Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/196

 151 ORIGIN OF THE "WAR OF 1853 CHAP, pose was needed he fairly said, for he observed, to Prince Mentschikoff ' that the Sultan's promise 1 to protect his Christian subjects in the free ' exercise of their religion differed extremely from ' a right conferred on any foreign Power to enforce ' that protection, and also that the same degree of ' interference might be dangerous to the Porte, ' when exercised by so powerful an empire as ' Pussia on behalf of ten millions of Greeks, and ' innocent in the case of Austria, whose influence, ' derivable from religious sympathy, was confined ' to a small number of Catholics, including her ' own subjects.'* These remarks were surely not ambiguous ; but it seems probable that Prince Mentschikoff, misled by his previous impression as to what Lord Stratford really objected to, may have imagined that the proposed convention in its altered form would not be violently disapproved by the English Ambassador. At all events, beseems to have instructed his Government to that effect. On the 1 9th of April the Russian Ambassador addressed his remonstrances and his demands to the Turkish Minister for Foreign Affairs in the form of a diplomatic Note. In the first sentence of this singular document Prince Mentschikoff tells the Minister for Foreign Affairs that he must have 'seen the duplicity of his predecessor.' In the next he tells him he must be 'convinced of ' the extent to which the respect due to the ' Emperor had been disregarded, and how great • was his magnanimity in offering to the Porte the
 * ' EasWn Triper*,' part i. p. 156.