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If that were so, the Menchikoff note and all the old protectorate treaties being abolished, surely the House will consider whether the combination of the three propositions the territorial guarantees, the Christian protectorate, and the Black Sea project do not give such securities to Turkey as the condition of Turkey will permit.
The rejection, first of the amended Menchikoff note, and then of the Olmuetz note, was a policy adopted solely by the Government of this country, and only concurred in, but not recommended, by the French Government and the other Governments of Europe.
Petersburg newspaper, and was afterwards published in the Paris journals a despatch in which the Emperor of the French, or his Minister, urged the Russian Government to accept the Vienna note on the express ground I give the exact words that 'its general sense differed in nothing from the sense of the original propositions of Prince Menchikoff. Why, Sir, can there be dissimulation more extraordinary can there be guilt more conclusive than that this Government should act as it did, after it had recommended the Emperor of Russia to accept the Vienna note?
Petersburg with the hope that it will find that its general sense differs in nothing from the sense of the proposition presented by Prince Menchikoff. The French words are: 'Que son sens general ne differe en rien du sens du projet presente par M. le Prince Menchikoff. It then goes on: 'And that it gives it satisfaction on all the essential points of its demands.
Now, so far as regards Turkey herself, and the 'integrity and independence' of that Empire, I put it seriously to the House do you believe, that if the Government and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe had advised Turkey to accept the last note of Prince Menchikoff, a note so little different from the others, offered before and since, that it was impossible to discover in what the distinction consisted; or if the Government had insisted on Turkey accepting, as the condition of their co-operation, the Vienna note, either as at first proposed by the Conference, or with the explanatory definitions with which the Emperor of Russia at Olmutz offered to accept it, that they would have injured the 'integrity and independence' of Turkey?
With respect to the question of the Christian protectorate, the House will probably recollect that it was represented over and over again by Ministers in this House it was stated in the speeches of Lord Clarendon in another place that the proposition of Russia, as conveyed in the Menchikoff note, was intended to transfer the virtual sovereignty of 10,000,000 or 12,000,000 of Ottoman subjects to the Czar.
There is a third course, and which I should have, and indeed have all along recommended that war should have been avoided by the acceptance on the part of Turkey either of the last note of Prince Menchikoff, or of the Vienna note; or, if Turkey would not consent to either, that then she should have been allowed to enter into the war alone, and England and France supposing they had taken, and continued to take, the same view of the interests of Western Europe which they have hitherto taken might have stood aloof until the time when there appeared some evident danger of the war being settled on terms destructive of the balance of power; and then they might have come in, and have insisted on a different settlement.
I have already described to the House what it would have been if my policy had been adopted if the thrice-modified note of Prince Menchikoff had been accepted, or if the Vienna note had been assented to by the Porte. But what is it now under the protection of the noble Lord and his Colleagues?
Petersburg ought to desire is an act of the Porte, which testifies that it has taken into serious consideration the mission of Prince Menchikoff, and that it renders homage to the sympathies which an identity of religion inspires in the Emperor Nicholas for all Christians of the Eastern rite. And farther on:
I find that after the first proposition for a treaty had been made by Prince Menchikoff, that envoy made some concession, and asked only for a Sened, or Convention; and when that was disapproved of, he offered to accept a note, or memorandum merely, that should specify what should be agreed upon.
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