[152] France explained this by demanding in the official Moniteur that the fleet of Russia in the Black Sea should be reduced in strength.
[153] Diplomatic Study of the Crimean War, Vol. II., p. 18.
[154] Orloff was sent by the Czar to extract from Austria a pledge of absolute neutrality. The Austrian Emperor asked if the Czar would promise not to cross the Danube or seize territory, and if he would evacuate the Principalities when war was over. Orloff said “No.” The Emperor then replied that Austria would preserve perfect freedom of action. Baron de Bulberg failed at Berlin to extract a similar pledge from Prussia.—Despatch of Lord Westmoreland to Lord Clarendon, dated 8th February, 1854. Eastern Papers.
[155] “Ministers are preparing for war; the quarrel has now become an European quarrel and must have an European settlement. We ask for 20,000 more men for the army and navy; we propose to add £21,000,000 to our expenditure, and is this an occasion on which you should potter over Blue-books?”—Sir James Graham’s speech, in reply to Mr. Layard, in the House of Commons on the 17th of February, 1854.
[156] Writing to Mrs. Cobden about this speech, Cobden says, “No enthusiasm of course; that I did not expect; but there was a feeling of interest throughout the House which is not bumptious or warlike to the extent I expected, and not disposed to be insolent to the ‘peace party.’ In fact, I find many men in the Tory Party agreeing with me. After I spoke, Molesworth took me aside and said he and Gladstone thought I never spoke better.”—Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXII. If the men who agreed with him privately had been bold enough to say so in public, there would have been no invasion of the Crimea.
[157] Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, K.G., by Edwin Hodder, Vol. II., p. 465. Cassell and Co. (Limited). Palmerston was chief of the War Party in the Cabinet. Lady Palmerston was Lord Shaftesbury’s mother-in-law.
[158] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXII.
[159] The history of its publication is as follows: On the 13th of March Lord Derby drew the attention of the Peers (1) to “An Official Answer of the Emperor of Russia to a speech of Lord John Russell in the House of Commons,” published in the St. Petersburg Journal, wherein it was alleged that the English Cabinet had been frankly told at the outset what course the Czar desired to pursue in Turkey; (2) to statements in the Times to the effect that though an indignant refusal had been Lord John’s answer, yet the Czar had in 1844 attempted to gain over the Government of the day to his designs. Lord Derby called for the production of this Secret Correspondence, and as Russia, by her official reference to it, had virtually challenged its publication, it was in due course laid before both Houses of Parliament.
[160] The English case against Russia was that the Czar persisted in asserting an exceptional right of protecting the Greek Christians in Turkey under existing treaties. In Lord John Russell’s despatch of 9th of February, 1853, in which he expressed a disapproval of the Czar’s overtures to Sir Hamilton Seymour, he counselled forbearance, and then said: “To these cautions Her Majesty’s Government wish to add that, in their view, it is essential that the Sultan should be advised to treat his Christian subjects in conformity with the principles of equity and religious freedom, which prevail generally among the enlightened nations of Europe. The more the Turkish Government adopts the rules of impartial law and equal administration, the less will the Emperor of Russia find it necessary to apply that exceptional protection which His Imperial Majesty has found so burdensome and inconvenient, though no doubt prescribed by duty and sanctioned by Treaty.”
[161] See ante, p. 582.