and the peace of Paris brought a temporary and
superficial repose. The French ruler, by strange irony at once the sabre
of Revolution and the trumpet of Order, made a beginning in urging the
constitution of a Roumanian nationality, by uniting the two Danubian
principalities in a single quasi-independent state. This was obviously a
further step towards that partition of Turkey which the Crimean war had
been waged to prevent. Austria for reasons of her own objected, and
England, still in her Turcophil humour, went with Austria against France
for keeping the two provinces, although in fiscal and military union,
politically divided. According to the fashion of that time--called a comedy
by some, a homage to the democratic evangel by others--a popular vote was
taken. Its result was ingeniously falsified by the sultan (whose ability
to speak French was one of the odd reasons why Lord Palmerston was
sanguine about Turkish civilisation); western diplomacy insisted that the
question of union should be put afresh. Mr. Gladstone, not then in office,
wrote to Lord Aberdeen (Sept. 10, 1857):--

The course taken about the Principalities has grieved me. I do not
mean so much this or that measure, as the principle on which it is
to rest. I thought we made war in order to keep Russia out, and
then suffer life, if it would, to take the place of death. But it
now seems to be all but avowed, that the fear of danger, not to
Europe, but to Islam,--and Islam not from Russia, but from the
Christians of Turkey,--is to be a ground for stinting their
liberties.

In 1858 (May 4) he urged the Derby government to support the declared wish
of the people of Wallachia and Moldavia, and to fulfil the pledges made at
Paris in 1856. "Surely the best resistance to be offered to Russia," he
said, "is by the strength and freedom of those countries that will have to
resist her. You want to place a living barrier between Russia and Turkey.
_There is no barrier like the breast of freemen._" The union of the
Principalities would raise up antagonists to the ambitions of Russia more
powerful than any that could be bought with money. The motion was
supported by Lord John Russell and Lord Robert Cecil, but Disraeli and
Palmerston joined in opposing it, and it was rejected by a large majority.
Mr. Gladstone wrote in his diary: "May 4.--H. of C.--Made my motion on the
Principalities. Lost by 292:114; and with it goes another broken