The conscience of the country was touched to the quick by the thought that the presence of the British Mediterranean fleet at Besika Bay was giving the same encouragement to the Turks as it had done before the Crimean War, and that, too, when they had belied the promises so solemnly given in 1856, and were now proved to be guilty of unspeakable barbarities.

In such a case, the British nation would have been disgraced had it not demanded that no further alliance should be formed.

It was equally the duty of the leaders of the Opposition to voice what was undoubtedly the national sentiment.

To have kept silence would have been to stultify our Parliamentary institutions.

The parrot cry that British interests were endangered by Russia's supposed designs on Turkey, was met by the unanswerable reply that, if those designs existed, the best way to check them was to maintain the European Concert, and especially to keep in close touch with Austria, seeing that that Power had as much cause as England to dread any southward extension of the Czar's power.