BETWEEN THE CZAR AND THE SULTAN. 377 were rejected by Eussia; and for a moment Eu- chap. rope was threatened with the mortification of see- XVIL ing that the question of peace or war was to depend upon a mere verbal criticism — and a criticism, too, in which the English Government at first supposed that the Turks were wrong.* It happened, however, that in the course of the discussion, Count Nesselrode argued against the alterations proposed at Constantinople, in Ian- And are un- . i . expectedly guage which avowed that the meaning and intent proved to „ -S . be right in of Eussia coincided with that very interpretation their inter- u x pretation of which had been fastened upon the Note by the lhe Note - sagacity of the Turks ; and the Governments of the four Powers being then obliged to acknow- ledge that they were wrong, and that Lord Strat- ford and the Turks were right, the question which brought about the final rupture between Eussia and the Porte was virtually the same as that which had caused the departure of Prince Mentschikoif what their dispute with from Constantinople. What Eussia still required, Russia sun and what the Porte still refused to grant, was the Protectorate of the Greek Church in Turkey. -f- At length, with the advice of a Great Council attended by a hundred and seventy-two of the foremost men of the Empire, the Porte determined
- 'Eastern Papers,' part ii. p. 91.
t I am happily able to say that the letters which have re- cently passed between Sir Arthur Gordon and Lord Russell do not suggest to me any modification of the statements contained in this chapter; but the correspondence is, I think, so inter- esting, that I venture to add it (see Note iv.) in the Appendix. Sir Arthur Gordon was the son and deeply trusted private secre- tary of Lord Aberdeen, and probably knows more of what his father knew than any other living man
