Mr. Layard, on the 23rd of June, gave notice of motion in the House of Commons, “that, in the opinion of this House, the language held by the First Minister of the Crown was calculated to raise grave doubts in the public mind as to the objects and results of the present war, and to lessen the prospect of a durable peace.” Even the Queen wrote to the aged statesman a letter scolding him because he had annoyed the public by “an impartial examination of the Emperor of Russia’s conduct.” She admired Aberdeen’s courage and honesty, but expressed a hope--in the circumstances her “hope” was a command--that in any explanation of his unlucky speech “he will not undertake the ungrateful and injurious task of vindicating the Emperor of Russia from any of the exaggerated charges brought against him and his policy, at a time when there is enough in that policy to make us fight with all our might against it.”[174] What Aberdeen said was that he objected to Russian aggression on Turkey, but as for Russian aggression on Europe, he did not fear it in the least. There was nothing in that to cause offence, except to those who, suddenly finding that Russian aggression on Turkey had been repelled by Omar Pasha, supported by the hostile demonstrations of the Western Powers, were now at a loss to discover another form of Russian encroachment, real or imaginary, to repel. There must therefore, cried Lyndhurst and the War Party, be no talk of peace till the Russian fleet in the Black Sea was destroyed, and the walls of Sebastopol razed to the ground. “For the future,” exclaimed Lord Derby, “it was impossible to permit the Black Sea to be a Russian lake, or that the Danube should be a Russian ditch, choked with mud and filth.”[175] A great army had been sent to Turkey; but the fighting and the glory had fallen to Omar Pasha on the Danube. As Lord Hardwicke said, in the debate in the House of Lords on a Vote of Credit (24th of July), “if the present campaign closed without some great deed of arms equal to the power and dignity of this country, Her Majesty’s Government would lie under a heavy responsibility.”