Page:The Letters Of Queen Victoria, vol. 3 (1908).djvu/134

120 RUSSIA AND THE BLACK SEA [chap. xxiv PICCADILLY, 26th April 1855. Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and begs to state that the Members of the Cabinet who met yesterday evening at the Chancellor’s were of opinion that the Austrian proposal adopted by M. Drouyn de Lhuys, even with his pretended modification, could not be described more accurately than in the concise terms of H.R.H. the Prince Albert, namely, that instead of making to cease the preponderance of Russia in the Black Sea, it would perpetuate and legalise that preponderance, and that instead of establishing a secure and permanent Peace, it would only establish a prospective case for war. Such a proposal therefore your Majesty’s Advisers could not recommend your Majesty to adopt; but as the step to be taken seems rather to be to make such a proposal to Austria than to answer such a proposal which Austria has not formally made, and as M. Drouyn’s telegraphic despatch stated that he thought that Lord John Russell would recommend such an arrangement to his colleagues, the Cabinet were of opinion that the best course would be simply to take no step at all until Lord John Russell’s return, which may be expected to-morrow or next day, especially as Lord Clarendon had already, by telegraphic message of yesterday, intimated to the French Government that such an arrangement as that proposed by M. Drouyn, and which would sanction a Russian Fleet in the Black Sea to any amount short by one ship of the number existing in 1853, could not be agreed to by the British Government. Such an arrangement would, in the opinion of Viscount Palmerston, be alike dangerous and dishonourable; and as to the accompanying alliance with Austria for the future defence of Turkey and for making war with Russia, if she were to raise her Black Sea Fleet up to the amount of 1853, what reason is there to believe that Austria, who shrinks from war with Russia now that the Army of