of the War Party lay in its numbers, and it would be absurd to assert that, with leaders like Derby, Disraeli, Palmerston, and Russell, it lacked intellectual ability. As usual, numbers won the day, and an abnormal alliance of “the classes and masses” rendered the Peace Party--sadly weakened in moral authority by the Moravian fanaticism of the Cobdenites--utterly impotent. Mr. Cobden cherished the illusion that his influence had strengthened the Peace Party. Yet, with the exception of Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Lord Derby, and Lord Lyndhurst, no public men did more to make peace impossible than Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, the tone of whose pacific speeches acted on the pugnacious temper of the country as soothingly as a sting on an open and irritable wound.[138] As might be expected, the Eastern policy of Ministers was fiercely attacked in both Houses of Parliament. But to understand the point of these attacks and the relation of the Queen to them, one must explain what was done after Sinope drove England into a frenzy of anger only comparable with that of the Danes when Nelson destroyed their fleet at Copenhagen. To rightly appraise the criminal blunder of Russia at Sinope, it is necessary to remember that when that “massacre” occurred, the European Powers had agreed on a new Note embodying what they considered an honourable settlement of the dispute between Russia and Turkey. That was the Note of the 5th of December, and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, under orders from Lord Clarendon, persuaded the Porte to accept it. This was a great step towards peace, for all that remained was to induce the Czar to be equally reasonable. But on the very day (the 13th of January, 1854) when the Powers, in concert at Vienna, decided to press this settlement on Russia, Sir Hamilton Seymour was instructed by Lord Clarendon to intimate to Count Nesselrode at St. Petersburg that England and France had lifted the gage of battle flung to them at Sinope. Russia was informed that the English and French fleets had sailed for the Black Sea, charged to “require” every Russian ship they met to put back to port. This irritated the Czar, who professed to regard it as “a flagrant act of hostility.”[139] Yet the Czar, or rather Nesselrode--who, like Lord Aberdeen, was braving infinite obloquy on account of his pacific proclivities--was willing to condone the act, if England would only state formally that she would impose on Turkish ships the same restrictions she imposed on those of Russia. Lord Clarendon, in his despatch, dated the 31st of January, did not make this statement, and accordingly, on the 4th of February, the Russian Ambassador in London announced that he and his retinue must return at once to St. Petersburg. On the 7th of February Lord Clarendon ordered the British Ambassador at the Court of the Czar to return to England; the French Government took the same course, and thus the rupture between Russia and the Western Powers became complete.