At this inauspicious moment Sultan Mahmoud died (30 June) and was succeeded by a child. In the midst of these complicated disasters, what, again, did Lord Palmerston do?—Nothing! But the ministers of the Five Powers poured the following consolation of balmy words into the bleeding wounds of Turkey :— "The Undersigned have this morning received instructions from their respective Governments, in virtue of which they have the honour to inform the Sublime Porte that agreement [accord] between the Five Powers upon the Eastern question is ensured, and to invite the Porte to suspend any final determination without their concurrence, awaiting the result of the interest which those Powers feel for the Porte. Constantinople, July 27, 1839. BARON DE STURMER. A. BOUTENEFF. (Signed) The Porte, having lost, in spite of the guarantee and pledges of these magnanimous allies, her army and her fleet, and twothirds of her empire, and being, in fact, prostrate and paralysed, and incapable of motion, is kindly invited to lie still, and to await the result of the interest these powers feel for her recovery. The real meaning however of this advice was, that the Porte should not, in the first moments of dismay, enter into any negotiation with the victorious Pacha. This is important; because it pledged France, as well as the other powers, to oppose any direct arrangement between the Porte and the Pacha-a result which she afterwards most unwarrantably tried to accomplish. But what did Lord Palmerston in consequence of this new engagement ?—Nothing! And so, as far as we are informed, affairs remained for twelve months; when, all of a sudden, we find that the agreement between the great Powers on the Eastern question, the assurance of which was testified under their respective hands, never existed at all; and that the two greatest of the Powers, instead of going to war with Mehemet Ali, for the protection of their ally the Sultan, were going to war with each other, nobody-and, least of all, Lord Palmerston-could clearly make out why or wherefore. Such is the surface, and, as far as the official papers go, the interior, of our diplomacy on the Eastern Question, and assuredly a more miserable detail of unaccountable delays, gross inconsistencies, and lamentable failures, never was exhibited. We do not presume to say that particular portions of it may not be capable of explanation or extenuation, but it seems to us to involve several flagrant and important contradictions which never can be reconciled. Here, however, and without any vain attempt to guess guess at what possible defence Lord Palmerston may be able to make, we shall leave this part of the case. The debates in parliament and the publication of the whole process of the negotiation, must soon enable the public to judge, on full evidence, a cause which, in its present state, does seem to bear most heavily on the noble Lord and his colleagues. We now arrive at what has become the most important part of the subject-our difference with France; on which, however, we hasten at the outset to express our conviction that there is not a sober, reasonable, and considerate mind in France any more than in England and Europe at large, which can doubt that the French ministry was- from beginning to end-in fact and in argument-in the letter and in the spirit-in judgment and in temper -absolutely and altogether in the wrong; and we cannot but express our surprise and regret at finding so large a portion (not so large, however, we hope, as it seems) of our neighbours so unjust to us and to themselves as to look for offence where none could be intended; and to imagine that we, people of at least common sense, could ever fail to acknowledge and appreciate the high station and influence of France in the civilised world. We had hoped that twenty-five years of friendly intercourse had made us better acquainted, and that the impressions created by the fury of the Revolution and the fraud of Buonaparte had faded before the light of truth: that is, we trust, the case with a large portion of France, but there is we fear a larger, at least a louder, portion, who from ignorance and passion and personal restlessness, but still more from political and religious prejudices, are prone to seize every pretence, however flimsy or false, of showing their enmity to England!-a lamentable and unworthy weakness as regards France herself, and one we fairly, but in all civility, tell her, which will not increase her physical power, and will very much tend to diminish her moral influence. We are for peace with all the world, and above all with our neighbours; but if she is resolved to pick a quarrel with us, God defend the right!—and we shall be glad that she puts it on such absurd, such irrational, and such—to herself-humiliating grounds. We never have entertained a wish, nor dreamed that we had the power, of humiliating that great nation; but, as Dr. Johnson said that no author was ever written down but by himself, let that great nation take care that she does not by violence, injustice, and folly, humiliate herself. Though our readers are, we doubt not, well nigh weary of the altercations between Lord Palmerston and M. Thiers, and the French and English press, yet we feel it to be necessary to recapitulate the main points of the case, and the rather, because we hope to be able to do so with more ensemble than we have yet seen it it treated. We must begin by repeating that there is wanting to a full understanding of the whole subject one main element. We know nothing, or next to nothing, of the negotiations between the European powers and Mehemet Ali, nor between the European powers themselves, from the original revolt of the Pacha in 1832, down to 1838, from which date the explanations afforded by the recent memorandums of Lord Palmerston and M. Thiers, and the more recent discussions in the French Chambers, take up and explain the general course of the affair. It is obvious that all these earlier proceedings must be very important-for they only can explain why the arrangement was so long delayed, and why such exorbitantly favourable terms were subsequently, and even recently, offered to the rebel-why a congress, professing for its sole object the integrity of the Turkish empire, should have at one time consented to convey over to Mehemet Ali its most important provinces-the very provinces that were the original bone of contention. There appear to the common sense of mankind, on the surface of the affair, but two reasonable courses-either absolute non-intervention, in which case the Sultan and the vassal would have fought it out, and Europe would have recognised the conqueror as the sovereign of the Levant-OR, as was certainly the more humane and generous policy as regarded the East, and the safest for the peace of Europe itself, to have said at once to the Pacha, 'You shall return to the status quo ante