Then came the censure which the House of Lords passed on him on the 17th of June. It was morally certain that if Russia followed France in withdrawing her Minister, the House of Commons would have confirmed the censure of the Lords, whereupon--condemned alike by the Crown and by both Houses of Parliament, by the Tories, the Radicals, and the Peace Party--Palmerston’s career must have ended. And every moment Brunnow’s demand for his passports was expected. At this crisis Palmerston, says Count Vitzthum, “turned to the Russian Minister with the inquiry whether there were no means of reconciling the Cabinet of St. Petersburg. After some consideration, Brunnow proposed a bargain: ‘Give us Denmark,’ he said, ‘and then we will give you Greece and forget the past.’ Of course it was not a question of ceding the Danish Kingdom, but of converting it into a Russian dependency, and giving the Emperor Nicholas a prospect of obtaining the harbour of Kiel.”[163] But how was this to be done? The first step was to get the integrity of Denmark affirmed as a European interest. Playing on Palmerston’s ignorance, Brunnow invented Russian claims to the Duchies based on those rights to the Gottorp portion, which the Emperor Paul had surrendered. These claims, Brunnow said, would be revived by the Czar Nicholas when the Danish line of kings became extinct with the death of Frederick VII. At such a suggestion Palmerston entered quite eagerly into the project of settling the succession to the Danish Crown on the basis (1), of recognising the integrity of Denmark as a European interest; (2), of passing over all male heirs to the sovereignty of the whole Danish Kingdom, in favour of Prince Christian of Glücksburg, the husband of the female heir. The points in the game which Russian diplomacy scored were three. The bargain kept Kiel out of German hands, which were alone strong enough to hold it against Russia. By getting the integrity of Denmark recognised, Russia rendered it easy for her to demand the whole kingdom whenever the time came to revive the Czar’s so-called claims to the Duchies as heir to the House of Gottorp. By getting the sovereignty of Denmark vested in Christian of Glücksburg, Russia contrived to seat on the Danish throne a Prince whose line of succession was not unlikely to fail. [Illustration: THE EXCHANGE, COPENHAGEN.]