University of California, FROM THE LIBRARY OF D R . FRANCIS L I E B E R , I'r-'fi .: nf llisn.ry and Law in Columbia College, New York. :KT OK MICHAEL REESE, 2. line 12. t,->r .Diplomacy, read Diplomacy chaotic. 1W, line 5. for l&ll. rw41852. 180, line 3, for Nay. read Nay why. 192, line 4,' for 11,000, read' 17,000,000. 209. This article should precede that on p 198 ; it was written and dated on the 15th September. 217. line -x/c/r stops, read stabs. CONTENTS. PAGE The Greek Church and RUSSIA Protection . Atigust 10th 1 Time in Diplomacy the "European Recognition" llth 10 Nineveh and Parliament 12th 18 Denmark and the " Times " 13th 22 The relative Power of Russia and Great Brjtain 13th 24 Denmark and Russia ,, 16th 33 .War between England and France ... 16th 37 Lord Palmerston and the Cabinet . , . . 19th 41 Protestantism and the Czar .... 20th 48 Rationale of the Servian Occupation . . 22f/ 52 The Kaiser and the Czar .... 23d 56 Evacuation of the Principalities . . . 24th 60 Austria and the United States ... 63 The British Press and Russia .... 25th 66 Russia and the United States the Corn Trade 26th. 70 Approaching Conflict of Russia and the United States 2*7 th 76 The "Character" of England and the "Honour" 29th 82 Consequences of Surrender 35 30th 86 Anatomy of a Diplomatist .... )' 30*7* 88 The Scales of Justice 31st 92 The Times and the United States 5J 31st 97 The Anatomy of a Diplomatist. No. II September 2d 100 The Honour and Character of a Great Gentleman 3d 105 Another Pebble from the Brook 55 3d 112 Lord Fitzwilliam and Russia 55 5th 117 The Venetian Conclave .... 6th 123 Tooth Money on the Pruth and the Eyder J5 127 Diplomacy made Easy J3 7th 132 The Happy Family .... 53 7th 136 Mr. Roebuck and the Galley Slave 55 8th 141 The Fabian Policy 55 Qth 147 A Peep behind the Scenes 10/A 152 ' 12th 159 Commercial Diplomacy .... 35 12th 162 Till CONTENTS. The Safety of Turkey and the Honour of England Mask and Anti-Mask The Pocket Crisis A Byzantine in London ..... How to get out of Besika Bay .... How to keep the Peace The Ransom Shall the Turks and the Eussians bellowed to fight it out ? England France Turkey .... The Error The Malefactors The Defence Suppressio Veri Lord Aberdeen Compunctious Thimblerigging Billstickers Beware ! Coincidences and Anticipations ... Besika Bay Squadron ..... Philosophy of Ambition ..... Is the Continent to become Tartar or Cossack ? Charles James Fox as a Diplomatist The Liturgy of Crime Russian Agency in Cabinets and Clubs " The Times " and Turkey .... Lord Palmerston The Eye of the Czar Refusal by the Porte of Western Succour . Why does the English Cabinet persevere ? . The Uses of Impeachment .... The Democracy of England and Diplomacy . The Squadrons and the Loan Westminster Review and Lord Palmerston The Turks in Arms and the Turks in Diplomacy Terms of Settlement with Turkey The " Times " and the Manchester Meeting . .. Turkish view of the Public Meetings in England December 10th 11th 19** 20th 21st 21st fad 23d 23d '23d 21th 21th October 3d 20th . 21th ' 5> 5> . 29** Sot- ember 1th 8th , 12th 13th 209 218 218 220 222 223 225 230 236 238 239 24O 243 247 250 253 257 260 261 262 263 264 268 273 275 280 283 288 290 October 27th 301 Custom Houses and Embassies Note to Article on Russia and the ITnited States the Corn Trade .... r 19th 306 On the Present State of the Turkish Question er 22d 307 LETTERS, ARTICLES, THE GREEK CHURCH AND RUSSIAN PROTECTION. August 10th. SIR, The course which you have adopted, with respect to the great matter now in hand, may not, in itself, be deserving of gratitude, because you have only done your duty ; but duty is meritorious, when neglect is the rule, and observance the exception. You have dealt with the case on its merits, and according to your best judgment. You have even given this proof of sincerity, that you have changed your opinion with respect to statesmen as the matter developed itself, and you had reason to understand them better. The ability which you have brought to bear is a matter of scarcely less importance. While you have not lent your columns to deceive (the general use of newspapers), you have employed your pen to arouse and to direct the sense of the nation, in respect to the matter the most grave ever yet submitted to the decision of public infatuation. After this statement, you will pardon me if I venture to remonstrate against your article of this morning. The new incident, like the turning in a road, shuts out the connection ' to the physical eye, and it requires to be acquainted with the country, to know which hand to take to arrive at the pro- posed destination. The matter, Sir, is not concluded with the passage of the Pruth ; that event in itself is nothing ; it has happened a score of times without endangering the Ottoman Empire. You consider that supervision of the 6 THE GREEK CHURCH AND conduct of Ministers now only regards the past. Allow me to tell you, Sir, that you are but approaching the critical moment. The profits of the passage of the Pruth are now to be realized in a convention by which the Powers shall be made to interfere in the affairs of the Christian subjects