Page:Karl Marx - The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston - ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1899).pdf/55

 Rh quietly submitted to all further encroachments of Russia, he was "inclined to think that the case might not arise in which that treaty would be called into operation; and that, therefore, it would in practice remain a dead letter."—(House of Commons, March 17, 1834.)

Besides, "the assurances and explanations" which the British Government had received from the contracting parties to that treaty greatly tended to remove its objections to it. Thus, then, it was not the articles of the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, but the assurances Russia gave with respect to them, not the acts of Russia, but her language, he had, in his opinion, to look upon. Yet, as on the same day his attention was called to the protest of the French Chargé d'Affaires, M. Le Grenée, against the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, and the offensive and contumelious language of Count Nesselrode, answering in the St. Petersburg Gazette, that "the Emperor of Russia would act as if the declaration contained in the note of Le Grenée had no existence"—the noble lord, eating his own words, propounded the opposite doctrine that "it was on all occasions the duty of the English Government to look to the acts of a foreign Power, rather than to the language which the Power might hold, on any particular subject or occasion."

One moment he appealed from the acts of Russia to her language, and the other from her language to her acts.

In 1837 he still assured the House that the "Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi was a treaty between two independent Powers."—(House of Commons, December 14, 1837.)

Ten years later, the treaty having long since lapsed, and the noble lord being just about to act the play of the truly English minister, and the "civis Romanus sum," he told the House plainly, "the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi was no doubt to a certain degree forced upon Turkey by Count Orloff, the Russian envoy, under circumstances [created by the noble lord himself] which rendered it difficult for Turkey to refuse acceding to it. … It gave practically to the Russian Government a power of interference and dictation