Sir Robert Morier finally stated that if Sir William White succeeded in building up an independent Bulgaria friendly to Roumania, he would have achieved the greatest feat of diplomacy since Sir James Hudson's statesmanlike moves at Turin in the critical months of 1859-60 gained for England a more influential position in Italy than France had secured by her aid in the campaign of Solferino. The praise is overstrained, inasmuch as it leaves out of count the statecraft of Bismarck in the years 1863-64 and 1869-70; but certainly among the _peaceful_ triumphs of recent years that of Sir William White must rank very high. If, however, we examine the inner cause of the success of the diplomacy of Hudson and White we must assign it in part to the mistakes of the liberating Powers, France and Russia. Napoleon III., by requiring the cession of Savoy and Nice, and by revealing his design to Gallicise the Italian Peninsula, speedily succeeded in alienating the Italians. The action of Russia, in compelling Bulgaria to give up the Dobrudscha as an equivalent to the part of Bessarabia which she took from Roumania, also strained the sense of gratitude of those peoples; and the conduct of Muscovite agents in Bulgaria provoked in that Principality feelings bitterer than those which the Italians felt at the loss of Savoy and Nice. So true is it that in public as in private life the manner in which a wrong is inflicted counts for more than the wrong itself. It was on this sense of resentment (misnamed "ingratitude" by the "liberators") that British diplomacy worked with telling effect in both cases. It conferred on the "liberated" substantial benefits; but their worth was doubled by the contrast which they offered to the losses or the irritation consequent on the actions of Napoleon III. and of Alexander III. To the present writer it seems that the great achievements of Sir William White were, first, that he kept the Sultan quiet (a course, be it remarked, from which that nervous recluse was never averse) when Nelidoff sought to hound him on against Bulgaria; and, still more, that he helped to bring about a good understanding between Constantinople and Sofia. In view of the hatred which Abdul Hamid bore to England after her intervention in Egypt in 1882, this was certainly a great diplomatic achievement; but possibly Abdul Hamid hoped to reap advantages on the Nile from his complaisance to British policy in the Balkans.