of the whole Ottoman Empire, in the same way that, twenty - seven years ago, they were made to interpose in those of the small province of the Morea. This, Sir, is the danger, this the achievement worth a dozen campaigns ; pursuing the nobly beneficial course upon which you have entered, warn now in time the people of England (diplomacy is as a race where the last is always beaten and the foremost always wins), so that they may not hail with jubilation the new crime which will be presented to them as a triv.nipJi. I tell you, Sir, that Eussia will evacuate the Provinces, and would evacuate them twenty times, in order to secure that " general assurance " of the Porte which is to deprive her of all " exclusive influence." I tell you, Sir, that it would be tenfold better to allow her to occupy the Principalities than to admit such a condition for their evacuation ; and, still further, that it would be infinitely less dangerous to allow her an exclusive Protectorate, than to establish a general one, however vague and unmeaning it may be rendered in terms. An exclusive one would, at least, be her own assump- tion, and not your act. It would excite resistance against Tier, jealousy of her ; it would be a public crime committed by her ; it would unite Sultan, Mussulmans, Greeks (Oriental Christians), and Europeans against her. As a common measure, the odium lies on you, together with the impossi- bility of reversing it, because the step which you take from a motive of expediency is itself unlawful, and places you at once out of the court of honour and out of the pale of reason. It amounts to this four policemen discover a burglar with a set of housebreaking tools upon his shoulder, too heavy for him to carry, and too many for him to use, and they*say amongst themselves, " Let us help the poor fellow, and then no robbery will have been committed." Does England or France want to protect the professors of the Oriental Church ? Do the people of England or France know what the meaning of the word is ? Teach them that, Sir, and you will deserve a civic crown, and a mural, too, for saving many citizens from heedless guilt, and Europe from RUSSIAN PROTECTION. 3 ruin for not less is involved in the case now before you. Allow me, in the meantime, to suggest some points for your consideration. The Oriental Church, to which belong nearly 14,000,000 of the subjects of European Turkey, is not the same as the Russian Church. The Russian Church has a doctrinal basis which was originally in conformity with it, but it has, by the governing action which has absorbed unto itself all things in Russia, in the course of five centuries, been changed into a mere piece of administrative machinery. This machinery is constructed, not simply for the purposes of internal despotism, but also for those of external aggression. In the pursuit of this end, the Emperor has been made at once, in a religious and political sense, Head of the Church. His name is printed in the same form as that of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. The children are taught in their catechism that to him "faith" and "worship" are due. The congregations are deprived of all consistorial rights ; the prelates, of all independent functions; and the patriarch, the object of peculiar veneration in the Oriental Church, is absolutely extinguished. Now, Sir, you can judge by your own feelings of those of the professors of the Oriental creed, if you were called upon to admit this HUMAN GOD as head of the Church of England, or of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Do not for an instant suppose that the Christian subjects of Turkey would feel less acutely than you would, either abhorrence of the sacrilege or indignation at the imposition. On the contrary, they will understand it better, because they have possessed, unbroken from. the earliest times, the Apostolical constitutions. These feelings will not appear, so long as Russia, from a distance, proffers political independence; but wait till you see her bring political subjection. Then you will see (supposing her established at Constantinople) a religious persecution, and a war of polemical hatred, such as the world has never yet witnessed. Nbw, the Oriental Church, which goes under the name of " Greek," and is even called " Russo-Greek," has actually little or nothing to do with that people. The Greeks, in as far as they constitute an agricultural, organised, warlike, and worthy population, have already been severed from Turkey. There remains belonging to that empire only half a million 4 THE GREEK CHURCH AND living as a community, and occupying the country south of the Pindus and Olympus ; this population did not choose to rise even at the time of the Greek revolt. The remainder of the Continental Greeks are scattered through the principal cities, where their occupations are those of handicraft, mer- chants, hucksters, brokers, interpreters, and priests, living there solely by their dependence on the Turks, and possessing wealth and influence by the happy adaptation of their genius to in- sinuate itself into the good graces of the dull and confiding Turk. They are