But once again a crisis was averted. On the morning of the day on which the meeting of the Cabinet was to take place, Guizot presented himself at the Foreign Office with two despatches from M. Thiers. The first, dated October 3, purported to be an answer to Lord Palmerston's despatch of August 31. It was a long and rambling statement of the French case. The chief argument consisted in an attempt to show that France, throughout the negotiations, had never departed from the principle embodied in the _collective note of July 27, 1839_. Then, as now, France considered that that instrument had been drawn up for the purpose of guaranteeing the independence and integrity of Turkey. She had always believed that the object which it had in view was to enable the Sultan to escape from the exclusive protection of a certain great Power. She had never understood that the policy of preserving the Ottoman Empire was bound up with any question of "territorial limitations, more or less advantageous, between the Sultan and the Viceroy."[643] The second, and more important, despatch bore the date of October 8, and dealt with the _firman_ of the Sultan deposing Mehemet Ali from the government of Egypt. France, declared M. Thiers, was prepared to leave the question of Syria to the chances of the war, which had actually begun. But the edict expelling the Pasha from Egypt was a different matter. It threatened to disturb the balance of power in the East, and France could, therefore, not consent to see it carried into execution.[644] Certain writers have pompously asserted that, on this occasion, M. Thiers "formulated the _casus belli_." It must be borne in mind, however, that he had already been informed by Lord Granville of the light in which the British government regarded the Porte's decree of deposition. Hence many of his contemporaries treat his despatch of October 8 with derision. That famous document, they contend, merely "forced an open door."[645]