Note 213 — Chapter XXXI · PARTY GOVERNMENT AND WAR.

“If,” writes Prince Albert in a Memorandum dated 3rd of May, 1855, “Austria, Prussia, and Germany will give the diplomatic guarantee for the future which I have here detailed, we shall consider this an equivalent for the material guarantee sought for in the limitation of the Russian Fleet.”—Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXIII. But the odd thing to note is, that the Prince was one of those responsible, not perhaps for suspending, but for finally breaking up the Conference of Vienna, that had already adopted the principle of his plan. He and the Queen ignored the fact that it was already embodied in the Memorandum agreed to by the Conference, for giving effect to Ali Pasha’s project for more completely connecting Turkey with “the European equilibrium.” The Queen first coerced—for her note to Clarendon was a coercive instrument—Palmerston to abandon negotiations in Conference, because Russia would not submit to a humiliating material guarantee. Then Prince Albert suggests as a substitute for that a diplomatic guarantee, which Russia had already accepted, and which was a far less effective protection to Turkey than the Austrian compromise which the Queen imperiously condemned. The only original point in the Prince’s plan is the inclusion of Prussia. She had been excluded from the Conference in deference to the prejudices of those who hated peace negotiations, and who declared that she was a mendacious slave of the Czar.