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'them of the guarantee required by Prince Mentschi- CHAP.

koff, and strongly recommended that, if the guaran'tee he required was inadmissible, a substitute for it should be found in a frank and comprehensive exer'cise of the Sultan's authority in the promulgation of a firman, securing both the spiritual and temporal privileges of all the Porte's tributary subjects, and, by way of further security, communicated officially 'to the five great Powers of Christendom.'* To all these counsels the Turkish Ministers listened with assenting mind.

But it was now late in the night, and the Ambassador rose. Perhaps the hour and the Ambassador's movement to depart cast a shadow of anxiety upon the minds of the Turkish Ministers. Perhaps the ripple of the waters (for the conference was in a house on the edge of the Bosphorus) called to mind the thought of the English flag. At all events, the Grand Vizier, in that moment of weakness, suffered himself to cast a thought after the arm of the flesh, and to ask whether the Porte might expect the eventual approach of the English squadron in the Mediterranean. Lord Stratford rebuked him. 'I replied,' said he, that I considered the position in 'its present stage to be one of a moral character, and 'consequently that its difficulties or hazards, what'ever they might be, should be rather met by acts of a similar description than by demonstrations calculated to increase alarm and provoke resentment.' It was a new and a strange task for this Grand *Eastern Papers,' part i. p. 177.

XI.

CHAP. Vizier of a warlike Tartar nation to be called upon

XI.

to defend a threatened empire by acts of a moral 'character;' but after all his reliance was upon the man. It might be hard for him to understand how the mere advantage of being in the right could be used against the Sebastopol fleet, or the army that was hovering upon the Pruth; but if he looked upon the close, angry, resolute lips of the Ambassador, and the grand overhanging of his brow, he saw that which more than all else in the world takes hold of the Oriental mind, for he saw strength held in reserve. And this faith was of such a kind that, far from being weakened, it would gather new force from Lord Stratford's refusal to speak of material help. The Turkish Ministry determined to reject Prince Mentschikoff's proposals, and to do this in the way advised by the English Ambassador. All this while Lord Stratford was unconscious of exercising any ascendancy over his fellow-creatures, and it seemed to him that the Turks were determining this momentous question by means of their unbiassed judgments.*

Prince Mentschikoff was soon made aware of the refusal with which his demand was to be met, and, finding that all his communications with the Turkish Ministers gave him nothing but the faithful echo of the counsels addressed to them by Lord Stratford, he seems to have imagined the plan of overstepping the Turkish Ministers, and endeavouring to wring an assent to his demands from the Sultan himself. It seems probable that Lord Stratford had been apprised Eastern Papers,' part i. p. 213.

XI.

ence of the

of this intention, and was willing to defeat it, for on CHAP, the 9th he sought a private audience of the Sultan : he sought it, of course, through the legitimate channel. The Minister for Foreign Affairs went with Lord Stratford to the Sultan's apartment, and then withdrew. The Ambassador spoke gravely to the Sultan His audiof the danger with which his Empire was threatened, Stat and then of the grounds for confidence. He was happy, he said, to find that His Majesty's servants, both Ministers and Council, were not less inclined to gratify the Russian Ambassador with all that could be safely conceded to him, than determined to withhold their consent from every requisition calculated to inflict a serious injury on the independence and dignity of their Sovereign. 'I had 'waited,' said Lord Stratford, 'to know their own unbiassed impressions respecting the kind of guarantee demanded by Prince Mentschikoff, and I could not do otherwise than approve the decision which they appeared to have adopted with unanimity. My own impression is, that if your Majesty should sanction that decision, the Ambassador will probably break off his relations with the Porte and go away, together perhaps with his whole embassy: nor is it quite impossible even that a temporary occupation, however unjust, of the Danubian Principalities by Russia may take place; but I feel certain that neither a declaration of war, nor any other act of open hostility, is to be apprehended for the present, as the Emperor Nicholas cannot resort to such extremities 'on account of the pending differences without con

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CHAP.tradicting his most solemn assurances, and exposing

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himself to the indignant censure of all Europe. I ' conceive that, under such circumstances, the true po'sition to be maintained by the Porte is one of moral resistance to such demands as are really inadmissible on just and essential grounds, and that the principle should even be applied under protest to the occupation of the Principalities, not in weakness or despair, but in reliance on a good cause, and on the sympathy of friendly and independent Govern'ments. A firm adherence to this line of conduct as long as it is possible to maintain it with honour will, in my judgment, offer the best chances of ultimate success with the least practicable degree of provocation, and prevent disturbance of commercial 'interests. This language,' writes Lord Stratford, ' appeared to interest the Sultan deeply, and also 'to coincide with His Majesty's existing opinions. He said that he was well aware of the dangers to 'which I had alluded; that he was perfectly pre

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pared, in the exercise of his own free will, to confirm and to render effective the protection pro'mised to all classes of his tributary subjects in matters of religious worship, including the immunities and privileges granted to their respective clergy. He showed me the last communications in writing which had passed between his Ministers and the Russian Embassy; he thanked me for having 'helped to bring the question of the Holy Places to 'an arrangement; he professed his reliance on the friendly support of Great Britain.'

XI.

But now Lord Stratford apprised the Sultan that CHAP. he had a communication to make to him which he had hitherto withheld from his Ministers, reserving The disclo it for the private ear of His Majesty. The pale

Sultan listened.

Then the Ambassador announced that, in the event of imminent danger, he was instructed to request the Commander of Her Majesty's forces in the Mediterranean to hold his squadron in readiness.*

This order was of itself a slight thing, and it conferred but a narrow and stinted authority; but, imparted to the Sultan in private audience by Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, it came with more weight than the promise of armed support from the lips of a common Statesman. Long withheld from the Turkish Ministers, and now disclosed to them through their Sovereign, it confirmed them in the faith that whatever a man might know of the great Eltchi's power, there was always more to be known. And when a man once comes to be thus thought of by Orientals, he is more their master than one who seeks to overpower their minds by making coarse pretences of strength.

sure which he had re

served for

the Sultan's ear.

answer to

koff's de

On the 10th the Secretary for Foreign Affairs sent Turkish his answer to Prince Mentschikoff's demand. The Mentschiletter was full of courtesy and deference towards Russia: it declared it to be the firm intention of the Porte to maintain unimpaired the rights of all the tributary subjects of the Empire, and it expressed a willingness to negotiate with Russia concerning a *Eastern Papers,' part i. p. 213.

VOL. I.

M