The existence of an informal understanding between the Czar and the old Tory Government of 1844 shows us why his Majesty, in conversation with Sir Hamilton Seymour, on the 9th and 14th of January, 1853, reopened the question which he believed he had virtually arranged with that Government. The last living representative of it--Lord Aberdeen--was Prime Minister of England; Turkey was in a more decrepit condition than ever; France seemed bent on reviving the Napoleonic legend--of evil omen to England in Egypt; nay, she was challenging the claim of Russia to secure protection for the Greek Christians in the Ottoman Empire--a claim which the Tory leaders in 1844 were disposed to favour.[109] The Czar therefore thought it most opportune to say to Sir Hamilton Seymour, as he had said to Wellington and Peel, that Turkey, “the Sick Man,” was dying on their hands, that England and Russia should either agree what should or should not be done with his heritage when he died, and, further, to suggest that the Christian provinces of Turkey should be organised as independent States under Russian protection, whilst England occupied Egypt and Candia.[110] Lord John Russell’s reply to these conversations must have also misled the Czar, preoccupied as he was with the fact that, in terms of the Secret Memorandum of 1844, England and Russia had agreed on a common policy in Turkey. Lord John, in effect, said that, as the British Government did not think that the Turk was quite moribund, it was premature to discuss any project, negative or positive, for disposing of his territory, and that England had no desire for territorial aggrandisement. But he went on to add that he thought the Sultan should be “advised” to treat his Christian subjects justly and humanely, because, if he did so, the Czar would not find it “necessary to apply that exceptional protection which his Imperial Majesty has found so burdensome and inconvenient, though no doubt _prescribed by duty and sanctioned by treaty_.” The words here italicised were not altogether in accord with the facts, for no treaty sanctioned in plain, definite terms this “exceptional protection;” moreover, they admitted the whole Russian case; for, as will be seen, it was precisely because the Czar was supposed to be bent on extorting from Turkey an extension of the sanction given by existing treaties to the Russian Protectorate over her oppressed Christian subjects, that Turkey and England went to war with Russia. Whether that war was right or wrong, this is certain: it was waged by the English Government to rebut a claim, which that Government at the outset admitted. The Czar, through Count Nesselrode, expressed himself satisfied with the self-denying pledges which had passed between the Russian and English Governments, and, as England had promised not to entertain any project for the protection of Turkey without a previous understanding with Russia, so Russia, he said, gave a similar undertaking to England.