relief of Bilbao, and, after a bad defeat at Hernani, it was eventually disbanded in 1838. Of course, the Foreign Secretary's best excuse for this intermittent form of armed assistance would have been that, in face of the suspicious attitude of France, direct intervention would have been attended with the utmost risk, but it was impossible to make use of that argument in public. When civil war ceased in Spain through the sheer exhaustion of the Carlists, Palmerston could claim, indeed, that the Liberal cause had been triumphant, but not that the victory had been speedily gained or that its results were likely to be permanent; for after the Carlists came military pronunciamientos, and Constitutionalism, buffeted by the winds of faction, was very slow to take root. It might fairly be said, however, that he had done his best with unpromising materials, and that, if Louis Philippe had proved true to his word, the result would have been very different.

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CHAPTER IV.

THE QUADRILATERAL ALLIANCE.

1831-1841.

Lord Palmerston and the Porte-Ibrahim Pasha's advance on Constantinople-Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi-Anti-Russian policy of Lord Palmerston-The first Afghan war-Burnes's despatchesCollapse of the Turkish Empire-Divergence of views between England and France-The Quadrilateral Alliance-Lord Palmerston's difficulties-His bold course of action-His estimate of the situation-Louis Philippe gives way-The fall of Acre-Lord Palmerston's treatment of Guizot-Settlement of the Syrian question-Lord Palmerston's marriage.

THOUGH Lord Palmerston, when Minister at War, had viewed the Greek struggle for independence with ardent approval, and though his aphorism concerning the Turks-"What energy can be expected from a people with no heels to their shoes ?"—has passed into a proverb, he was never a believer in the hopeless degeneracy of the Ottoman Porte. "All that we hear every day of the week," he once wrote to Sir Henry Bulwer, “about the decay of the Turkish Empire, and its being a dead body or a sapless trunk, and so forth, is pure and unadulterated nonsense. . . If we can procure for it ten years of peace under the joint protection of the five Powers, and if those years are profitably employed in

reorganizing the internal system of the Empire, there is no reason whatever why it should not become again a respectable Power." This opinion, even if not permanently tenable, was probably that of the majority of Englishmen at the time of the formation of Lord Grey's ministry, when the Sultan Mahmoud was making real, if somewhat rough and ready, attempts to introduce reforms into his dominions. Palmerston further thought that the downfall of the Porte would be far more likely to occur through external violence than through internal combustion. For the moment, however, the final blow seemed likely to come from one who was nominally its subject. For in 1831 Mahomet Ali, the crafty Albanian who had risen from the position of tobacco-seller to that of the Pasha of Egypt, sent his adopted son Ibrahim against Acre, the fortress which had defied Napoleon; its fall in the following May placed all Syria at his mercy. The surrender of Damascus and Antioch followed; the line of the Taurus was crossed in July; in October the brilliant Ibrahim scattered to the winds at Konieh the last of the Turkish armies, and there was nothing to prevent his casting out his shoe over Constantinople.

The peril of the Porte was undoubtedly extreme, and Palmerston was anxious that an affirmative response should be made to the Sultan's appeals for assistance, which reached England about the time of the battle of Konieh. The Cabinet, however, overruled his opinion, and he must have felt considerably annoyed when it fell to him to defend English non-intervention in the House of Commons, on the ground that our naval operations on the Dutch coast and elsewhere were so extensive, that it would have been impossible to send to the Mediterranean such a squadron as would have served

the purpose of the Porte, and at the same time have comported with the naval dignity of England. His appeal rejected, though with regret, by England, and with less ceremony by France, where public sympathy was wholly with the Pasha, Mahmoud, in his despair, applied to his ancient euemy, Nicholas of Russia, The response was prompt; a Russian army was despatched to the mouth of the Bosphorus, Ibrahim retired before it, and Constantinople was saved. But the price was heavy; by the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, signed by the representatives of the two Powers, on the 8th of July 1833, the Porte bound itself, in return for a promise from Russia of military and naval assistance whenever required, to come come to an "unreserved understanding" with that Power "upon all matters which concern their respective tranquillity and safety," that is, to allow Nicholas to interfere when he pleased in Turkish affairs. A secret article further engaged the Porte "to close the strait of the Dardanelles, that is to say, not to allow any foreign vessels of war to enter therein under any pretext whatsoever." In short, the treaty. made Mahmoud the vassal of Nicholas, and the Black Sea a Russian lake.

The natural result of this master-stroke of Russian diplomacy, the terms of which were known throughout Europe within six weeks, was that Palmerston, with the full approval of his eccentric sovereign, and the applause of the Radicals in Parliament, was during the remainder of the reign of William IV. decidedly antiRussian in his policy. He joined with the French Government in a vigorous protest against the treaty, but it was, of course, mere waste-paper. The destruction of the liberties of Poland in the previous year; the conclusion in the following year of a new treaty with the

Porte, by which Russia acquired fresh territory in Asia; the mandate issued by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, for the occupation of the little republic of Cracow, the last remnant of independent Poland, by Austrian troops; the presence of Russian agents at the court of the Shah of Persia; the Russian intrigues for the ruin of Colonel Chesney's expedition to open up the Euphrates route to India-all these facts taken together seemed to point to a systematic attempt on the part of Nicholas to aggrandize his dominions, and that at the expense of England. "Russia," wrote Palmerston to his brother, "is pursuing a system of universal aggression on all sides, partly from the personal character of the Emperor, partly from the permanent system of her government." In the House of Commons, O'Connell, Mr. Attwood, and other Radicals, hurled abuse at the Czar, and the British fleet was sent to cruise in the neighbourhood of the Dardanelles; but though the two countries were on the verge of a quarrel, no actual outbreak took place.

If Palmerston shrank from war with Russia from motives of prudence, Nicholas refrained from direct hostilities with England because he found others to fight his battles for him. The mission of Russian agents to Teheran and Cabul was the means employed, not for the last time, to lure England into operations beyond the Indus, and to drain her of wealth and strength without hazarding a single Cossack or a single rouble. Excuses may be advanced for the first Afghan war, as for every war. The Persian attack on Herat was undoubtedly of the most formidable nature, and was only averted by chance in the person of Eldred Pottinger, and Melbourne's cabinet were of opinion that "decisive measures" in Afghanistan were necessary to counterbalance Russian preponderance in Persia. Lord