Page:Karl Marx - The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston - ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1899).pdf/79

 Rh Mr. Bell; "all I want to know is, whether or not His Majesty's Government recognises the Russian blockade on the Black Sea to the south of the river Kuban?" "You must look at the London Gazette," retorts the noble lord, "in which all the notifications, such as those alluded to by you, are made." The London Gazette was indeed the quarter to which a British merchant had to refer for such information, instead of the ukases of the Emperor of Russia. Mr. Bell, finding no indication whatever in the Gazette of the acknowledgment of the blockade, or of other restrictions, despatched his vessel. The result was, that some time after he was himself placed in the Gazette.

"I referred Mr. Bell," says Lord Palmerston, "to the Gazette, where he would find no blockade had been communicated or declared to this country by the Russian Government—consequently, none was acknowledged." By referring Mr. Bell to the Gazette, Lord Palmerston did not only deny the acknowledgment on the part of Great Britain of the Russian blockade, but simultaneously affirmed that, in his opinion, the coast of Circassia formed no part of the Russian territory, because blockades of their own territories by foreign States—as, for instance, against revolted subjects—are not to be notified in the Gazette. Circassia, forming no part of the Russian territory, could not, of course, be included in Russian custom-house regulations. Thus, according to his own statement, Lord Palmerston denied, in his letters to Mr. Bell, Russia's right to blockade the Circassian coast, or to subject it to commercial restrictions. It is true that, throughout his speech, he showed a desire to induce the House to infer that Russia had possession of Circassia. But, on the other hand, he stated plainly, "As far as the extension of the Russian frontier is concerned, on the south of the Caucasus and the shores of the Black Sea, it is certainly not consistent with the solemn declaration made by Russia in the face of Europe, previous to the commencement of the Turkish war." When he sat down, pledging himself ever "to protect the interests and uphold the honour of the country," he seemed to labour beneath the accumulated miseries of his past policy, rather than to be