The Cabinet were by no means united in their policy. Aberdeen believed in Nicholas, and was for peace; Palmerston believed in the Turks, and was for war.[29] Clarendon was the mediator between the two. At first the Queen and her husband were decidedly sympathetic with Aberdeen’s policy. They fully acknowledged that the “ignorant, barbarian, and despotic yoke of the Mussulman” had been a curse to Europe, and agreed with Lord Aberdeen that the Turkish system was “radically vicious and inhuman.” Against this view Palmerston exerted all his strength. Little by little the war fever, fanned by him and favored by events, grew fiercer and fiercer. It spared neither the palace nor the cottage, and presently there was hardly a voice raised in England for peace except those of Bright and Cobden; and their influence was weakened by the belief that they would be against all war under all circumstances. There was a very general impression in the country that if Palmerston had been at the Foreign Office no war would have been necessary. Certainly experience forces the conviction that the peace-at-any-price party, when in power, is almost certain to land the country in war; but in this particular instance it appears probable that Palmerston, having secured the French alliance, thought the moment for fighting favorable, and therefore forced on the war; and that he would have done so equally from the Foreign Office as from the Home Office. His whole attention and interest were centred on foreign affairs, and there was an excellent understanding between him and Lord Clarendon, who was Foreign Secretary. It is needless to say that the Queen was thoroughly convinced before war was declared that it could not have been avoided, that our cause was just, and that the claim of Russia to protect the Christian subjects of Turkey was a hypocritical cloak to her aggression and ambition, and that her real object was to seize Constantinople and the command of the entrance between the Black Sea and Mediterranean, with an eye ultimately to India and the possessions of England in Asia.