The intelligence of the last violence offered to the Porte by Prince Menschikoff reached England on the 30th of May. The British Cabinet took a decisive resolution. On the 31st of May a despatch went forth from the Foreign Office, placing the fleet under Admiral Dundas at the "disposal" of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, to be ordered whithersoever he would, but not to be allowed to enter the Dardanelles, except on the express demand of the Sultan. Two days afterwards, by a direct order, Admiral Dundas was instructed to proceed at once from Malta to the neighbourhood of the Dardanelles; and three days later, the French Government learning this, and being desirous of acting in concert, the Emperor sent orders to his squadron to quit Salamis, and proceed to Besika Bay. It was not possible--it was not, at that stage of the question, desirable--to do more. The two fleets were placed within call of the Sultan, and the treaty of 1841 was not broken or strained. The temper of the British Government now underwent a great change. Its trust in the Emperor Nicholas was gone. On the same day that Lord Clarendon entrusted the fleet to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, he wrote a despatch to Sir Hamilton Seymour, recapitulating, with trenchant brevity, those "most solemn assurances" which the Czar had given over and over again. It is a long catalogue; there are no less than sixteen distinct pledges that the question of the Holy Places, and that alone, required to be resolved. Yet at this very time the Czar was urging on Prince Menschikoff to extort from the Porte a treaty which would have laid that independence at his feet. The "explicit, precise, and satisfactory assurances" which came day by day from St. Petersburg were day by day proved to be worthless at Constantinople. The assurances of the Czar, and the language and acts of his Minister at the Porte were in flagrant contradiction. This flagrant "discrepancy," as the British Secretary of State mildly called it, he did not fail to set forth as the ground of a demand for explanations; nor did he fail to remark that Prince Menschikoff had been supported by a display of force, with what object he desired the Russian Government to explain. At the same time Lord Clarendon distinctly informed the Russian Government that England was determined to abide by that policy which held the preservation of Turkish independence and integrity to be essential to the peace of Europe. Sir Hamilton Seymour had already confronted Count Nesselrode with his promises. Nothing can exceed the cool effrontery with which the wily old Chancellor maintained that he had concealed nothing. His language, he averred, had always pointed to the exact reparation which Prince Menschikoff had demanded, and against which the Turkish Ministry and the British Ambassador had raised such "unaccountable" objections. Well might Sir Hamilton remark that "a long-cherished object" had been "sought by a tortuous path." Indeed, few