which, as your Lordships will see when you refer to the Protocols which I shall lay on the table to-night, was made by my noble friend the Secretary of State, that Austria should accept this trust and fulfil this duty; and I earnestly supported him on that occasion.  My Lords, in consequence of that arrangement, cries have been raised against our ‘partition of Turkey’.  My Lords, our object has been directly the reverse—­our object has been to prevent partition.  The question of partition is one upon which, it appears to me, very erroneous ideas are in circulation.  Some two years ago—­before, I think, the war had commenced, but when the disquietude and dangers of the situation were very generally felt—­there was a school of statesmen who were highly in favour of what they believed to be the only remedy—­what they called the partition of Turkey.  Those who did not agree with them were those who thought we should, on the whole, attempt the restoration of Turkey.  Her Majesty’s Government at all times have resisted the partition of Turkey.  They have done so, because, exclusive of the high moral considerations that are mixed up with the subject, they believed an attempt, on a great scale, to accomplish the partition of Turkey would inevitably lead to a long, a sanguinary, and often recurring struggle, and that Europe and Asia would both be involved in a series of troubles and sources of disaster and danger of which no adequate idea could be formed.

These professors of partition—­quite secure, no doubt, in their own views—­have freely spoken to us on this subject.  We have been taken up to a high mountain and shown all the kingdoms of the earth, and they have said—­’All these shall be yours if you will worship Partition.’  But we have declined to do so for the reasons I have shortly given.  And it is a remarkable circumstance that after the great war, and after the prolonged diplomatic negotiations, which lasted during nearly a period of three years, on this matter, the whole Powers of Europe, including Russia, have strictly, and as completely as ever, come to the unanimous conclusion that the best chance for the tranquillity and order of the world is to retain the Sultan as part of the acknowledged political system of Europe.  My Lords, unquestionably after a great war—­and I call the late war a great war, because the greatness of a war now must not be calculated by its duration, but by the amount of the forces brought into the field, and where a million of men have struggled for supremacy, as has been the case recently, I call that a great war—­but, I say, after a great war like this, it is utterly impossible that you can have a settlement of any permanent character without a redistribution of territory and considerable changes.  But that is not partition.  My Lords, a country may have lost provinces, but that is not partition.  We know that not very long ago a great country—­one of the foremost countries of the world—­lost provinces; yet, is not France one of the Great Powers