better known by the Christians, every race of whom either hates or despises them. On their side, they know their interests to be bound up with Turkish supremacy, but they are, by their greater intelligence, the people of all the East who most thoroughly detest the Russians. For the same reason, they are for her the most available of instru- ments : but no Greek serves Russia save for a consideration. They are, however, a vain people, and entertain travellers with stories of a Byzantine restoration ; so, also, they disguise the painful circumstance of the mis-estimate of their qualities by their fellow Rayahs. The employment of them by Russia has mainly contributed to discredit her in the eyes of all these popu- lations ; and the common movement in "VVaDachia, Bulgaria, Servia, &c., to get rid of a Greek prelacy, and to substitute for it a national one, has arisen out of the connection of the Greeks with Russia. The eft'ect of this revolution in the Patriarchate of Constantinople has been to detach it from Russia, who has now lost that leverage of religion which she has hitherto worked with such deadly effect. You will observe, Sir, the confirmation of this statement in the very demand which Russia now puts forward of a Pro- tectorate. If she possessed influence over the Christians, she would use it, and say nothing about it ; if she demands it from the Sultan, it is that she wants his authority to esta- blish it. But the case is infinitely stronger : the Sultan is actually the protector of the dissidents of Russia Proper, not as the result of Turkish intrigues at St. Petersburg, but as the result of their direct appeals to him. 50,000 of fnem have already emigrated into the Turkish dominions. The recent atrocious persecutions in Russia have led to a petition to the Emperor, either to be left alone or to be suffered to miirrate into Turkey. They are prevented from escaping into Austria by a secret arrangement entered into in September, RUSSIAN PROTECTION. 5 1846, under which several of them have already been seized and delivered up. Now, these dissidents, who are supposed to amount to nearly 8,000,000, are no other than the rem- nants of the ancient Church of Eussia, and are consequently in every respect identical with the Christian subjects of Turkey ; so that the Protectorate claimed has in view not less the per- secution of Russian dissent, than the subjection of the Oriental to the Russian Church, and that to be effected by arousing Mussulman fanaticism against the Christians. It will thus be seen that Russia is engaged in a very hard task, and one utterly hopeless, if her own means be considered; but if by putting forward religious pretensions which the Powers consider alarming, and backing it by a military in- vasion, which the Powers have rendered alarming by inducing Turkey to endure it she can bring them to propose as a means of adjustment, any sort of recognition by the Sultan of the right of interference, in reference to its Christian subjects, then she will have effected, in reference to the administra- tion of the Empire, exactly what she effected in 1841, in reference to its integrity. In that year she proposed a eommon guarantee of that integrity, on the condition of ex- cluding men-of-war from the Black Sea ; by means of it, in 1853, she sweeps over provinces in resources exceeding in importance her own immense dominions. If, now, you again admit of common engagements, expecting thereby to curb and clog her action, you will, as then, and on all other occa- sions, confer on her the power of doing that which by her own means she could not have accomplished. We must now render to ourselves an account of what Pro- tection is, and what it can mean. In the Capitulations, the word has a peculiar and, so to say, a legal sense. It is neither vague nor general, but special and individual, as used in the Capitulations. These acts, be it observed, are not bipartite contracts or treaties : there are no counter-stipulations, and are incapable of enforcement by legal procedure : they are merely charters octroyed to the various populations, granting them privileges and immunities, the chief of which is that of being governed by their own laws and by their own magis- trates. But, when cases arise between them and the subjects of Turkey, the mode of procedure is laid down, and the Turkish Court is not allowed to adjudicate except in presence of the agent of the community itself, namely, its consul, or 6 THE GREEK CHURCH AND interpreter, who is to be present to protect their rights. That is the value of the word " protection ;" it means no more than the right of having a certain advocate or attorney. The Capitulations with France allowed her in this manner to protect other persons, not her subjects, being without natural protectors ; but these persons were not subjects of Turkey, they were " certain Latin priests." No stipulation was re- quired to obtain this right. Turkey refuses it to none. A private individual may exercise it : any foreigner may claim such protection from any foreign agent. France, however, made use of this purely fictitious right, carrying it to the extent of