Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/110

 80 CAUSES INVOLVING FliANCE AND ENGLAND C u A P. the firm and wise sclieme of actiuii laid duwu by Lord Clarendon on the IGth of November,* and bitterly ofTended the Czar by agreeing, at Lord Clarendon's instance, that the Porte should not be even asked to accept any conditiou M'hich it liad already rejected, and by affirming the de- termination of the four Powers to intervene in any settlement of the dispute between Russia and Turkey. Prussia also gave her imreserved adhesion lo the plan of action laid down by Lord Clarendon, and to the measures resulting from it.-f* By the Protocol of the 5t]i of December 1853 both Austria and Prussia joined with the Western Powers in declaring that the existence of Turkey in the limits assigned to it by existing treaties was one of the necessary conditions of the Euro- pean equilibrium. By the Protocol of the 13th of January the four Powers recorded their approval of the terms agreed to by the Turkish Government, and re- solved to submit them to the Court of St Peters- burg. At the very time when the English Govern- ment were framing the Speech from the Throne which ostentatiously separated Prance and Eng- land from the rest of the four Powers, the two great Courts of Germany were sending back Count Orloff and Baron Budberg to St Petersburg, with not only a decisive refusal to promise neutrality, but also a plain avowal that Prussia and Aus» • 'Eastern Tapers,' part vii. pp. 238, 25S. + Ibid, part ii. p. 263. t hU. p. 296.