Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/435

 APPENDIX. 393 present impression— that you then desired to press the Turks to accept the Vienna Note, and that Lord Aberdeen declined to adopt your advice to that effect — is not in accordance with my understanding of what actually took place. It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to add that of course it is the accuracy of your recollection only, and not the sincerity of the present impression upon your mind, which I venture to call in question. I need hardly remind you that the Note prepared at Vienna, and which was held by all the Four Powers to be one which the Porte might safely sign, and the Emperor of Russia might honourably accept, was forwarded from Vienna simultaneously to St Petersburg and to Constan- tinople ; that the Emperor Nicholas at once declared his willingness to accept it ; but that the Porte refused to sign it unless certain modifications were previously intro- duced ; and that the Emperor of Eussia was recommended by the Four Powers to consent to the introduction of these modifications, but declined to accept any alteration made by the Turks in a document which had been originally prepared by all the great Powers of Europe, and already accepted by himself. The question then arose whether the Porte should be pressed to sign the original Note, under a guarantee of the great Powers as to the interpretation to be given to it ; and my recollection is very clear that both Lord Aberdeen and Lord Clarendon wished to adopt this course, but that it met with strenuous opposition from yourself, and that your objections were indeed so strong as to lead you to declare that, should the plan be persevered in, you would leave the Cabinet. In fact, I believed that a dissolution of the Government on this ground was only averted by the publication of the Emperor of Russia's reasons for refusing to accept the modifications of the Porte — reasons which, showing as they did that he understood the Note in the-