BETWEEN THE CZAR AND THE SULTAN. 347 if we had bad the misfortune to find that the Emperor of the French was the only potentate in Europe whose policy was in accord with our own, it might have been right that closer relations of alliance with France (however humiliating they might seem in the eyes of the moralist) should have followed our separation from the other States of Europe. Put no such separation had occurred. What the French Emperor ventured to attempt, and what he actually succeeded in achieving, was to draw England into a distinct and separate alliance with himself, not at a time when she was isolated, but at a moment when she was in close accord with the rest of the four Powers. Towards the close of the Parliamentary session of 1853, the determination on the part of Austria to rid the Principalities of their Prussian invaders was growing in intensity. Prussia also was firm ; and in principle the concord of the four Powers was so exact, that it extended, as was afterwards seen, not only to the terms on which the dif- ference between Russia and Turkey should be settled, but to the ulterior arrangements which might be pressed upon Russia at the conclusion of the war which she was provoking. ' The four ' great Powers,' said Lord Aberdeen on the 12th of August, ' are now acting in concert.' * ' In ' all these transactions,' said Lord Clarendon, f ' Austria, England, Prussia, and France are all 1 acting cordially together, in order to check de- ' signs which they consider inconsistent with the
- 129 Hansard, p. 1650. -|- Had p. 1423.
CHAP. XV.
