Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/415

 BETWEEN THE CZAK AND THE SULTAN. 373 omission may have conduced to make the Czar chap. accept the award of the mediating Powers, by xvn *. tempting him with the delight of seeing Lord Stratford overruled. But, on the other hand, the one man who was judge of what ought or ought not to be conceded by the Turks was Lord Stratford ; and it is plain that any statesmen who forgot him in their reckoning must have been imperfect in their notion of political dynamics. It would be wrong to suppose that a sound judg- ment by the four Powers would be liable to be overturned by Lord Stratford from any mere feel- ing of neglect. He was too proud, as well as too honest, to be capable of such a littleness. What was to be apprehended was, that until it was ratified by the English Ambassador at the Porte, the decision of a number of men in Vienna and Paris and London and Berlin might turn out to be really erroneous, or might seem to be so in the eyes of one who was profoundly versed in the sub- ject; and no man had a right to make sure that, even at the instance of all Europe, this strong- willed Englishman would consent to use his vast personal ascendancy as a means of forcing upon the Turks a surrender which he held to be dangerous. Early in August the Vienna Note reached Con- stantinople; and the Turkish Government soon detected in it not only a misrecital of history, but words of a dangerous sort, conveying or seeming to convey to Russia, under a new form, that very protectorate of the Greek Church in Turkey which had brought about the rupture of the negotiation