ey would have become more able, in case
any accident, which might not be far distant, occurred, to
supplant the Mahommedan rule, and to establish themselves in
Constantinople as a Christian State, which, I think, every man who
hears me will admit is infinitely more to be desired than that the
Mahommedan power should be permanently sustained by the bayonets of
France and the fleets of England. Europe would thus have been at
peace; for I do not think even the most bitter enemies of Russia
believe that the Emperor of Russia intended last year, if the
Vienna note or Prince Menchikoff's last and most moderate
proposition had been accepted, to have marched on Constantinople.
Indeed, he had pledged himself in the most distinct manner to
withdraw his troops at once from the Principalities, if the Vienna
note were accepted; and therefore in that case Turkey would have
been delivered from the presence of the foe; peace would for a time
have been secured for Europe; and the whole matter would have
drifted on to its natural solution--which is, that the Mahommedan
power in Europe should eventually succumb to the growing power of
the Christian population of the Turkish territories.

Now, looking back upon what has since happened, which view shows the
greater wisdom and prevision? That of the man who delivered this speech
(and he was John Bright) or those against whom he spoke? To which set of
principles has time given the greater justification?

Yet upon the men who resisted what we all admit, in this case at least,
to have been the false theories and who supported, what we equally admit
now, to have been the right principles, we poured the same sort of
ferocious contempt that we are apt now spasmodically to pour upon those
who, sixty years later, would prevent our drifting in the same blind
fashion into a war just as futile and bound to be infinitely more
disastrous--a war embodying the same "principles" supported by just the
same theories and just the same arguments which led us into this other
one.

I know full well the prejudice which the names I am about to cite is apt
to cause. We poured out upon the men who bore them a rancour, contempt
and hatred which few men in English public life have had to face.
Morley, in his life of Cobden, says of these two men--Cobden and Bright:

They had, as Lord Palmerston said, the whole world agains