bellum, your natural allegiance, and to the administration of that portion of the Ottoman empire in which you have made.yourself an honourable name and a great power, and where you will find abundant employment for your time and your talents, and become a benefactor, instead of a devastator, of the Eastern world.' Why one, but, above all, why the latter, of these, the only obvious courses, was not adopted, we have not the slightest information; yet our readers see that this is the point on which the whole transaction originally turned. We suspect, from their common silence, that neither the French nor English ministers think that an explanation on this point would be favourable to their respective cases; and we more than suspect that the secret but real cause was the ulterior designs of France upon Egypt, which the French ministers did not quite venture to avow, and which the English minister is ashamed at not having at once boldly grappled with. Leaving then, as we needs must, the earlier stages of the discussion to future, official, and parliamentary explanation, we shall proceed to state the case from the documents that we possess. We have seen, by Lord Palmerston's despatches to Col. Campbell, that in 1838 the allies were all agreed to make com mon mon cause against Mehemet Ali if he should force on a collision with the Sultan. It does not appear, nor could we expect to find in despatches of that class, what the ulterior intention of the Powers were; but it is obvious that, having determined on hostilities, they must have been prepared to pursue them to any extremities to which the obstinacy of the Pacha might drive them. We therefore conclude that in 1838 France must have professed her readiness to coerce the Pasha, if it should become necessary, an engagement which we believe she might safely have made; for we have no doubt that she was the real instigator of the Pacha's proceedings, and that without her encouragement he never would have driven matters to extremities. We have seen that after the battle of Nezib the Five Powers volunteered to declare to the Porte, in the celebrated note (already given), dated 27th July, 1839, that they had come to a perfect agreement (accord) on the Eastern Question.' Such a note could not of course state the details of that accord, but we have a distinct explanation of it in Lord Palmerston's speech (6th August, 1840). 'We had been negotiating with France for the last twelve months on the general principle of maintaining the independence of the Turkish empire under its existing dynasty. There had been no difference whatever between the governments on these points. The French government had declared that in the most unequivocal manner. As early as last July France had spontaneously declared to the other Four Powers of Europe that she considered the maintenance of the INTEGRITY and independence of the Turkish empire, under its present dynasty, as essential to the preservation of the peace of Europe, and that she was determined to oppose, by all her means of action and by all her influence, any combination to subvert it.' And this is proved by a dispatch of Marshal Soult's, and subsequently confirmed by still more solemn evidence. The Queen of England stated in her speech from the Throne, 27th August, 1839: 'The same concord which brought these intricate questions [the Belgic affairs] to a peaceful termination prevails with regard to the affairs of the Levant. The Five Powers are alike determined to uphold the independence and INTEGRITY of the Ottoman empire; and I trust this union will ensure a satisfactory settlement of matters which are of the deepest importance to Europe.' The King of France too, in opening the next Session of his Chambers (23rd December), made a similar declaration: 'Our flag, in concert with that of Great Britain, and faithful to the spirit of that union, always so advantageous to the interests of both countries, has watched over the independence and immediate safety of the Ottoman Empire.-[a rather loose watch they had kept when they allowed allowed Mehemet to seize Syria by force, and the fleet by treachery]— Our policy is always to ensure the preservation of the INTEGRITY of that empire, whose existence is so necessary to the maintenance of general peace.' 6 6 Here, we should have thought, whatever obscurity or doubts might overhang the earlier part of the discussion, we had now arrived at daylight-the clear principle of the independence and INTEGRITY of the Ottoman empire' distinctly laid down, and a solemn determination to give it effect: but that was not the object of France; she had no sooner agreed to this principle than she set about embarrassing and evading its execution. She probably had consented to it because she had no avowable excuse for refusing, and was afraid that the real motive of her reluctancewhat M. Thiers has since with so much naïveté called the national instinct of France towards Egypt'-should be suspected; but she promised herself an escape from the engagement by delay and intrigue; and, they failing, she has not been ashamed to deny the plain and obvious meaning of the word integrity. Integrity,' says France, meant integrity as against Russian interference,'— not as against the Pacha's pretensions; against the temporary danger, and not against territorial dismemberment.' Could it be believed that this wretched quibble is the whole and sole basis of M. Thiers' defence in his celebrated reply of the 3rd October to Lord Palmerston's Memorandum of the 31st August? and he further adds that all the powers so understood it.' It seems quite supererogative to argue such a question; but as it is the whole point of M. Thiers' case, we will throw away two or three observations upon it. First, the word integrity has and can have but one meaning, territorial integrity, which was threatened from one quarter only-the Pacha! What France or any of the other Powers may have feared from Russia was clearly not immediate invasion, but interference and influence under the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, and that was provided against in the word independence.' The independence and integrity of the Turkish empire under the present dynasty' meant, therefore, 1st, independence of any special influence or protection of any one power-Russia, or France, or England, or Austria; 2ndly, the integrity of the limits and authority of the Turkish empire against Mehemet's territorial aggressions and local usurpations; and 3rdly, the preservation of the existing dynasty to the exclusion of any design Mehemet might have of becoming Sultan himself. These three objects are clearly met by the respective terms of the agreement; two of them-the independence' and the existing dynasty'—were precautionary words against future risks, but the immediate, and pressing, and main, and, practically speaking, only object of the engagement was to meet |