pretending that she did not aim at the acquisition of any _new_ right, but required only a satisfaction of honour, and an acknowledgment of the rights she already possessed by treaty--and that she does intend, and for the first time lays bare that intention, to acquire new rights of interference.” The Queen then made a suggestion which was carried out. It was that England should lay the whole case before Europe, declaring that the Russian demands were inadmissible, and “that the continuance of the occupation of the Principalities, in order to extort these demands, constitutes an unwarrantable aggression upon Turkey, and infraction of the public law of Europe.”[118] As matters stood, such an intimation to the fiery Czar was virtually a challenge to mortal combat. Those who hold the destinies of great nations in their hands are now chary of committing themselves to war for the sake of honour or the public law of Europe. The subterfuges by which Russia disorganised Bulgaria in 1886, and got rid of Prince Alexander, whose anti-Russian proclivities had been encouraged by England, touched British honour more closely than the “explicative Note” of Count Nesselrode. Yet England, guided solely by her interests, did not make Russian interference with Bulgaria in 1886, a _casus belli_. A greater statesman than Aberdeen in 1853, also eliminated all considerations of “honour” from his policy, and looked solely to the material interest of his country. Prussia was scoffed at by Prince Albert as “a reed shaken by the wind.” But Prussia not only refused to join the Western Powers against Russia, but deterred Austria from joining them. And why? Because Herr von Bismarck had enough influence with the King to convince him that the interest of Prussia did not lie in strengthening the Western Powers, or in offending Russia, whose benevolent neutrality might one day be valuable to his country. Why, he argued, should Prussia waste her strength in helping France and Austria to weaken Russia, without the prospect of winning for Prussia “a prize worthy of us”? He was “appalled” by the notion that “we may plunge into a sea of trouble and danger on behalf of Austria, for whose sins the King displays as much tolerance as I only hope God in Heaven will one day show to mine.” The “interest of Prussia,” he said, after the Crimean war was over, “is my only rule of action, and had there ever been any prospect of our promoting this interest by taking part in the war, I should certainly never have been one of its opponents.”[119] Lord Salisbury, on the 9th of November, 1886, speaking at the Guildhall, has in our time said that England has no interest to resist Russian aggression in European Turkey, where Austria has none. Tested by that principle the policy of the Cabinet and the Crown in 1853 was chivalrous, but indefensible. Yet if the Sovereign and her Ministers erred, what is to be said of the Nation? It was simply mad for war with