am not mistaken, at this very moment, terms have been agreed upon—agreed upon by the Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen; consented to by the noble Lord the member for Tiverton (Lord Palmerston) when he was in that Cabinet; and ratified and confirmed by him upon the formation of his own Government—and that those terms are now specifically known and understood; and that they have been offered to the Government with which this country is at war, and in conjunction with France and Austria—one, certainly, and the other supposed to be, an ally of this country. Now, those terms consist of four propositions, which I shall neither describe nor discuss, because they are known to the House;[6] but three of them are not matters of dispute; and with regard to the other, I think that the noble Lord, the member for the City of London (Lord John Russell) stated, upon a recent occasion, that it was involved in this proposition that the preponderant power of Russia in the Black Sea should cease, and that Russia had accepted it with that interpretation. Therefore, whatever difference arises is merely as to the mode in which that “preponderant power” shall be understood, or made to cease. Now there are some gentlemen not far from me—there are men who write in the public press—there are thousands of persons in the United Kingdom at this moment—and I learn with astonishment and dismay that there are persons even in that grave Assembly which we are not allowed to specify by a name in this House—who have entertained dreams, impracticable theories, expectations of vast European and Asiatic changes, of revived nationalities, and of a new map of Europe, if not of the world, as a result or an object of this war. And it is from these gentlemen that we have continually addressed to the noble Lord the member for Tiverton language which I cannot well understand. They call upon him to act, to carry on the war with vigour, and to prosecute enterprises which neither his Government nor any other Government has ever seriously entertained; but I would appeal to those gentlemen whether it does not become us—regarding the true interests and true honour of the country—if our Government have offered terms of peace to Russia, not to draw back from these terms, not to cause any unnecessary delay, not to adopt any subterfuge to prevent those terms being accepted, not to attempt shuffles of any kind, not to endeavour to insist upon harder terms, and thus make the approach of peace even more distant than it is at present? ...