Note 173 — Chapter XXX · WAR.

Lord Shaftesbury, in a letter to Lord Aberdeen, dated 22nd of February, says that a conversation he held with the Prime Minister on the subject had “terrified” him. “It implied,” writes Lord Shaftesbury, “that the country had entered on a war which you could so little justify to your own conscience as to be unwilling, nay, almost unable, to advise the ordinance of public prayer for success on the undertaking. Why, then, have we begun it? You asked whether ‘the English nation would be brought to pray for the Turks?’ Surely, if they are brought to fight for them, they would be induced to pray for them in a just quarrel.”—Life and Work of Lord Shaftesbury, by Edwin Hodder, Vol. II., p. 466 (Cassell and Co.). See also Greville Memoirs—Third Part (Longmans), 1887.