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"Afterwards, however, she departed from this principle, by demanding, for the advantage of the viceroy, a dismemberment of the empire incompatible with its existence. With the desire of obtaining the concurrence of France, the four cabinets, parties to the treaty of the 15th of July, made repeated appeals to her in order to bring her to their views. They even made to her considerable sacrifices, for they added to Egypt, granted hereditarily the pashalic of Acre with the exception of the fortress of that name; and afterwards they consented to add thereto the fortress itself; but all these sacrifices were fruitless; France persisted in departing from the principle which the five cabinets had thought it right to proclaim

in common.

"The other courts were unable to follow her in this course. Whatever desire they might have felt to obtain her concurrence, they were at length compelled to separate themselves from her, and to sign an act at which she ought not to be surprised, because she had been more than once warned that if an understanding should not be arrived at, it would be necessary to end by solving by four, the question which could not be solved by five. Four cabinets being agreed upon a question of the highest importance, could not indefinitely make to a fifth the sacrifice of their perfectly disinterested views and intentions. Indeed, lord Palmerston had studiously repeated to the ambassador of France, that the proposition afterwards contained in the treaty of the 15th of July, was his ultimatum, and that if this proposition were rejected, he would not make another. It was quite necessary to procced and

not to leave the Ottoman empire to perish through too long hesitation. The four courts could not be accused of having intended to offend France on this occasion.

"Moreover, in acting thus, the four cabinets remembered that France had in the month of September, 1839, through the channel of her ambassador in London, proposed a plan of arrangement, founded, with very little difference, upon the same basis as the treaty of the 15th of July; that at a later period, in opposing the plan presented by England, she had acknowledged that with the exception of the difficulty and danger attending the means of execution, it would be incontestably preferable to any other; that, lastly, on every occasion she had manifested the intention of not opposing any obstacle to those means of execution. They were therefore justified in believing that if, on account of private considerations, she refused to unite with them to constrain Mehemet Ali by force, she would at least not oppose any obstacle to their efforts, that she would even assist them by the employment of her moral influence at Alexandria. The four cabinets still hope, that when the treaty of the 15th of July shall have been accomplished, France will unite with them anew to secure in a definitive manner the maintenance of the Ottoman empire."

Such, if I mistake not, is the exact and impartial analysis of the statement which lord Palmerston and the four courts in general do not cease to make, respecting the negotiations to which the Turco-Egyptian question has given rise.

According to this statement France has been inconsistent.

She has desired, and desires no longer, the integrity and independence of the Ottoman empire;

The four courts have made repeated sacrifices to her views;

They have ended by presenting to her an ultimatum, founded upon an old proposition of her own ambassador ;

They have not proceeded further until this ultimatum was jected;

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They have reason to be surprised at the manner in which France received the treaty of the 15th of July; because from her own declarations they were led to expect, that she would give more than a passive adhesion, and at least her moral influence, to this treaty.

An exact narrative of facts will afford a complete answer to this manner of representing the negotiations.

When the porte, ill-advised, renewed its hostilities with the viceroy, and lost at the same time its army and its fleet; when to all these losses was added the death of the sultan Mahmoud, what was the apprehension of England and of France, both then perfectly united? Their apprehension was that of seeing Ibrahim, victorious, cross the Taurus, threaten Constantinople, and bring, at the same instant, the Russians into the capital of the Ottoman empire. In this apprehension every enlightened individual in Europe participated.

What were the propositions of lord Palmerston upon this subject? The first time in his own name, the second time in the name of his cabinet, he proposed to France to

unite two fleets-one English, the other French; to cause them to proceed towards the coast of Syria; to address a summons to the two belligerent parties; with a view to compel them to suspend hostilities; to support this summons by naval means; then to join the two fleets, and to demand from the porte admittance into the Dardanelles, or even to force that celebrated passage, if the struggle between the pasha and the sultan should have brought the Russians to Constantinople.

What, therefore, England, and with her every politician of foresight, then understood by the integrity and independence of the Ottoman empire, was, to preserve that empire from the exclusive protection of Russian armies, and, in order to prevent the case arising for such protection, to prevent the viceroy from marching upon Constantinople.

