and had
asked us for our advice, the best thing we could have said would have
been, 'Don't do anything half so foolish; we are not prepared to send
an army and a fleet to defend you, and don't give Russia a cause to
attack you.' But there was another empire burning with desire to
join us against Russia. Turkey, we were told by the hon. and learned
member, with 200,000 cavalry, was ready to carry demonstration to the
very walls of St. Petersburg--perhaps to carry off the Emperor himself
from his throne. What was the state of Turkey then? In 1831 she had
engaged in a war with Russia, in which, after two campaigns, her arms
were repulsed and driven back into their own empire, so that she was
compelled at Adrianople to accept conditions of peace, hard in
their nature, and demanding a sacrifice of an important part of her
territory, but to which she was advised in friendly counsel by the
British Ambassador to submit, for fear of having to endure still
worse. We are told that, two or three years after this great disaster,
Turkey was of such amazing enterprise and courage, and was furnished
with such a wonderful quantity of cavalry, that she was prepared to
send 200,000 horse (which she never had in all her life) over the
frontiers of Russia, and sweep her territory. Now this is, of all
the wild dreams that ever crossed the mind of man, one of the most
unlikely and extraordinary. But supposing all this had been true,
and that Turkey really was prepared to do all the hon. and learned
gentleman said she was, I should have given her just the same advice
that I should have offered Sweden under the same circumstances, and
should have said, 'Have you not been beaten enough? Are you mad? Do
you want the Russians to get Constantinople instead of Adrianople?
Will nothing satisfy you? We cannot come and defend you against your
powerful neighbour. She is on your frontiers, and do not give her any
just cause for attacking you.' Then the hon. and learned gentleman
told us of the Shah of Persia, how the gunboats of Sweden, the troops
of Austria, the fine cavalry of Turkey, the magnificent legions of
Persia, were ready all to pour in upon Russia in revenge for the
injuries which the inhabitants of the Baltic coasts inflicted upon
Europe in former centuries, and would have stripped Russia of her
finest provinces. Now, what had happened to Persia? In 1827, she
had very foolishly and thoughtlessly, against advice, rushed into a
conflict with R