§ MR. BRIGHTSir, the importance of the question which I am about to put to the noble Lord at the head of Her Majesty's Government will be a sufficient apology for my putting it without having given previous notice. I wish to know whether the House can be informed or is to understand that the noble Lord the Member for the City of London has left Vienna, and if the conferences and negotiations are considered by the Government to be at an end? If that be so, I wish also to ask whether the noble Lord can inform the House on what day he will make a specific statement, or afford to the House documentary information, whereby we may be enabled to ascertain precisely what is the difference between the terms offered by the allies, and any terms that may have been offered as counter propositions by the Russian Government, in order that the House and the country may precisely understand, if the war is to be prolonged, what is to be the object of the war in future? As I have not been enabled to find persons agreeing as to why the war began at all, I am the more anxious that we should know exactly how we stand, apart from the obscurity of diplomatic language, and I therefore beg to inquire of the noble Lord if he can give the House, at an early period, the specific information for which I ask?
§ VISCOUNT PALMERSTONSir, the subject referred to by the hon. Gentleman is of too great and deep importance for me to shrink from some explanation even at the present moment, though, as to what may be the time at which Her Majesty's Government may think fit to give more detailed information, or to lay any papers upon the table, I am not now in a position to state. It is well known to the House that the English and French Governments in concert with the Government of Austria, had determined that the proper development of the third point, which regarded the treaties of 1840 and 1841, with respect to the Straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, should be, among other things, that the preponderance of Russia in the 1629 Black Sea should henceforth be made to cease. That was the principle laid down by England and France, and agreed to by Austria, and it was in the abstract accepted by the Russian Plenipotentiary. On Thursday last, at the conference held on that day, at which were present the English, French, Austrian, Turkish, and Russian Plenipotentiaries; the Plenipotentiaries of England, France, Austria, and Turkey proposed to the representative of Russia, as a mode of making the preponderance of Russia cease in the Black Sea—which, in principle, had been admitted and accepted by Russia—either that the amount of the Russian naval force in the Black Sea should henceforth be limited by treaty, or that the Black Sea should be declared entirely neutral ground and all ships of war of all countries be excluded from it, so that henceforth it should be a sea for commerce only. The Russian Plenipotentiary required forty-eight hours to take that proposal into consideration. Those forty-eight hours elapsed on Saturday, and on Saturday another conference was held, at which the Russian Plenipotentiary absolutely refused to accept either of the alternatives proposed, those alternatives being pressed by the four other Plenipotentiaries unanimously. Thereupon the conference adjourned sine die, and my noble Friend the Member for the City of London, and the French Minister, M. Drouyn de Lhuys, were, I believe, to take their departure from Vienna in the course of the present day.
§ SIR HENRY WILLOUGHBYsaid, the noble Lord had not answered the question of the hon. Member for Manchester (Mr. Bright), with respect to any counter propositions which might have been made by Russia.
§ VISCOUNT PALMERSTONI have to state that Russia made no counter proposition.