Page:The invasion of the Crimea Vol. 8.djvu/359

 CONTINUING DEBATES. 327 jected himself to the answer relentlessly inflicted chap. XII upon him by M. Drouyn de Lhuys, who took L_ care to remind the negotiator that that very Sea on which he claimed ' sovereign rights ' had as matter of fact been swept clear of the Russian flag, and brought under the full control of Powers at war with the Czar.* M. Drouyn de Lhuys might have added that, even when Eussia was at peace with the Western Powers (though sub- ject indeed to their anger) they had forbidden her the use of those very ' sovereign rights,' had ordered her war-ships into port, had taken good care to see the order obeyed, and had done all these things without provoking her Czar — a man not thought much wanting in pride — to meet their repressive authority with any Declaration of War.t Lord John Russell gave point to his French colleague's argument by alluding to the future, and saying that the resistance of Russia on the question of Limitation would be obliging England and Prance to find the guarantees they required in a continued occupation of the Black Sea and the Baltic.^: To oppose that Russian contention which as- t So that the Czar if asserting in conference what his people called ' sovereign rights,' must have owned, when pressed to be accurate, that he referred to his former possessions. He could neither have appealed to the principle of the 'uti possidetis,' nor to that of the status quo ante beUum. Neither at the time of the Conference, nor in the winter preceding the declaration of war, was he master of the Black Sea. X Eastern Papers, No. xiii. p. 67.
 * Eastern Papers, No. xiii. p. 58.