latory
character of the Porte alone but to the perverse action of Lord
Stratford de Redcliffe.'[38] Lord Clarendon did not hesitate to declare
that Lord Stratford was inclined to thwart any business which was not
carried on in Constantinople, and the English Ambassador kept neither
Lord John in Vienna nor the Cabinet in Downing Street acquainted with
the views of the Porte. Lord John declared that the Turkish
representative at Vienna, from whom he expected information about the
affairs of his own country, was 'by nature incompetent, and by
instruction silent.' Two schemes, in regard to the point which was
chiefly in dispute, were before the Congress; they are best stated in
Lord John's own words: 'One, called limitation, proposed that only four
ships of the line should be maintained in the Black Sea by Russia, and
two each by the allies of Turkey. The other mode, proposed by M. Drouyn
de Lhuys, contemplated a much further reduction of force--namely, to
eight or ten light vessels, intended solely to protect commerce from
pirates and perform the police of the coast.' Although a great part of
the Russian fleet was at the bottom of the sea, and the rest of it
hemmed in in the harbour of Sebastopol, Prince Gortschakoff announced,
with the air of a man who was master of the situation, that the Czar
entirely refused to limit his power in the Euxine.

[Sidenote: COUNT BUOL'S COMPROMISE]

At this juncture Count Buol proposed a compromise, to the effect that
Russia should maintain in the Black Sea a naval force not greater than
that which she had had at her disposal there before the outbreak of the
war; that any attempt to evade this limitation should be interpreted as
a _casus belli_, by France, England, and Austria, which were to form a
triple treaty of alliance to defend the integrity and independence of
Turkey in case of aggression. Lord Palmerston believed, to borrow his
own phrase, that Austria was playing a treacherous game, but that was
not the opinion at the moment either of Lord John Russell or of M.
Drouyn de Lhuys. They appear to have thought that the league of Austria
with England and France to resist aggression upon Turkey would prove a
sufficient check on Russian ambition, and did not lay stress enough on
the objections, which at once suggested themselves both in London and
Paris. The Prince Consort put the case against Count Buol's scheme in a
nutshell: 'The proposal of Austria to engage to make war when the
R