“‘By such means it seems to Her Majesty’s Government, that future security might be afforded, both to the Sultan and to his Egyptian subjects, against the disposition of Mehemet Ali to rebel against his Sovereign, and to oppress the people of the province he would have to govern.’ “The above constitute the sole rule I can follow, and they are the only words I am at liberty to use in the counsel I shall consent to give to the Sublime Porte.” The reader will observe these instructions were merely general, and ought to have been followed only so far as the Porte had the power of enforcing them; besides, at the time they were given, Lord Palmerston was not aware what force Mehemet Ali had in Egypt; and there is not a word in these instructions to lead Lord Ponsonby to suppose that Lord Palmerston would have recommended the Porte to set aside Ibrahim Pacha, which was evidently Lord Ponsonby’s aim. His Lordship finishes his letter to the Baron by observing, that as Mehemet Ali had rejected the Treaty of the 15th of July, the Allies are free to act as they think proper. However free they might have been, they always declared they should abide by the basis of the Treaty of the 15th of July, which was acknowledged by my Convention, and also by the instructions of the 15th of October, which Lord Palmerston quotes in his despatch of the 17th of December,—that despatch which the British Ambassador takes for the guide of conduct, viz.: “Your Excellency and your colleagues will, of course, have given to the Porte the advice specified in my despatch of the 15th of October to your Excellency:” and again, “In fact these articles of agreement were substantially a complete surrender on the part of Mehemet Ali, and he was led to suppose, that in asking for hereditary tenure, he was only asking that which the Porte was willing to give[91].”