topic in the speech was an allusion to the
late naval conflict. It remarked:--"Having been earnestly entreated
by the Greeks to interpose his good offices, with a view to effect
a reconciliation between them and the Porte, his majesty concerted
measures in the first instance with the Emperor of Russia, and
subsequently with his imperial majesty and the King of France. His
majesty has given directions that there should be laid before you copies
of a protocol signed at St. Petersburg by the plenipotentiaries of his
majesty, and of his imperial majesty the Emperor of Russia, on the 4th
of April, 1826, and of the treaty entered into between his majesty and
the courts of the Tuilleries and of St Petersburg, on the 6th of July,
1827. In the course of the measures adopted 'with a view to carry into
effect the object of the treaty a collision wholly unexpected by his
majesty took place in the port of Navarino between the fleets of the
contracting powers. Notwithstanding the valour displayed by the combined
fleet, his majesty deeply laments that this conflict should have
occurred with the naval force of our ancient ally; but he still
entertains a confident hope that this untoward event will not be
followed by further hostilities, and will not impede that amicable
adjustment of the existing differences between the Porte and the Greeks
to which it is so manifestly their common interests to accede." This is
the first time in the British annals that a victory is characterized
as an "untoward event." But the men now in power hated Greece and her
cause, and were so blinded by admiration of despotic principles, as not
to perceive the advantages which might accrue to Russia in her future
projects, from the destruction of the Ottoman navy, and from the lack
of confidence which the sultan would now have in his western allies. In
both houses the language of the king's speech respecting the victory
of Navarino was loudly denounced by opposition, it being supposed to
indicate that the Duke of Wellington's cabinet abandoned the line of Mr.
Canning's policy. In the lords the Duke of Richmond especially fixed a
quarrel on the phrase "ancient ally:" contending that the sultan could
not be termed in any correct sense of the word an ally of this country
at all, and much less an "ancient ally." He disapproved still more
of the epithet "untoward," as applied in the speech to the battle
of Navarino. If the term was meant, he said, to cast any blame on