Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/406

 3G4 ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1S53 CHAP. XVI. Policy of Russia in regard to the straits. The rights of the Sultan and the five Powers under the treaty of 1S41. IIow these rights were affected by the Czar's seizure of the Princi- palities. Black Sea fleet was pent up in an inland basin. Painful as this duress must needs be to a haughty State having a powerful fleet in the Euxine, it would seem that Russia has been more willing to submit to the restriction than to see the war-flag of other States in the Dardanelles or the Bos- phorus. The presence of a force greater than her own, or even rivalling it, did not comport with the kind of ascendancy which she was always seeking to establish at Constantinople and on the seabord of the Euxine. Russia, therefore, had been a willing party to the treaty of 1841. By this treaty the five great Powers acknowledged the right of the Sultan to exclude armed navies from both the straits ; and, on the other hand, the Sultan engaged that in time of peace he would always exercise this right of exclusion. More- over, the five Powers promised that they would all respect this engagement by the Sultan. The result, therefore, was that, whether with or without the consent of the Sultan no foreign squadron, at a time when the Sultan was at peace, could law- fully appear in either of the straits.* But when the Emperor Nicholas forcibly occupied the Prin- cipalities, it was clear that this act was a just cause of war whenever the Sultan might think fit so to treat it; and there was fair ground for saying that, even before a declaration of war, the invasion of the Sultan's dominions was such a vio- lation of the state of peace contemplated by the the Representatives of foreign States.
 * There were exceptions in favour of vessels having on board