Page:Karl Marx - The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston - ed. Eleanor Marx Aveling (1899).pdf/81

 Rh Count Nesselrode, by virtue of the Treaty of Adrianople, see no sufficient reason to question the right of Russia to seize and confiscate the Vixen."

There are some very curious circumstances connected with the negotiation. Lord Palmerston requires six months of premeditation for opening, and hardly one to close it. His last despatch of May 23, 1837, suddenly and abruptly cuts off any further transactions. It quotes the date before the Treaty of Kutchuk-Kainardji, not after the Gregorian but after the Greek chronology. Besides, "between April 19 and May 23," as Sir Robert Peel said, "a remarkable change from official declaration to satisfaction occurred—apparently induced by the assurance received from Count Nesselrode, that Turkey had ceded the coast in question to Russia by the Treaty of Adrianople. Why did he not protest against this ukase?"—(House of Commons, June 21, 1838.)

Why all this? The reason is very simple. King William IV. had secretly instigated Mr. Bell to despatch the Vixen to the coast of Circassia. When the noble lord delayed negotiations, the king was still in full health. When he suddenly closed the negotiations, William IV. was in the agonies of death, and Lord Palmerston disposed as absolutely of the Foreign Office, as if he was himself the autocrat of Great Britain. Was it not a master-stroke on the part of his jocose lordship to formally acknowledge by one dash of the pen the Treaty of Adrianople, Russia's possession of Circassia, and the confiscation of the Vixen, in the name of the dying king, who had despatched that saucy Vixen with the express view to mortify the Czar, to disregard the Treaty of Adrianople, and to affirm the independence of Circassia?

Mr. Bell, as we stated, went into the Gazette, and Mr. Urquhart, then the first secretary of the Embassy at Constantinople, was recalled, for "having persuaded Mr. Bell to carry his Vixen expedition into execution."

As long as King William IV. was alive, Lord Palmerston dared not openly countermand the Vixen expedition, as is proved by the Circassian Declaration of Independence,