In this crisis it was to be expected that the policy of the Court would be the subject of criticism, even though it were based on conjecture. The pro-Turkish party were artful and adroit in their insinuations that the Queen was on their side; though it is doubtful if the country would have paid heed to them but for a curious coincidence. The third volume of the “Life of the Prince Consort” was published at this juncture, and it was assumed by both the partisans of Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Gladstone that Sir Theodore Martin had issued it by the Queen’s desire in the form of a violent pamphlet against Russia. Perhaps it might have been more discreet to have suppressed some passages, in which the Prince, carried away by the excitement of the Crimean struggle, had naturally taken a less sober and far-seeing view of European diplomacy and English duty than he formulated in his famous Memorandum of 1853. On the other hand, there is no reason to suppose that when the work was compiled Sir Theodore Martin, or rather the Queen, who selected the documents for publication, could have anticipated that the London Press and the Pall Mall clubs would be agitated by a frenzied controversy as to whether the Cossack was a more moral man than the Bashi-Bazouk, or Lord Beaconsfield a greater traitor than Mr. Gladstone. Nor can it be said that a just view of the Prince Consort’s opinions would have been obtained if his letter to Stockmar, penned in April, 1854, and his Memorandum to the Cabinet of the 3rd of May, 1855, had been withheld. The former expressed the Prince’s regret that the English public were too excited to permit the Government to stand by, and, having let Turkey dash herself to pieces against Russia, step in and take guarantees against Russia using her victory to the prejudice of Europe. Public opinion in 1854, the Prince regretfully admitted, recognised no way of taking these guarantees but one--that of supporting Turkey at the outset, so that the influence thus gained might be used to persuade the Porte to behave decently. As for the Memorandum of May, 1855, written during the negotiations at Vienna, it merely put on record his strong feeling against giving Russia an excuse for enforcing, single-handed, demands which Europe might make on Turkey. It is simply amazing that by these documents the Russophobes pretended to prove that the Queen was on the side of Turkey, and the Russophiles that she was for attempting to raise another Crimean War. The natural inferences from the documents read in connection with the Memorandum of 1853, were (1), that as English public opinion had now changed so as to tolerate the policy of expectancy, for which Prince Albert hinted his personal preference, he would, if alive, have supported the “sordid” national policy of neutrality, and that, too, all the more readily that Austria and Germany were better able to curb Russia in 1877 than in 1854; (2), that he would have either accepted the Berlin Memorandum, or have taken steps to give executive effect to the demands formulated by the Conference of Constantinople.