Page:The European Concert in the Eastern Question.djvu/9



action of the Great Powers in the Eastern Question deserves, I think, to be studied as a whole, and to be studied textually in the documents which are its official record.

But these documents are not generally accessible, nor are they intelligible without some elucidatory comment. They are scattered through voluminous collections, to be found only in a few great libraries; and in order to ascertain whether a given Treaty is still in force, how far its provisions have been carried into effect, or in what relation it stands to earlier or later Conventions, recourse must be had to sources of information other than the Treaty itself.

I have therefore brought together, from various quarters, those European Acts which determine the character of the Eastern Question at the present day, arranging them according to their subject, and supplying them with such explanatory matter as seemed desirable.

The plan of the work will, I hope, be sufficiently apparent. Each chapter, after the first, relates to Rh