'The general impression is that Bismark[9] (sic) will not be able to hold power, from the state of his health. I do not envy the King of Prussia left alone to carry out plans which he probably has never understood and to face a German Parliament which he only consented to call in reliance on his adviser's capacity to manage it.'
Another letter refers to a contemplated visit of the Prince of Wales to St. Petersburg, and, in view of 'his strong anti-Turkish opinions of which he makes no secret,' points out that care should be taken to explain to the Russian Government that H.R.H. did not represent the opinions of the Cabinet.
Other communications from the same Minister mention that the Americans had revived the Alabama claims 'in a friendly and temperate manner,' and there are many allusions to the disquieting symptoms in France. 'I hear,' he wrote in November, 'that the one idea of everybody, high and low, in France is that the country is defenceless (with 600,000 soldiers), and that the lowest estimate of the necessary force laid before the commission now sitting involves an addition of 400,000 more. They have so long been used in that country to be surrounded by weak states that the mere neighbourhood of an equal is regarded by them as a threat.'
In the beginning of 1867 one difficulty was cleared out of the way, for Lord Stanley having formally tendered his advice, the Turkish Government consented to evacuate the Fortress of Belgrade. This unusual display of good sense was all the more creditable on account of the terror which Sultan Abdul Aziz inspired in his ministers; but the protracted insurrection in Crete constituted not only a danger, but also a fertile source of intrigues amongst Foreign Powers.
Lord Stanley took the matter-of-fact view that Greece had estranged British sympathy through financial immorality; and he was probably correct, for in the case of Turkey, it was not until the repudiation of her debts, that there was much fulmination against the iniquities of Ottoman rule.
'Opinion here is undecided about the Cretan quarrel,' wrote this prosaic nobleman, who is credited with having himself refused the throne of Greece. 'Nobody much believes in the Turks, but the old Phil-Hellenism is dead, and cannot be revived. Greece is too much associated in the English mind with unpaid debts and commercial sharp practice to command the sympathy that was felt thirty years ago. And now that questions of more interest and nearer home are being discussed, Crete will drop out of men's minds.'
A little later, the French Government suddenly and quite unexpectedly proposed the cession of Crete to Greece; and this violent change in the policy hitherto pursued, rendered difficult joint action on the part of England and France with regard to Turkey. The original idea underlying French policy had been that the two Governments should force certain reforms upon the Porte, more particularly with regard to encouraging public works to be undertaken by foreign capitalists, and that the Turks should be made prosperous in spite of themselves. The difficulty in carrying out this beneficent programme consisted in the fact that there were no means of influencing the daily details of administration upon which its execution and success depended, and it seemed highly probable that the joint guardianship of England and France might degenerate into a struggle between the two Embassies for personal influences in making and unmaking governors and ministers, to say nothing of the danger of the perpetration of gigantic jobs under the guise of giving public works to foreign capitalists. Nor, of course, was the Turkish Government in possession of funds to carry out any programme whatever.
Lord Stanley refused to entertain the French proposal with regard to Crete, and advanced much the same reasons as those probably brought forward more than forty years later.