wrong on the wretched inhabitants of the
Principalities; that war had ensued and was raging with all its
horrors; that we had procured for the Emperor an offer of
honourable terms of peace which he had refused; that we were not
going to extend the conflagration (but I had to correct myself as
to the Baltic), but to apply more power for its extinction, and
this I hoped in conjunction with all the great Powers of Europe.
That I, for one, could not shoulder the musket against the
Christian subjects of the Sultan, and must there take my stand.
(Not even, I had already told him, if he agreed to such a course,
could I bind myself to follow him in it.) He said Granville and
Wood had spoken to him in the same sense. I added that S. Herbert
and Graham probably would adhere; perhaps Argyll and Molesworth,
and even others might be added.

LORD ABERDEEN'S MISGIVINGS

Ellice had been with him and told him that J. Russell and
Palmerston were preparing to contend for his place. Ellice himself,
deprecating Lord Aberdeen's retirement, anticipated that if it took
place Lord Palmerston would get the best of it, and drive Lord John
out of the field by means of his war popularity, though Lord John
had made the speech of Friday to put himself up in this point of
view with the country.

In consequence of what I had said to him about Newcastle, he
[Aberdeen] had watched him, and had told the Queen to look to him
as her minister at some period or other; which, though afraid of
him (as well as of me) about Church matters, she was prepared to
do. I said I had not changed my opinion of Newcastle as he had done
of Lord John Russell, but I had been disappointed and pained at the
recent course of his opinions about the matter of the war. At my
house last Wednesday he [Newcastle] declared openly for putting
down by force the Christians of European Turkey. Yes, Lord Aberdeen
replied; but he thought him the description of man who would
discharge well the duties of that office. In this I agree.[309]

A few days later (March 3) Lord John Russell, by way of appeasing
Aberdeen's incessant self-reproach, told him that the only course that
could have prevented war would have been to counsel the Turks to
acquiesce, and not to allow the British fleet to quit Malta. 'But that
was a