deporting the so-favoured individuals, and, in her very admirable instructions in 1792 to her consuls in the Levant, these functionaries are required to send out of the country any of those Latin priests who rendered themselves obnoxious by intermeddling in local politics, so as not to compromise the French Government with the Turkish. I think, Sir, you will now apprehend the bearing of a general, vague, and abstract right of interference with nearly 20,000,000 of Turkish subjects in Europe and Asia for Armenians, Jacobites, Nestorians, Catholics, &c. will be prac- tically included. You will perceive that the more vague, the more unmeaning the contract or note may be made, by so much will it be the more dangerous ; if any of your readers do not apprehend it, their eyes may be opened by an illus- tration. Suppose that the Emperor of the French had obtained a similar sanction in England, and could make it apply in the same manner to Catholics, then, if a question of a Catholic trust came for adjudication before the Lord Chancellor, the French Consul would take his place beside the gentlemen with silk gowns, and so argue the case, to the disgust alike of the bench and the bar ; if, notwithstanding his science and eloquence, the Chancellor demurred to the view taken in the instructions from Paris, the matter would be immediately transferred from Westminster to Downing-street, there to be decided between the French Ambassador and the English Foreign Minister. In this analogy we must suppose a French fleet with an army of disembarkation at Dover, the entrance of the Thames open and unguarded, and the other Powers of Europe consenting parties to the general arrangement, and, moreover, with their navies locked up in the Black Sea or the RUSSIAN PROTECTION. 7 Baltic, having bound - themselves by treaty not to use their physical preponderance in passing those limits. What, I ask, would be the condition of the internal Government of England, what the burning indignation in the heart of every Protestant against the detested Catholic name ? Would you not have Lord George Gordon mobs would you not have assassina- tions and burnings, to justify, by this explosion of Protestant fanaticism, the bombardment of London ? Would you not have the Catholics of England turning to the Emperor of the French, even although he had officiated in lieu of the Arch- bishop of Paris, and had told his flock, striking his forehead with his fist, as did Peter the First, " Here henceforward is your Pope and your GOD !" The object of the Emperor of the French would be tke creation of a body of partisans ; his instructions consequently would be, always to support a Catholic claim, and always to oppose a Protestant one ; the cases would not be confined to those of corporate rights and administration, but would extend to every individual interest not merely as in conflict with other individuals, but as regards the payment of taxes, the jurisdiction of rulers as well as of courts, and would apply to every quarrel in the streets. Eeverting to the case of Turkey under the approaching settlement, which I call upon you to labour to prevent, such an incident as this might and will arise. The Ambassadors of England and Russia are seated to- gether in a room in the " cross street " of Pera : a row takes place below ; a Turk has knocked off the cap of a Greek, or the Greek has stabbed the Turk, and is seized by the officers of justice: the Russian Ambassador starts up, exclaims, "This is unbearable," and calls out to his janissaries to go and rescue the Greek. " Oh ! " exclaims the English Ambassador, " you have no right to exercise an exclusive influence ; we are to clog you." " Yes," replies the other, " it is a common note, and, therefore, you are bound also to interfere. If you do not perform your duty, you cannot prevent me from per- forming mine ; it remains for you but to thank me for relieving you from the performance of the engagements you have con- tracted." The course which I have here described is exactly that which the British Ambassador would himself take in reference to a British subject. When one of the 8,000 so-called persons resid- 8 THE GREEK CHURCH AND ing in Turkey happen, as is not unfraquent, to assassinate a Turk, he is taken out of the hands of the native authorities, is sent to Malta for trial, is acquitted for want of evidence, and can in three months return to assassinate another. It is the same with respect to all minor crimes. The matter will not rest with, as the case may be, the de- fence of the injured or the liberation of the culprit. The Turkish Government and the Turkish people have been accus- tomed to submit to such proceedings in reference to foreigners, but they will draw between these and this interference in regard to natives, a distinction not visible to European diplomatist. The courts of law will resist ; the Porte may resist too, the people will rise ; blood will be shed, one or two Russian cai-as/ies will be killed, perhaps also an attache, or a consul or two; and then it will be a case for reprisals. Ob- serve that Russia, in the Treaty of Adrianople, has given her- self a right of