178 ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1853 CHAP, intended to issue and proclaim a guarantee for the XL exercise of the spiritual rights possessed by the Greek Church in Turkey. It was hard for .Russia to endure the resistance which she had en- countered, but it was more difficult still to hear, with any semblance of calmness, that the Porte, of its own free will, was doing a main part of that which the Emperor Nicholas had urged it to do. This was not tolerable. To Russian ears the least utterance about ' the free will of the Porte ' instantly conveyed the idea that all was to be ordered and governed at the will and pleasure of the English Ambassador. The thought that the protectorate of the Greek Church was not only refused to the Czar, but was now passing quietly into the hands of Lord Stratford, was so madden- ing, that Prince Mentschikoff, forgetting or tran- scending the fact that he had formally announced Finaithreats the rupture of his relations with the Porte, now Mentscin- suffered himself to address a solemn Note to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, in which (basing himself upon a theory that the mention of the spiritual might be deemed to derogate from the temporal rights of the Church) he announced that any act having the effect which this theory attri- buted to the proposed guarantee, would be regarded Hisdepar- as ' hostile to Paissia and her religion.' * Having despatched these last words of threat, he at length went on board and departed. On the same day the arms of Paissia were taken down from the palace of the Imperial Embassy.
- 'Eastern Papers,' part i. p. 253.
koff. ture.
