Page:Karl Marx - The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston - ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1899).pdf/57

 Rh impossible to wrest out of him any document whatever relating to the first Syrio-Turkish War, and to the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi. "When the production of the papers was first demanded, on July 11, 1833, "the motion was premature, .… the transactions incomplete, … and the results not yet known."

On August 24, 1833, "the treaty was not officially signed, and he was not in possession of it." On March 17, 1834, "communications were still carrying on … the discussions, if he might so call them, were not yet completed." Still in 1848, when Mr. Anstey told him that in asking for papers he did not ask for the proof of the noble lord's collusion with the Czar, the chivalrous minister preferred killing time by a five hours' speech, to killing suspicion by self-speaking documents. Notwithstanding all this, he had the cynical impudence to assure Mr. T. Attwood, on December 14, 1837, that "the papers connected with that treaty [viz., the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi] were laid before the House three years ago," that is to say in 1834, when "peace could be preserved only" by withholding them from the House. In 1834, he enjoined the House not to press him, as "peace could be preserved only by the House reposing confidence in the Government," which, if left alone, would certainly protect the interests of England from encroachment. Now, in 1837, in a thin House, composed almost entirely of his retainers, he told Mr. Attwood, that it had never been "the intention of the Government to have recourse to hostile measures to compel Russia and Turkey, two independent Powers, to cancel the treaty made between them."

On the same day, he told Mr. Attwood that "this treaty was a matter which had gone by, it was entered into for a limited period, … and that period having expired, its introduction by the honourable member … was wholly unnecessary and uncalled for."

According to the original stipulation, the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi was to expire on July 8, 1841. Lord Palmerston tells Mr. Attwood that it had already expired on December 14. 1837.