France entered fully into this idea: she employed her influence with Mehemet Ali and his son to stop the victorious Egyptian army; in this she succeeded; and, in order to ward off the more serious danger of seeing the Russian armies at Constantinople, she conceived that, before forcing the Dardanelles, it would be right to demand from the porte its consent to the entry of the two fleets, in the event of a body of Russian troops having traversed the Bosphorus.

England acceded to these propositions, and the two cabinets were perfectly agreed. The words independence and integrity of the Ottoman empire did not then mean, and we cannot point this out too strongly, that Mehemet Ali should be deprived of this or that portion of the territories which he occupied, but that he should

be prevented from marching upon the capital of the empire, and by the presence of Egyptian troops attracting the presence of Russian troops.

In conversing upon this subject with M. de Bourqueney on the 25th of May, and the 20th of June, her Britannic majesty's secretary of state acknowledged, that there existed in France and in England an opinion in favour of the Egyptian family; that in France this opinion was much more general; that the French government therefore must naturally be much more inclined to Mehemet Ali than the English government; that here was, doubtless, a difficulty of the position; but this was a consideration of secondary importance; that a higher consideration ought to predominate over all others, to wit, the necessity of saving the Ottoman empire from an exclusive protection, which sooner or later would be fatal to it, if France and England did not come to an understanding.

France participated in these ideas. Her policy was therefore directed to a twofold end; that of checking the viceroy, if, from being a powerful but submissive vassal, he should proceed to play the part of an insubordinate vassal threatening the throne of his master, and of substituting for the exclusive protection of one power, that of the five preponderating powers of Europe.

It is with these views that she joined in signing the note of the 27th of July, a note tending to place the protection of the five courts between the defeated sultan and the victorious pasha; it was with this idea that, on the 17th of July, she addressed a circular to all the courts in order to elicit a

common profession of respect for the integrity of the Ottoman empire. With these views it was, that she originated the proposal of uniting Austria, Prussia, and Russia herself, in all the resolutions relating to the Turco-Egyptian question.

Lord Palmerston will, no doubt, recollect that he was less disposed than France to call for this general concurrence of the five powers; and the French cabinet cannot remember without lively regret, in comparing that period with the present time, that the English cabinet then believed that it could depend on France, beyond all others, for ensuring the safety of the Turkish empire.

No one was then disposed to think that the integrity of the Ottoman empire depended on the boundary which might separate the possessions of the sultan and the viceroy in Syria. All held that it reposed on a twofold condition; on preventing Ibrahim from threatening the capital, and on exempting the Russians from coming to its succour.

France shared this belief with all the cabinets, and to this she has remained faithful.

Austria and Prussia adhered to the views of France and England. The court of Russia refused to join in the conferences which were to be held at Vienna with the view of making this European protectorate with regard to the sultan a matter of general concern. She little approved of the eagerness shown by the western powers to interfere in the eastern question. "The emperor," said M. de Nesselrode, in a despatch addressed on the 6th of August, 1839, to M. de Médem, and communicated officially to the French government;

"the emperor by no means despairs of the safety of the Porte, provided the European powers respect its tranquillity, and do not, by an ill-timed agitation, end in shaking it, while desiring to uphold it." The court of Russia, therefore, deemed it but little fitting to interpose itself between the sultan and the pasha, thought that it would be sufficient to prevent the viceroy from threatening Constantinople, and seemed to consider a direct arrangement as the most suitable resource in that state of things. "For the rest,' said M. de. Nesselrode again to the ambassador of France in the beginning of August, 1839, "it is of small import to us, whether a little more, or a little less, be given to or taken from the pasha in Syria. Our only condition is, that the Porte be left at liberty, in the consent it may give."

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At this period, then, the four powers who afterwards signed the treaty of the 15th of July, were not, as it is now wished to have it believed, united in their views, in the face of France alone dissenting and precluding all agreement by her perpetual refusals.

