Page:Karl Marx - The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston - ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1899).pdf/80

 74 hatching treacherous designs for the future. On that dayhe met with the following cruel apostrophe:

"Who was it that thus mercilessly branded the truly English Minister? Nobody else than Lord Dudley Stuart.

On November 25, 1836, the Vixen was confiscated. The stormy debates of the House of Commons, just quoted, took place on March 17, 1837. It was not till April 19, 1837, that the noble lord requested the Russian Government "to state the reason on account of which it had thought itself warranted to seize in time of peace a merchant vessel belonging to British subjects." On May 17, 1837, the noble lord received the following despatch from the Earl of Durham, the British Ambassador at St. Petersburg:

It need hardly be remarked that the fort Alexandrovsky had not even the reality of the pasteboard towns, exhibited by Potemkin before the Empress Catherine II. on her visit to the Crimea. Five days after the receipt of this despatch, Lord Palmerston returns the following answer to St. Petersburg:

"His Majesty's Government, considering in the first place that Soudjouk-Kale, which was acknowledged by Russia in the Treaty of 1783 as a Turkish possession, now belongs to Russia, as stated by