Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/77

 BETWEEN THE CZAll AND THE SULTAN. 35 of tilings or from the general course of her policy, CHAP. ° . . II. that France bad any deep interest in the integrity „ of the Sultan's dominions. At all events, her interest was not of so cogent a sort as to oblige her to stand more forward than any of the other great Powers, or to bear, in any greater proportion than they might do, the charge of keeping the Ottoman Empire untouched. Indeed, it was hard at that time to infer from the past acts of France that she had any settled policy upon the Eastern Question. She had clung with some steadiness to the idea of establishing French influence in Syria ; and from time to time during the last half- century she had been inclined to entangle herself in Egypt ; but upon the question whether the elements constituting the Ottoman Empire should be kept together, she had generally seemed to be undecided ; for, although she took part in the conservative arrangements of 1841, her conduct in the previous year, and at several other times of crisis, had disclosed no great reluctance on her part to see the empire dismembered. Upon the supposition, however, that she intended to pursue the policy which she afterwards avowed, and to concur in the endeavour to maintain the Sultan's dominions, her duty towards herself and to Europe required that she should herself refrain from dis- turbing the quiet of the East, and that, in the event of any wrongful aggression by Russia upon the dominions of the Sultan, she should loyally range herself with such of the four great Towers as might be willing to check the encroachment