Page:Karl Marx - The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston - ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1899).pdf/69

 Rh tions of Russia in the Black Sea, and her enactments and restrictions tending to intercept English commerce on the Danube. There had appeared on February 7, 1836, a Russian ukase, which, by virtue of the Treaty of Adrian­ople, established a quarantine on one of the islands formed by the mouths of the Danube. In order to execute that quarantine, Russia claimed a right of boarding and search, of levying fees and seizing and marching off to Odessa refractory ships proceeding on their voyage up the Danube. Before the quarantine was established, or rather before a custom-house and fort were erected, under the false pretence of a quarantine, the Russian authorities threw out their feelers, to ascertain the risk they might run with the British Government. Lord Durham, acting upon instruc­tions received from England, remonstrated with the Russian Cabinet for the hindrance which had been given to British trade.

The formal ukase of February 7, 1836, aroused, however, the general attention of British commerce.

Russia required the marshy islands of the Danube, by virtue of the clause of the Treaty of Adrianople, which clause itself was a violation of the treaty she had previously contracted with England and the other Powers, in 1827. The bristling the gates of the Danube with fortifications,