This movement was brought about by the explosion of very old feelings which had been smouldering for nearly forty years, had been kept alive by the Balkan war, and had been roused by the last conflict. Even at the time of Catherine II the merchants of the City of London merely looked upon Russia as a first-rate customer to whom they sold European and Indian goods, and of whom in return they bought raw materials which their ships brought to England. So they felt inclined to support the policy of Russia, and, to quote the words of a French writer in the eighteenth century, the English ambassador at Constantinople was “le chargé d’affaires de la Russie.” So a party which took into account only the material advantages to be drawn from a closer commercial connection with Russia arose and soon became influential. William Pitt inveighed against this party when, in one of his speeches, he refused to argue with those who wanted to put an end to the Ottoman Empire. But the opinion that England can only derive economic advantages from the dismemberment of Turkey in favour of Russia soon found a new advocate in Richard Cobden, the leader of the Manchester school, who expounded it in a little book, _Russia, by a Manchester Manufacturer_, printed at Edinburgh in 1835. This dangerous policy was maintained, in spite of David Urquhart’s campaign against the Tsarist policy in the East in a periodical, _The Portfolio_, which he had founded in 1833, and, notwithstanding the strenuous efforts made by Blacque, a Frenchman, editor of _The Ottoman Monitor_, to show that Europe was being cheated by Russia, and was going the wrong way in her attitude towards Turkey. And the same foolish policy consistently pursued by Fox, Gladstone, and Grey towards Tsardom is still carried on by Britain towards Bolshevism. The same narrowly utilitarian views, the typical economic principles of the Manchester School, linked with Protestant ideas, and thus strengthened and aggravated by religious feeling, seem still to inspire the Russian policy of Britain as they once inspired the old “bag and baggage” policy of Mr. Gladstone, the “Grand Old Man,” that the Turks should be expelled from Constantinople with bag and baggage. Indeed, this policy may be looked upon as an article of faith of the English Liberal party. Mr. Gladstone’s religious mind, which was alien to the Islamic spirit, together with the endeavours of the economists who wanted to monopolise the Russian market, brought about an alliance with Holy Orthodox Russia, and within the Anglican Church a movement for union with the Holy Synod had even been started.