England, it has been said, following the lead of Austria, encouraged the Porte to resist, and pressed Russia to accept the Turkish modification of the Note. It has been shown how, when Russia refused to do this, Austria, with whom Prussia acted, suddenly wheeled round and pressed the original Note on Turkey. England, however, had made herself sufficiently ridiculous in first recommending Turkey to accept the Note, and in then supporting her in rejecting it. Lord Aberdeen’s Government accordingly refused to recommend the Note again to Turkey, and the Government of France took the same course. The concert of the Powers which thus alone rendered peace possible was broken, and neither England nor France seemed to have made any serious effort to repair it. On the contrary, they not only approved of Lord Stratford’s conduct in summoning two ships of war from Besika Bay to Constantinople, but in September, yielding to Palmerston,[122] they put the whole fleet at his disposal. It was contrary to the Treaty of 1841 for the Porte to admit war-ships to the Bosphorus in time of peace. To send the English fleet to Constantinople was therefore a declaration on the part of England that Turkey was at war with Russia. Turkey formally declared war on Russia on the 5th, and the British Fleet entered the Bosphorus on the 30th of October. To order our Fleet to defend the Turks in the Euxine if they were attacked by Russia was a perilous step to take. Yet it is curious to observe that the Queen was the only high personage engaged in this transaction who, in the midst of the popular war frenzy, foresaw the peril of it. Even her habit of deference to Lord Aberdeen, which unfortunately led her to sanction without demur the blunders which have now been recorded, could not induce her to approve of this last and, as will be seen, most fatal error. Her trenchant criticism of it, unanswered and unanswerable to this day, is to be found in a letter which she wrote to the Prime Minister, in which she said:--“It appears to the Queen that we have taken on ourselves, in conjunction with [Illustration: THE DUKE OF NEWCASTLE.] France, all the risks of an European war, without having bound Turkey to any conditions with respect to provoking it. The 120 fanatical Turks constituting the Divan at Constantinople are left sole judges of the line of policy to be pursued, and made cognisant at the same time of the fact that England and France have bound themselves to defend the Turkish territory. This is entrusting them with a power which Parliament would be jealous of confiding even to the hands of the British Crown. It may be a question whether England ought to go to war for the so-called Turkish independence, but there can be none that, if she does so, she ought to be the sole judge of what constitutes a breach of that independence, and have the fullest power to prevent by negotiation the breaking out of the war.”[123] Had the Queen subjected