Page:Karl Marx - The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston - ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1899).pdf/50

 44 But why should the noble lord prevent the Russians from occupying Constantinople? "He, for his part, had great doubts that any intention to partition the Ottoman empire at all entered into the policy of the Russian Government."—(House of Commons, February 14, 1839.)

Certainly not. Russia wants not to partition the empire, but to keep the whole of it. Besides the security Lord Palmerston possessed in this doubt, he had another security

Besides these negative arguments, the noble lord had an affirmative one:

So inaccessible, indestructible, integral, imperishable, inexpugnable, incalculable, incommensurable, and irremediable, so boundless, dauntless, and matchless was the noble lord's confidence, that still on March 17, 1834, when the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi had become a fait accompli, he went on declaring that, "in their confidence ministers were not deceived." Not his is the fault if nature has developed his bump of confidence to altogether anomalous dimensions.