reprisals, not for the payment of debt, but as the -penalty of any alleged violation of stipulations ; that these reprisals are not to be a sequestration of property, but acts of war. Observe that there lies a capital exposed to bombard- ment, and a squadron ready for bombarding it, a tanto, and with water and provisions on board, at the extreme point of the Russian territory nearest to the entrance of the Bosphorus, the distance being 200 miles, the wind almost always favour- able, and the sea across which they would have to pass relieved by the treaty of 1841, "for the integrity of the Ottoman Empire," from the possibility of the inconvenient presence of the men-of-war of other States. Such is the action that has to be clogged by an interference that sanctions it. Such is the immunity from punishment which you are now about to establish for 20,000,000 of men, no longer foreigners resident on sufferance, but the natives of the land, who are henceforward to see in the Emperor of Russia a type of freedom, such as never entered into the dreams of a sans culotte. Thus is anarchy to be enthroned to involve, in the first instance, the Powers of the West in an intervention on its soil, leading to a war between themselves, then and then only can the Dardanelles be occupied. the present arrangement may not realise all, but the door is opened from the moment that any condition is attached to the evacuation of the Principalities. They must be evacuated unconditionally, an indemnity must be paid to Turkey, other RUSSIAN PROTECTION. 9 securities must be taken; into which the length of this letter prevents my at present entering. But, Sir, you may rest assured that if the powers can be brought to agree in any stipulation whatever, bearing this way, aj danger is incurred a thousandfold greater than the passage of the Pruth ; and if the withdrawal of that array be necessary to obtain this stipulation, most certainly will it be withdrawn. In the meantime, the Eussian troops will have consumed the harvest, and thereby open in England a market for Russian grain, drawing into Russia some millions of money, and adding to the receipts of the treasury 15 per cent, upon the exports. A small profit of 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 will have been made for the moment at the expense of the British artizan ; and next year, on some new complication, she will return on other grounds. And this is the most favour- able view of the case. You have long professed a lively interest in the fate of Turkey, you have long recognized the maintenance of that Empire as at once the most important, and the only perma- nent interest of England, connected as it is, and alone is, at once with the maintenance of the peace of Europe and of your supremacy in India ; but you have been alarmed lest that empire should not be able to maintain itself, and you have deplored as the cause of its danger the misuse of its resources, the dilapidation of its military power, and the dis- affection of its Christian subjects. At one and the same moment you are startled with the discovery that it actually supplies to Europe one-third of its enormous consumption of grain ; that it possesses a magnificent army of incomparable spirit ; but, above all, that its Christian subjects are not the dupes of its enemy, and not united in faith to Russia. Are you now overjoyed in the sense of the security you have re- gained ? No ! each discovery falls on you only as an embar- rassment ; each evidence of Turkish strength, by leading to resistance, has become an annoyance. You apply yourselves first to extinguish her trade; secondly, to nullify her army, and to convert it into a source of danger by sanctioning in- vasion, and proclaiming peace ; and you are about, thirdly, to force the whole mass of Christian Rayahs, as you did the Greeks in 1826, into dependence on the enemy you dread, and the protector they abhor ! Such conduct exhausts the most powerful feelings of the human breast contempt and 1 10 TIME IX DIPLOMACY indignation ; it surpasses in its bootless iniquity, almost the conceptive faculties of man. How can you thwart Russia's plans, you who cannot comprehend your own acts. Your task, Sir, has but commenced; the siege opera- tions of a century and a half have now been completed, the zigzags and trenches dug, the third parallel drawn, the silent labour of spade and mattock is at an end, the breaching batteries are unmasked, the assault is carried to the foot of the walls, the fabric of European power totters, the time of foresight is gone by, the struggle has come, and we who live on the earth shall see with our eyes and feel in our bodies the drama performed and the penalty inflicted. TIME IN DIPLOMACY THE "EUROPEAN RECOGNITION/' Augmt \\tli. SIR, I have to express to you my gratitude for the inser- tion of my letter of yesterday, by means of which you have enabled me to put within reach of those to whom the manage- ment of affairs is confided, warning beforehand. After the e\eut, words are useless ; the still voice of reason, the whisper of truth, or the storm of public rage and opinion are equally in vain. In the Agorai