The Tsar's sudden determination to abandon those advantages, which he was supposed to have acquired by the Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, has always been ascribed to his desire to separate France and England. Without doubt, this consideration entered largely into his calculations. But he was also annoyed with Metternich and was anxious to thwart his plan of establishing the seat of the negotiations at Vienna. Moreover, it was now realized that Orloff's treaty was a document of no practical value. Russia, by reason alone of her geographical position, could never be prevented from exercising her influence over the counsels of the Porte. Nor could the stipulation that the Sultan must close the Dardanelles at the demand of Russia be of any real utility, seeing that the maritime Powers had refused to accept this condition, and that Turkey would be unable to carry out her engagements in the face of their opposition. In a general way the doctrine that a weak State makes an excellent neighbour might be sound, but it was plainly inapplicable to Turkey--the custodian of straits so vitally important to Russia as the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. Under these circumstances, there was much to be gained by waiving the purely illusory advantage to be derived from the Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, and by agreeing that the closure of the straits to the warships of the Powers should be declared a law of nations.[518] Brunnow made no secret of the fact that his Imperial master would be only too pleased, were France to refuse to accede to his proposals. His desire was soon gratified. When the project was communicated to it by Lord Palmerston, the French government flatly declined to entertain it. The Russian overture, wrote Marshal Soult, was clearly a device for separating France and England, and it was with "feelings of painful astonishment" that he perceived "a man of such enlightened judgment as Lord Palmerston entertain it with so much complacency." Russia, he proceeded, had betrayed her real intentions by insisting that she alone should undertake the defence of Constantinople. If her motives were such as she pretended, why this repugnance to the idea of "the flags of the allied Courts floating side by side with her own" in the Bosphorus? "Never," he concluded, "with our consent shall a foreign squadron of war appear before Constantinople, unless ours appears there also."[519] Whilst he thus declined absolutely to consider Baron Brunnow's propositions, Marshal Soult put forward a plan for the settlement of the questions in dispute between the Porte and Mehemet Ali. But the solution of the difficulty, suggested by the French government, when it came to be examined, was found to amount to little more than an arrangement whereby the Pasha was to obtain the hereditary tenure of Arabia, Syria and Egypt, in return for which he was to restore to the Sultan the district of Adana.[520]