and Paris markets
rejecting such paper would have the greatest influence upon its
issue.[40]

[Footnote 40: Lord Clarendon replied:--"... With reference to
your Majesty's note of this morning, Lord Clarendon begs to
say that having laid a case fully before the Law Officers, and
having ascertained from them that it would be high treason for
any subject of your Majesty's to be concerned in the Russian
Loan, he will give all possible circulation to the opinion,
and he has this evening sent it to Vienna, Berlin, and The
Hague...."]

[Pageheading: INSTRUCTIONS TO LORD RAGLAN]

_The Earl of Aberdeen to Queen Victoria._

LONDON, _29th June 1854._

Lord Aberdeen presents his humble duty to your Majesty. The Cabinet
assembled yesterday evening at Lord John Russell's, at Richmond, and
continued to a very late hour.[41]

A Draft of Instructions to Lord Raglan had been prepared by the
Duke of Newcastle, in which the necessity of a prompt attack upon
Sebastopol and the Russian Fleet was strongly urged. The amount of
force now assembled at Varna, and in the neighbourhood, appeared to be
amply sufficient to justify such an enterprise, with the assistance
of the English and French Fleets. But although the expedition to the
Crimea was pressed very warmly, and recommended to be undertaken with
the least possible delay, the final decision was left to the judgment
and discretion of Lord Raglan and Marshal St Arnaud, after they should
have communicated with Omar Pasha.

It was also decided to send the reserve force, now in England, of
5,000 men, to join Lord Raglan without delay. This will exhaust the
whole disposable force of the country at this time, and renders it
impossible to supply British troops for any undertaking in the Baltic.
A communication was therefore made yesterday to the French Government
to know whether they would be disposed to send 6,000 French troops, to
be conveyed in English transports, to the Baltic, in order to join in
an attack upon the Aland Islands,[42] which appeared to be attended
with no great difficulty; although any attempt upon Helsingfors, or
Cronstadt, was pronounced by Sir Charles Napier to be hopeless.

[Footnote 41: The war now entered upon a new phase. Though the
land forces of the Allies had hitherto not come into
conflict with the enemy, the Turks under Omar Pasha had been
unexpectedly successful in their resistance to the Russians,