Page:Karl Marx - The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston - ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1899).pdf/56

 50 in Turkey, not consistent with the independence of that state."—(House of Commons, March 1, 1848.)

During the whole course of the debates about the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, the noble lord, like the clown in the comedy, had an answer of most monstrous size, that must fit all demands and serve all questions—the Anglo-French Alliance. When his connivance with Russia was pointed at in sneers, he gravely retorted:

When the production of the papers relating to the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi was demanded, he answered that "England and France had now cemented a friendship which had only grown stronger."—(House of Commons, March 17, 1834.)

Simultaneously the noble lord took good care not to quench the suspicions of his Tory opponents, that he had "been compelled to connive at the aggression upon Turkey by Mehemet Ali," because France had directly encouraged it.

At that time, then, the ostensible entente with France was to cover the secret infeoffment to Russia, as in 1840 the clamorous rupture with France was to cover the official alliance with Russia.

While the noble lord fatigued the world with ponderous folios of printed negotiations on the affairs of the constitutional kingdom of Belgium and with ample explanations, verbal and documentary, with regard to the "substantive power" of Portugal, to this moment it has proved quite