of Greece, and the Senate of Borne, the Ambassadors of Foreign Powers were introduced to make their statement in open debate, with those of the other party, to hear and to reply ; but now all is managed in whispers ; and, instead of knowledge preceding counsel, it is conceal- ment. The only chance of arresting evil measures is pre- dicting them so that they may see that to be a snare laid for them by others, which they imagined to be a profound combination of their own. This habit of secresy superinduces in the nation heedless - ness of causes in operation and excitation upon events. All they care for is news, and consequently they never think upon a subject until it is too late for any advantage to be derived from their reflections. On the present occasion the Russian Cabinet has .pushed THE EUROPEAN RECOGNITION. 11 the English into the attempt to solve enigmas, not only in reference to the countries surrounding the Black Sea, but also in respect to those surrounding the Baltic. The two positions are, in fact, to be simultaneously advanced upon ; however far asunder in point of space, and dissimilar in point of antecedents and procedure still, in one respect, and the important one, the road that leads to them they are the same. Downing Street is the way alike to the Sound and the Dardanelles ; and that because the English Cabinet will manage, and in secret. You will, therefore, understand the importance which I attach to the insertion of my letter of yesterday in your journal, which, in consequence of its recent articles on the great event of Europe, is now read in diplo- matic circles. For a similar warning respecting the Soujid, I could get no insertion. That warning was translated, by the zeal of friends, into some half-dozen languages, and sent in vain to some score of journals. The papers at Constantinople did not dare to insert it : Yassy, Bucharest, Augsburg, Vienna, Paris, and London were tried with no better success. This universal repulsion arose, not so much from Kussian parti- sanship as from sheer incredulity ; it was regarded as extra- vagant. However, within a couple of years the treaty was signed ; and then, reproaching myself with my own neglect, I instantly sent it to be printed as a pamphlet, and it came out under the title of Denmark and the Duchies. But even the Treaty did not help me; there was no sensation : it was not known to be an event ; all that society knew, and all that the Ministers knew, was merely what Baron Brunnow had told them ; so that though the Treaty was announced in the Times, there were members of the Government who, in the March of the year following, denied its existence, and were startled when a printed copy was shown to them. Before the Treaty I could not be heard, because the proposition was too monstrous to be believed. After the Treaty, again, I could not be heard because, if my interpretation was correct, the Treaty could not exist. One single copy of the pamphlet was sold : not a paper noticed it ; the statement therein contained is now the admitted opinion of the whole of Europe : the result now deplored has been submitted to only because not seen in time. It was not seen in time, because you only care about news, and 12 TIME IX DIPLOMACY will attend to matters only after it is too late. A member of that Cabinet said, "Ah, if I had known this before." So it has been, so it will be with England, until her last capital of folly is expended : it will always be, " If I had only known before." This may appear to have little to do with the matter in hand ; but, in fact, it has everything to do with it. It is not the four corps of Russians on the Danube, nor her 150 gun- boats, that are to deflect the stream of history from its level course, and change it to a Niagara. It is the evanes- cent thoughts of some five or six or, at the utmost, some twenty or thirty men and women in London, who are no more conscious than the babe unborn of the methods employed now, and for generations past, to keep their minds in tutelage, tjiat will bring the events which the graphic historian will have to pourtray, and the profound reasoner to investigate. To what end the creation of the diplomatic faculties of Russia, unless to overreach why overreach us, unless our power was great ? how overreach us if not by blinding us to its existence? Then she uses it to her ends. In my letter of yesterday, I think I made it clear that Russia wants a " European recognition," in reference to the Oriental Church, such as she obtained last year in reference to the Danish succession. The word I have quoted is her own it is from the Protocol of "U'arsaw. When the Powers granted that " Recognition," they did not know that they had done anything ; the English Government attributed to their act no further importance than that of relieving them- selves " from being pestered." Russia, when she obtained it, converted it into a " European necessity," and brought it down like an icy avalanche on the head of Denmark, to extinguish at once its ancient laws and its modern liberties its past beneficial despotism its present applauded Consti- tution. Thus were cut out by the stroke of a pen twenty heirs to the Crown, a whole host of royal and princely lines disinherited, and the succession of the now united Monarchy entailed on the heir of a quarter of the Duchy of Holstein, recognised in the person of Nicholas the First on the strength of claims doubtful, if not inadmissible, in their origin and, if founded, over and over again extinguished by boundless concessions ! THE EUROPEAN RECOGNITION. 