The danger was removed after Ibrahim had suspended his victorious march. The two belligerent parties were in presence; the pasha all powerful, the sultan beaten and without resources; yet both motionless, thanks to the intervention of France. The British cabinet proposed to wrest the Turkish fleet from the hands of Mehemet Ali. This France refused, fearing to excite fresh hostilities. Then began the fatal difference of opinion which has separated France from England, and which, for the interests of peace and the civilization

of the world, must for ever be lamented.

The ill-will which the British cabinet bore to the viceroy of Egypt broke out with great vivacity: France sought to moderate it. Upon the representations of France, the British cabinet, appreciating the danger of an act of violence, renounced the idea of recovering the Turkish fleet by forcible means; that proposal was not followed up.

A mutual explanation had at last become necessary in order to know in what manner the territorial question between the sultan and the viceroy could be settled. The difference between the views of France and England became more clearly manifest. Lord Palmerston declared, that according to his view, the viceroy ought to receive Egypt in hereditary possession, but that, in consideration of this hereditary right, he ought at once to yield up the holy cities, the Island of Candia, the district of Adana, and the whole of Syria. Nevertheless, he slightly modified his original views, and consented to attach to the hereditary possession of Egypt, the possession, also hereditary, of the pashalic of Acre without the fortress of Acre.

France did not agree to these propositions. She held that the viceroy who had conquered the sultan at the battle of Nezib, without having been the aggressor, who had moreover consented to stay his march when he might have fallen upon the empire, and overturned the sultan's throne, deserved more consideration. She thought that the powers which had engaged him to accept in 1833 the conditions of Kutaya, would show but little equity in imposing upon him conditions far more ri

gorous, at a time when he had done nothing to forfeit the benefit of that arrangement. She thought, that in taking from him the holy cities, the Island of Candia, the district of Adana, an offensive position which, when restored to the Porte, afforded it complete security, they ought to secure to the pasha the hereditary possession of Egypt and Syria. The victory of Nezib, won without aggression on his part, might alone have entitled him to hereditary right in his possessions from the Nile to the Taurus. But while the victory of Nezib was viewed as a thing which had never happened, while Mehemet Ali was made to purchase hereditary right at the cost of a portion of his actual possessions, strict justice at least enjoined that he should not be deprived of more than Candia, Adana, and the holy cities. Besides, France demanded by what means it was proposed to reduce Mehemet Ali. Doubtless, the European cabinets were pow erful against him when he intend. ed to threaten Constantinople; in that case, the fleets in the sea of Marmora were sufficient to stop him. But what means had they of wresting Syria from him? means of little efficacy, such as a blockade; of questionable justice, such as incitements to revolt; means very perilous, and contrary to the end proposed, such as a Russian army. France proposed then, in September 1839, to adjudge the hereditary possession of Egypt and the hereditary possession of Syria to the viceroy. At no period of the negotiation has France proposed anything else, till recently, when she has counselled the viceroy to content himself with the possession of Syria for life. I have examined the despatches an

terior to my administration, and nowhere have I seen in them that general Sebastiani was ever authorised to propose the scheme of boundaries contained in the treaty of July the 15th, or that he spontaneously took upon himself the responsibility of proposing it. I have asked him what his own recollections were with respect to this, and he has assured me that he never made any proposition of the kind. France proposed therefore in 1839, that the hereditary possession of Egypt and the hereditary possession of Syria should be granted to the viceroy. Unhappily, her opinion was quite at variance with that of England.

This difference of opinion, to be for ever deplored, was soon known to the whole of Europe. All at once, and as if by magic, it caused the divergence which had separated the four courts to cease, and brought about a sudden union among them.

Austria, who had at first given in a full adhesion to our propositions; who, when on the point of notifying this adhesion at London, had only, she told us, suspended this notification in order to give us time to come to an agreement with England; Austria began to say that between France and England, she would declare herself in favour of that of the two courts, which should grant the greater extent of territory to the sultan. It is true that she still protested against the idea of having recourse to measures of coercion, of which she was the first to proclaim the danger. Prussia adopted the opinion of Austria. Russia sent M. de Brunnow to London in September 1839, to make her propositions. Russia, who had lately repelled as little suitable the idea of an European intervention between the sultan

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