On the 12th of January, 1878, this proposal was discussed in the Cabinet, and it would have been necessary to follow up the step by asking the House of Commons for a war vote. At a meeting on the 14th, from which Lord Derby was absent, the proposal was adopted. On the 15th Lord Carnarvon sent in his resignation, but Mr. Montagu Corry came to him with a message from Lord Beaconsfield to say that certain telegrams had arrived which had caused the order to the Fleet to be cancelled. These telegrams must obviously have been from Lord Augustus Loftus, conveying Prince Gortschakoff’s pledge that Gallipoli would not be touched, and his warning that Russia would regard the British occupation of it as a breach of neutrality. On the 16th Lord Carnarvon was at the Cabinet meeting, but his resignation was not returned to him till the 18th, when Lord Beaconsfield assured him that there was no longer any difference between them. Lord Beaconsfield, indeed, went further in his soothing assurances to the House of Lords on the 17th. Though he had Lord Carnarvon’s resignation at that moment in his pocket, he said “there is not the slightest evidence that there has _ever_ been any difference between my opinions and those of my colleagues.”[123] As for the rumours of dissensions in the Cabinet, Lord Salisbury scornfully averred that they were only the inventions of “our old friends the newspapers.” To understand the events that followed, and which again threw the country into a panic, two facts must be kept in view. First, the resolution to send the Fleet to the Dardanelles had been taken on the 14th of January, after the receipt of a telegram from Mr. Layard warning the Government that the Russians were moving on Gallipoli. This false statement had been neutralised by Lord Augustus Loftus, who sent on the 15th the telegram conveying Gortschakoff’s renewed pledges to respect British interests, in time to enable Lord Beaconsfield to cancel the orders to the Fleet. But the second point is, that the public and Parliament were kept in complete ignorance of Gortschakoff’s fresh pledges not to approach Gallipoli, and not to occupy Constantinople. If the one pledge was to be trusted, so was the other, and the withdrawal of the orders to the Fleet proved that the Government thought that the one pledge was valid. Yet Lord Beaconsfield’s friends strove without ceasing to impress the public with the false notion that Russia meant to seize Constantinople. On the 17th Mr. Layard sent another alarmist telegram. The Russians, he said, were marching on Adrianople. They were next to occupy Constantinople, and the Sultan was making ready to fly to Broussa. On the 22nd a deputation of the Tory War Party, representing seventy-five malcontents in the House of Commons, urged a policy of intervention on Sir Stafford Northcote. On the 23rd the Cabinet resolved to send immediate orders to Admiral Hornby to take the Fleet to Constantinople.