AN INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL FOR EUROPE. 355 



date to support the contention, in favour of a Tribunal, based upon 

 moral, as well as upon potential power. 



1. In 1853, a Congress assembled at Vienna, in-order to deliberate 

 upon the Affairs of Turkey, and to prevent a war which threatened 

 between the Allied P.owers and Russia. 



Lord John Russell represented Great Britain at the Congress, and, 

 after prolonged negotiations, the Congress unanimously decided in 

 favour of certain recommendations to Turkey, as embodied in the 

 celebrated Vienna Note. NoW mark, the declarations contained in 

 the Vienna Note were the unanimous decision of the Congress ; 

 they were accepted by Russia and Turkey at the Congress, but on 

 their presentation by Lord Stratford De Redcliffe to Turkey for its 

 acceptance, Turkey, for some unexplained reason, obstinately refused 

 to carry them out. Russia then insisted that the Great Powers, 

 who had signed the Note, should call upon Turkey, in the interests 

 of peace, and of the good government of her Provinces, to 

 carry out the declarations it contained, but Great Britain, France, 

 and Italy, instead of enforcing its acceptance upon Turkey, sided 

 with the latter, and Russia, finding that the Vienna Note was not 

 to be enforced, sent her Army across the Pruth, an event which 

 was followed by a Declaration of War by the Allies on behalf of 

 Turkey, against Russia. 



Had Great Britain, and the Allied Powers, determined upon 

 enforcing the decision of the Vienna Congress ; had«they abandoned, 

 as useless, all hope of the moral influence of the Vienna Note, upon 

 Turkey, and Conveyed to Turkey, in unmistakeable language, an 

 intimation, that her refusal to accept the proposals would be a 

 declaration of war against her by the Powers represented at the 

 Congress, it is generally admitted, that Turkey would have yielded, 

 and the Crimean War would have been averted. 



2. In 1867, a dispute arose between France and Prussia in regard 

 to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which France was anxious to 

 obtain as compensation for the victories and conquests of Prussia in 

 the wars waged by Prussia against Denmark and Austria. Lord 

 Stanley (now the Earl of Derby), as Foreign Minister for England, 

 proposed, on behalf of the British Government, that a Conference 

 should assemble in London, and, if possible, secure a peaceful 

 settlement of the question. The Conference met, under the 

 presidency of his Lordship, and an amicable solution of the 

 difiSculty was arrived at, by which the fortress of Luxembourg was 



