berment of his dominions. Moreover, there were hostile counsels at the Porte. Baron Otterfels, the Austrian internuncio, then held the ear of the sultan, acting under instructions from Metternich, which were of course repudiated when they were exposed. Baron Militz, the Prussian minister, was also intriguing against peace, and even went so far as to send home accounts of interviews and conversations which never took place—‘a scheme of treachery almost unparalleled even in diplomatic history.’ In the end the long duel terminated in the discomfiture of both these ministers; but the struggle was a severe one, and any one less gifted than Canning would have early given over the desperate conflict. Fortunately, he knew how to make himself respected. The dominating influence so powerfully described by Kinglake nearly thirty years later was already asserting itself in these days, and his personal ascendency over the Porte was already felt.
But all his personal ascendency could not at this moment avail against the forces that were then working in Turkey. The first hostile element was Sultan Mahmud himself. Writing in later years, Canning describes this famous sultan as ‘in temper and policy a caliph and a despot;’ and, notwithstanding the admiration which his resolution and energy in army and other reforms excited, Canning's opinion of Mahmud was disparaging. Russia was the next obstacle. While originally anxious to interfere by force in favour of the Greeks, the czar had no idea of preferring their cause to his own interests; and for the present he allowed England to attempt the thankless office of non-coercive mediator, alone, and steadily kept the Greek question in the background until his own claims in Europe and Asia had been settled to his satisfaction. The Austrian internuncio also stuck at nothing to damage the prospects of a peaceful arrangement of the Greek difficulty. Canning found himself isolated, and even viewed with distrust by the Porte as the only advocate of the rebellious Greeks. In vain he pressed upon the Porte the advantages of an amicable arrangement, and hinted that the Greeks (who had accorded him full powers) were prepared to accept such moderate concessions as were included in the separation of the Morea under local authority, with Turkish garrisons in strong positions (MS. Memoirs). In vain he tried ‘persuasion, admonition, and a glimpse of perilous consequences.’ All argument was thrown away on Mahmud and his ministers, and Canning had to stand aside and become a mere onlooker, while Russia played her own game. ‘When I look back,’ he wrote, ‘after an interval of forty years, to the whole of the circumstances, it appears to me quite clear that the success I so ardently desired was a simple impossibility.’ It was no doubt the position of isolation to which his efforts in favour of Greece had consigned him that prevented the English ambassador from helping the Turks to obtain better terms from Russia than those included in the humiliating treaty of Akerman, October 1826, which the rawness of his new army alone induced the sultan to sign. The dispute between Russia and Turkey having been temporarily adjusted by this instrument, the part of solitary mediator in behalf of Greece, which Canning had thus far performed, was exchanged for the joint action of the three powers, England, France, and Russia, under the treaty of London of July 1827, which was the formal expression of the protocol signed by Wellington at St. Petersburg in the preceding year. The effects of this forcible interposition of the three maritime powers, which was emphasised by the appearance of their joint fleets in the Mediterranean, were disastrous to Turkey in many ways. The light terms which Canning had been able to offer the Turks on behalf of the Greeks were now enlarged to the extent of a settlement which involved the creation of an independent kingdom, with far wider boundaries than had been hitherto contemplated. The hot-headed action at Navarino, which was fought without the knowledge of the ambassador, who agreed emphatically with the Duke of Wellington in describing it as an ‘untoward event,’ was followed by a burst of indignation from the Porte, which broke off all negotiations, and compelled the withdrawal of the embassies of the three mediating powers. The imprudent manifesto then promulgated by Sultan Mahmud gave Russia the pretext she desired for a forcible insistance upon the terms of the treaty of 1827, and thus the Russo-Turkish war of 1828–9 ensued, and by its disastrous termination in the peace of Adrianople deprived Turkey of the good results which were beginning to flow from the reforming policy of Mahmud.
The English ambassador's action during these eventful times was one of compulsory inactivity. He had at first to stand aside and busy himself with the affairs of the embassy, and decide the legal causes which were moved in the ambassador's supreme court, by the light of common sense, a task he accomplished to such purpose that he never had a complaint against his judgments. Meantime, he availed himself of any opening that arose to assert the influence of England
