Page:Karl Marx - The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston - ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1899).pdf/54

 48 Skelessi, and the animosity it had aroused in Europe against Russia was to be soothed down.

Artful as the dodging was, it would not do. On March 17, 1834, Mr. Sheil brought in a motion for "the copies of any treaties between Turkey and Russia, and of any correspondence between the English, Russian, and Turkish Governments, respecting those treaties, to be laid before the House."

The noble lord resisted this resolution to his utmost, and succeeded in baffling it by assuring the House that "peace could be preserved only by the House reposing confidence in the Government," and refusing to accede to the motion. So grossly contradictory were the reasons which he stated prevented him from producing the papers, that Sir Robert Peel called him, in his parliamentary language, "a very inconclusive reasoner," and his own Colonel Evans could not help exclaiming:—"The speech of the noble lord appeared to him the most unsatisfactory he had ever heard from him."

Lord Palmerston strove to convince the House that, according to the assurances of Russia, the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi was to be looked upon "as one of reciprocity," that reciprocity being, that if the Dardanelles should be closed against England in the event of war, they should be closed against Russia also. The statement was altogether false, but if true, this certainly would have been Irish reciprocity, for it was all on one side. To cross the Dardanelles is for Russia not the means to get at the Black Sea, but, on the contrary, to leave it.

So far from refuting Mr. Shell's statement, that "the consequence [of the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi] was precisely the same as if the Porte surrendered to Russia the possession of the Dardanelles," Lord Palmerston owned "that the treaty closed the Dardanelles to British men-of-war, … and that under its provision even merchant vessels might, … in effect, be practically excluded from the Black Sea," in the case of a war between England and Russia. But if the Government acted "with temper," if it "showed no unnecessary distrust," that is to say, if it