Unkiar Skelessi, had enforced upon Russia the new Treaty of St. Petersburg. This treaty, by promising the evacuation of the Principalities, and reducing the Turkish payments to one-third of the stipulated amount, apparently relieved the Porte from some engagements enforced on it by the Treaty of Adrianople. In all other instances it was a simple ratification of the Treaty of Adrianople, not at all relating to the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, nor dropping a single word about the passage of the Dardanelles. On the contrary, the small alleviations it granted to Turkey were the purchase money for the exclusion of Europe, by the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, from the Dardanelles.
"At the very time at which the demonstration (of the British fleet) was being made, an assurance was given by the noble lord to the Russian Ambassador at this court, that this combined movement of the squadrons was not intended in any sense hostile to Russia, nor to be taken as a hostile demonstration against her; but that, in fact, it meant nothing at all. I say this on the authority of Lord Ponsonby, the noble lord's own colleague, the Ambassador at Constantinople."—(Mr. Anstey, House of Commons, February 23, 1848.)
After the Treaty of St. Petersburg had been ratified, the noble lord expressed his satisfaction with the moderation of the terms imposed by Russia.
When Parliament had reassembled, there appeared in the Globe, the organ of the Foreign Office, a paragraph stating that
"the Treaty of St. Petersburg was a proof either of the moderation or good sense of Russia, or of the influence which the union of England and Prance, and the firm and concerted language of those two powers, had acquired in the councils of St. Petersburg."—(Globe, February 24,1835.)
Thus, on the one hand, the Treaty of Adrianople, protested against by Lord Aberdeen and the Duke of Wellington, was surreptitiously to be recognized on the part of England by Lord Palmerston officially expressing his satisfaction with the Treaty of St. Petersburg, which was but a ratification of that treaty; on the other hand, public attention was to be diverted from the Treaty of Unkiar
