1829. } England, Russia, and Turkey. 57 
epigrams and metaphors, the happy sneer that makes an opponent ridi- 
culous, aud the ready retort that keeps the dull in distant awe, were 
not the true means of guiding the career of a mighty empire. He was 
always busy, and always unfortunate. He made shewy speeches, and 
worthless treaties: he alienated the continental cabinets by feeble 
menaces, and made Ireland a rebel by idle conciliation. He struggled 
to make friends for the throne, and he made it pre-eminently unpopular ; 
he struggled to make a firm ministry, and he filled it with contradiction ; 
he struggled to place England at the head of Europe, and he laid the 
foundations of a rebel violence which will yet shake every throne into 
dust. Proclaiming universal peace, he urged England into hostilities 
with Spain to protect Portugal ; and invaded Portugal, to gratify Brazil. 
Professing a hatred of revolution, he unfurled the English banner as a 
rallying point for the revolutionists of all countries, and boasted of wielding 
the power of conspiracy. Loud in his abhorrence of British faction, he 
canvassed every faction of the legislature, recruited his parliamentary 
ranks from the men whom he hated, and by whom he was hated in 
return: pledged himself to the most determined defence of the consti- 
tution, and dug its grave. 
At once to fulfil the views of Russia, and sustain the policy of Eng- 
land was impossible, and he therefore tasked himself to combine them. 
He remonstrated loftily, and he yielded weakly. He formed a compact 
with Russia, by which she was at liberty to send a powerful fleet into 
the Mediterranean, but she was not to fire a gun. The Russians dispatched 
a fleet of twice the permitted force ; he indignantly sent them back ; and 
yet, uniting a British fleet with the remainder, he attacked the Turkish 
squadron, and extinguished at a blow the naval resistance of the Otto- 
man. 
_ He died, fortunate only in having anticipated, by a single month, the 
__ fall of the miscellaneous government that he had collected with such 
worthless toil. His successors disclaimed the victory of Navarino, and yet 
_ paid public honours to the victors ; cleared their consciences by harangues 
on the impolicy of the attack, and indulged their patriotism by the tri- 
~ umphant declaration, that Britons had not lost the art of conquest, though 
eg might blunder into beating their friends for the sake of their 
ies. 
The treaty of London was now brought into force, and diplomacy has 
never furnished a finer instance of the genuine enigma. In the same 
¢ page it denied the right of European powers to interfere with the 
quarrel of Turkish subjects, and demanded the liberty of Greece. It 
denied the right of Russia, as a neutral, to attack the Cttoman empire, 
and it suffered her to throw off the neutral character at her first conve- 
__ nience, and begin the work of fire and sword. The result of this dextrous 
% _ policy is, that Russia is now blockading the Dardanelles, that Turkey is 
; without a ship to oppose her attempt to storm the capital, that France 
has possession of the fortresses of Greece, and that English diplomacy is 
F in possession of nothing but the general ridicule of mankind. 
The determination of Russia to seize upon the European dominions of 
the Sultan, was at length practically exhibited by the march of her troops, 
under Wittgenstein, to the Danube. The Turks, after some affairs of 
posts, retreated before the powerful army which now rushed down from 
Podolia and Moscow on their scattered parties ; and the three sieges of 
humla, Silistria, and Varna, were immediately and rashly undertaken. 
ose places, the first is, beyond all comparison, the most important, 
