180 OEIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1853 chap, the 'ill-disposed powers,' for so he called England - and France ; * and again, in the very week in which the Czar was joining with the English Government in a form more than usually solemn in denouncing the practice of ' harassing the Porte ' by overbearing demands, put forward in a man- c ner humiliating to its independence and its ' dignity/ *J* he was shaping the angry despatch which caused Prince Mentschikoff to insult the Torte by his peremptory Note of the 5th of May. Put notwithstanding all this variance between what the Czar said and what he did, it must be acknowledged that it would be hard to explain his words and his course of action by imputing to him a vulgar and rational duplicity; for it was plain that the secrecy at which he aimed would be terminated by the success of the negotiation ; and supposing him to have been in possession of his reason, and to have been acting on grounds tem- poral, he could not have imagined that, for the sake of extorting a new promise from the Sultan, and giving a little more semblance of legality to pretensions which he already maintained to be valid, it was politic for him to forfeit that reputa- tion for honour, which was a main element of his Greatness and his strength. The dreams of terri- torial aggrandisement which he imparted to Sir Hamilton Seymour in January and February had
- ' Eastern Papers,' part i. p. 108.
+ Memorandum by the Emperor Nicholas confidentially deliveied to Sir Hamilton Seymour, and dated the 15th April 1853. Ibid, part v. p. 25.
