Note 211 — Chapter XXXI · PARTY GOVERNMENT AND WAR.

The proof of this is as follows: (1) The Turks would have taken the Austrian compromise, which, by the way, was the development of a suggestion made by the French Envoy, as the basis of a feasible plan for giving effect to the Third Point. (2) Lord John Russell—the most violent and bellicose of the anti-Russian Ministers—was in favour of it. (3) The position of Russia in the matter was officially misrepresented to the English people. Russia said her defeats were not such as to justify her as a Great Power in letting the Allies force on her a reduction of her Black Sea fleet. But she had no objection to any plan limiting her preponderance if it sprang from mutual negotiation between her and Turkey—acting as principals on an equal footing—to establish, by mutual consent a naval equilibrium in the Black Sea. (4) She did not absolutely exclude the idea of reducing her fleet as was falsely stated, not only in the English press, but in Parliament. Article 2 of Count Buol’s compromise provided that Turkey and Russia should “propose by common agreement to the Conference the effective equality of the naval forces which the two coast Powers will keep up in the Black Sea, and which shall not exceed the actual number of Russian ships afloat in that Sea.” (See Annual Register, Vol. XCVII., pp. 214-217.) The use of the word “exceed” shows that the Article provided a maximum limit—not a minimum. It was simply foolish to argue, as representatives of the Government did, that negotiations for peace had to be abandoned because Russia refused to accept a practical and reasonable plan for preventing her from having more ships than Turkey in the Black Sea. The statement of facts on this subject by Sir T. Martin in Chap. LXIII. of his Life of the Prince Consort is as misleading as Mr. Spencer Walpole’s account of the Austrian Compromise (History of England, Vol. V., p. 135). Mr. Walpole says that Count Buol’s proposal was one “under which any addition to the Russian Fleet might be followed by the admission of a corresponding number of war vessels of the Allies into the Euxine.” This is not a correct summary of Article 2 of the Compromise.