hatching treacherous designs for the future. On that dayhe met with the following cruel apostrophe:
"The want of vigorous alacrity to defend the honour of the country which the noble lord had displayed was most culpable; the conduct of no former minister had ever been so vacillating, so hesitating, so uncertain, so cowardly, when insult had been offered to British subjects. How much longer did the noble lord propose to allow Russia thus to insult Great Britain, and thus to injure British commerce? The noble lord was degrading England by holding her out in the character of a bully—haughty and tyrannical to the weak, humble and abject to the strong."
"Who was it that thus mercilessly branded the truly English Minister? Nobody else than Lord Dudley Stuart.
On November 25, 1836, the Vixen was confiscated. The stormy debates of the House of Commons, just quoted, took place on March 17, 1837. It was not till April 19, 1837, that the noble lord requested the Russian Government "to state the reason on account of which it had thought itself warranted to seize in time of peace a merchant vessel belonging to British subjects." On May 17, 1837, the noble lord received the following despatch from the Earl of Durham, the British Ambassador at St. Petersburg:
"My Lord,
"With respect to the military de facto occupation of Soudjouk-Kale, I have to state to your lordship that there is a fortress in the bay which bears the name of the Empress (Alexandrovsky), and that it has always been occupied by a Russian garrison.
"I have, etc.,
It need hardly be remarked that the fort Alexandrovsky had not even the reality of the pasteboard towns, exhibited by Potemkin before the Empress Catherine II. on her visit to the Crimea. Five days after the receipt of this despatch, Lord Palmerston returns the following answer to St. Petersburg:
