treaty, pending the final payment of Chinese indemnity], to insist on the refusal of a lease of that port on terms similar to those granted to Germany.”[226] This view was sounded, it is true, to the British Minister at Peking, and not to the Russian Government, but the latter was not to encounter an effective protest from a government which had so soon made up its mind that the protest might fail and be compensated by itself reproducing the evil at China’s expense.[227] At any rate, Count Muravieff deemed it now safe to declare, beginning with March 8, that no alternative had been left to Russia, under the uncertainty attending the development of affairs in the Far East and other circumstances, but to demand a cession both of Talien-wan and Port Arthur, the former only to be opened to foreign trade; that one of these ports without the other would be of no use to Russia, while the use of both was of vital necessity to her; and that the lease would not interfere with the sovereign rights of the Chinese Empire. To the last pledge was added, probably at the persistent representations of England, that the treaty rights acquired by the Powers in China would be respected.[228] The distinction made by Count Muravieff between Port Arthur and Talien-wan at once brought home to the British Government the gravity of the situation. The first impulse on the part of Lord Salisbury was to fall back upon M. de Staal’s statement of February 10, that any (_tout_) port which Russia might acquire on the Chinese coast should be open to the foreign trade.[229] Count Muravieff, however, explained that the statement applied only to Talien-wan, but no promise had been made regarding Port Arthur.[230] On March 15, however, he was authorized by the Czar to give to Sir N. O’Conor “an assurance that both Port Arthur and Talien-wan would be open to foreign trade, like other Chinese ports, in the event of the Russian Government’s obtaining a lease of these places from the Chinese Government.” The Count intimated next morning that it would be desirable for the British Government not to repeat this assurance in the House of Commons, for “it might be considered as a want of courtesy toward the Chinese Government, who had not yet formally agreed to give the Russian Government a lease of the ports in question.”[231]