Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century

“If we should find it consistent with the welfare of our State, that the Muscovite have an inlet into the Baltic, as having, of all the princes of Europe, a country that can be made most beneficial to its prince, by uttering its produce to foreign markets. In this case, it were but reasonable to expect on the other hand, that in return for our complying so far with his interest, for the improvement of his country, His Czarish Majesty, on his part, should demand nothing that may tend to the disturbance of another; and, therefore, contenting himself with ships of trade, should demand none of war.”

“We should thus preclude his hopes of being ever more than an inland power,” but “obviate every objection of using the Czar worse than any Sovereign Prince may expect. 1 shall not for this give an instance of a Republic of Genoa, or another in the Baltic itself, of the Duke of Courland; but will assign Poland and Prussia, who, though both now crowned heads, have ever contented themselves with the freedom of an open traffic, without insisting on a fleet. Or the treaty of Falczin, between the Turk, and Muscovite, by which Peter was forced not only to restore Asof, and to part with all his men-of-war in those parts, but also to content himself with the bare freedom of traffic in the Black Sea.^[129] Even an inlet in the Baltic for trade is much beyond what he could morally have promised himself not yet so long ago on the issue of his war with Sweden.”

If the Czar refuse to agree to such “a healing temperament,” we shall have “nothing to regret, but the time we lost to exert all the means that Heaven has made us master of, to reduce him to a peace advantageous to Great Britain.”

War would become inevitable. In that case, “it ought no less to animate our Ministry to pursue their present measures, than fire with indignation the breast of every honest Briton, that a Czar of Muscovy, who owes his naval skill to our instructions, and his grandeur to our forbearance, should so soon deny to Great Britain the terms which so few years ago he was fain to take up with from the Sublime Porte.”

“’tis every way our interest to have the Swede restored to those provinces which the Muscovite has wrested from that crown in the Baltic. Great Britain can no longer hold the balance in that sea,” since she “has raised the Muscovite to be a maritime Power there... Had we performed the articles of our alliance made by King William with the crown of Sweden, that gallant nation would ever have been a bar strong enough against the Czar coming into the Baltic.... Time must confirm us, that the Muscovite’s expulsion from the Baltic is now the principal end of our Ministry.”

Footnotes from MECW