ed, is this
the place, to recount the vicissitudes of the Aberdeen Administration in
its baffled struggles against the alternative of war. The achievements
of the Coalition Government, no less than its failures, with much of its
secret history, have already been told with praiseworthy candour and
intimate knowledge by Lord Stanmore, who as a young man acted as private
secretary to his father, Lord Aberdeen, through the stress and storm of
those fateful years. It is therefore only necessary in these pages to
state the broad outlines of the story, and to indicate Lord John
Russell's position in the least popular Cabinet of the Queen's reign.

Lord Shaftesbury jotted down in his journal, when the new Ministry came
into office, these words, and they sum up pretty accurately the
situation, and the common verdict upon it: 'Aberdeen Prime Minister,
Lord John Russell Minister for Foreign Affairs. Is it possible that this
arrangement should prosper? Can the Liberal policy of Lord John square
with the restrictive policy of Lord Aberdeen? I wish them joy and a safe
deliverance.'

FOOTNOTES:

[26] _Sir William Gregory, K.C.M.G.: an Autobiography_, edited by Lady
Gregory, pp. 92, 93.

[27] Mr. Gladstone's comment on this statement is that it is interesting
as coming from an acute contemporary observer. At the same time it
expresses an opinion and presents no facts. Mr. Gladstone adds that he
is not aware that the question of re-union with the Conservative party
was ever presented to him in such a way as to embrace the relations to
Mr. Disraeli.

[28] _Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay_, by the Right Hon. Sir George
Otto Trevelyan, M.P., vol. ii. p. 340.

[29] Sir Theodore Martin's _Life of the Prince Consort_, vol. ii. p.
483.

[30] Pitt became guardian to the young Lord Haddo in 1792.

CHAPTER X

DOWNING STREET AND CONSTANTINOPLE

1853

Causes of the Crimean War--Nicholas seizes his opportunity--The
Secret Memorandum--Napoleon and the susceptibilities of the
Vatican--Lord Stratford de Redcliffe and the Porte--Prince
Menschikoff shows his hand--Lord Aberdeen hopes against hope--Lord
Palmerston's opinion of the crisis--The Vienna Note--Lord John
grows restive--Sinope arouses England--The deadlock in the Cabinet.

MANY causes conspired to bring about the war in the Crimea, though the
pretext for the quarrel--a dispute between the monks of the Latin and
Greek Churches concerning th