Page:Karl Marx - The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston - ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1899).pdf/68

 62 lish Government, therefore, refused to recognise the Treaty of Adrianople. The Duke of Wellington protested against it.—(Lord Dudley Stuart, House of Commons, March 17,1837.)

Lord Aberdeen protested:

Earl Grey declared that "the independence of the Porte would be sacrificed, and the peace of Europe endangered, by this treaty being agreed to."—(Earl Grey, House of Lords, February 4, 1834.)

Lord Palmerston himself informs us:

The eastern littoral of the Black Sea, by blockading which and cutting off supplies of arms and gunpowder to the north-western districts of the Caucasus, Russia could alone hope to realize her nominal claim to these countries—this littoral of the Black Sea and the outlets of the Danube are certainly no places "where an English action could possibly take place," as was lamented by the noble lord in the case of Cracow. By what mysterious contrivance, then, has the Muscovite succeeded in blockading the Danube, in blocking up the littoral of the Euxine, and in forcing Great Britain to submit not only to the Treaty of Adrianople, but at the same time to the violation by Russia herself of that identical treaty?

These questions were put to the noble viscount in the House of Commons on April 20, 1836, numerous petitions having poured in from the merchants of London, of Glas­gow, and other commercial towns, against the fiscal reguła-