The next day he added:—
The principalities are, in fact, an independent State under my protection. This might so continue. Serbia might receive the same form of government. So again with Bulgaria; there seems to be no reason why these provinces should not form one independent State. As to Egypt, I quite understand the importance to England of that territory. I can thus only say that if, in the event of a destruction of the Ottoman succession upon the fall of the Empire, you should take possession of Egypt, I shall have no objection to offer. I could say the same thing of Candia. That island might suit you, and I do not see why it should not become an English possession.
Sir Hamilton Seymour, in reply to the Emperor, said to his Government:—
I simply observed that I had always understood that the English views upon Egypt did not go beyond the part of securing a safe and ready communication between British India and the Mother Country.
“Well,” said the Emperor, “induce your Government to write again upon this subject—to write more fully and do so without hesitation. I have confidence in the British Government. It is not an engagement or convention which I ask of them; it is a free interchange of ideas in case of need—the word of a gentleman—that is enough between us.”
In reporting these conversations to the Foreign Secretary, Sir Hamilton Seymour expressed his own opinion as follows:—
It can hardly be otherwise but that the Sovereign who insists with such pertinacity upon the impending fall of a neighbouring State must have settled in his own mind that the hour, if not of the dissolution, at all events for the dissolution, must be at hand.
In answer to these overtures the British Government, through Lord John Russell, the Foreign Secretary, disclaimed all intention of aiming at the acquisition either of Constantinople or any other of the Sultan’s possessions, and accepted the assurances of the like effect which were given by the Czar. It combated the opinion that the extinction of the Ottoman Empire was near at hand and deprecated a discussion based on this supposition as leading directly to produce the very result against which it was hoped to provide. Finally, the British Government, with abundance of courtesy, but in terms very stringent and clear, peremptorily refused to enter into any kind of secret engagement with Russia for the settlement of the Eastern question.
Lord Clarendon, who succeeded Lord John Russell as Foreign Minister in the course of these proceedings, in a final despatch to Sir Hamilton Seymour (March 23, 1853), expressed the following opinion:—
Turkey only requires forbearance on the part of its allies, and a determination not to press their claims in a manner humiliating to the dignity and independence of the Sultan—that friendly support, in short, which among States as well as individuals the weak are entitled to expect from the strong—in order not only to prolong its existence but to remove all cause for alarm respecting its dissolution.