Lord Ponsonby, being first called upon for his opinion, stated, he had no objection to offer, but after his colleagues had spoken he should make some observations on the Tribute. The other Ministers gave their assent to the propositions of Rechid Pacha; the arguments they used Lord Ponsonby does not report to Lord Palmerston, as they would appear in the Protocol, but which Protocol is not, I suppose for some wise purpose, inserted in the _Levant Papers_. We must, then, content ourselves with the British Ambassador’s own observations. He begins by stating, that Mehemet Ali having been deposed, and the Porte appealed to, to reinstate him, sufficiently proves that the Treaty of the 15th of July does not bind the Allies. His Lordship, I believe, was singular in this opinion, for it has been distinctly and repeatedly stated by the Allied Ministers both in London, Vienna, and Constantinople, that the Treaty of the 15th of July should be the basis of the settlement of the Egyptian question; and in no part of the correspondence does it appear that the Allies approved of the deposition of Mehemet Ali, and it may therefore be fairly inferred that they entirely disapproved of it. His Lordship takes for granted the Treaty is not an absolute rule, and thus observes: “If the Treaty be not the absolute rule, why are we to counsel the Sublime Porte to take a measure that was adopted in that Treaty, at a time when affairs were in a state totally different from their actual state? The Treaty was a compromise with Mehemet Ali, and all its stipulations were conditional, and with a view to engage him to accept it. Mehemet Ali decided to refuse the Treaty, and to try the chance of arms. He has been vanquished, and he has made unconditional submission to his Sovereign. How then can the Treaty be obligatory upon the Allies, (of whom the Sultan is one,) to take the measures framed for another position of affairs which has ceased to exist? “If then the Treaty be not obligatory upon the Allies, the counsel to be given by us to the Ottoman Porte is to be based upon the instructions we have received from our Courts; and we are not to advise the Porte to adopt measures that are impossible to be reconciled one with another, and contradictory, so as that one measure, if adopted, shall defeat almost every other measure which we are ordered to recommend.”