13 The country, thus dilapidated and prostrated by your unconscious act, is covered with no Cimmerian darkness, robed in no Colchian fable ; it is almost on your shores, and under your eye ; the victims are a people of your own race ; the Sound was at stake, and with it the oceanic supremacy of Great Britain. What then has to be expected, when it is a question of an Oriental Church of barbarous Turks of Khans and Knezes Boyards and Caliphs of wild tribes roaming on the plains across which were wafted the sighs of an Ovid, or Pandours inhabiting unpronounceable fortresses on the Danube ? This is the difference between the two cases, that you have sacrificed the Sound, to escape from being further lectured by a Russian Ambassador ; and that you will sacrifice the Danube, the Euxine, the Bosphorus, the Dardanelles with these, the Levant, and ultimately Egypt and the Red Sea, by a triumph over the Czar. In the Danish case, Russia did not trouble your inventive faculties ; she gave you the Treaty all ready ; she put the pen in your hand, after she had dipped it in the ink, and merely said in an undertone " Sign this." In regard to the Turkish settlement, she allows you the satisfaction of taking the initiative ; she has cast you off kicked you spat on you, and said " Now, pray invent, devise a process. You know I have lifted the trick in the north; you know that there is no water in the Baltic for your line-of-battle ships ; now, I give you your revanche dice or cards, whichever you like ; the ' colours ' or roulette ; the billiard balls or single stick ; the foils, with buttons on or buttons off; make your choice: it is all one to me." " Well," says the British Government, " we will try a congress ; we will have a joint note ; we will beat you at your own weapons, and roast you on your own spit ; we will bring down upon you a * prudent reserve,' and checkmate you with ' judicious conduct ;' we will batter you with 'character,' 'courage,' and 'sincerity;' with France in one hand, with Austria in the other, and another weighty stone Prussia under the arm, we will drive you back into your deserts and your snows." On this the Czar shoots himself. Lions and cocks, and .leopards,* and eagles black and gray, with double' alld single maw, a whole menagerie let loose about a dancing and muzzled bear ! And ^et the * The Imperial animal of the Ottomans. 14 TIME IN DIPLOMACY result, unless you, Sir, the conductor of a popular English journal, and Lord Clanricarde, the member of a degraded British Legislature, interpose by a few words of man's reason to prevent it, will be the imposition upon one of the five con- federates, by his associates, of a condition which extinguishes his sovereignty ! The close of the passage at arms with Russia will be* a stab in the back at Turkey. Is this not, then, the occasion to direct attention to our governing system, and to call for its revision ? It is very needless to abuse the members of the present Cabinet. I would, of course, if it depended upon me, bring them to the bar of justice ; and, if there were virtue enough in the country to adopt that course, no doubt the evil would at once be remedied ; for men would not accept office without the requisite qualifications, if responsibility attached to their acts. That course being impossible, at least for the moment, I would direct attention from the ministry to the people I would ask the latter how they have employed those great incentives to public action, those springs of pre-eminent virtue and sinews of national success censure and applause ? The public men of England are the creatures of popular breath ; they are masks with mechanical voices, but, like that of Esop's fable, without brains ; they have, indeed, a material brain, but not an originating one ; their senses are plants parasitical, feeding on the trunk of opinion nurtured by the dews of applause ; they perceive when the people desires but have no sight in that direction where opinion does not run. The nation has had no opinion to spare for its great concerns, and as the rulers must ever be what the people are, its government has neglected its great concerns. You trust peace and war to the Monarch, but you have taken from the Monarch the means of action ; you have taken out of his hands the nomination of his servants : having usurped from the king of England now reigning Victoria the kingly functions, you have not the coherence of despotic will sufficient to exercise in fulness that usurped authority. The Parliament, the echo of ephemeral faction, arrogates to itself the nomination of ministers, and so becomes a sovereign ; and, ipso facto, an irresponsible sovereign : yet it- imposes upon its own omnipotence an absolute abdication, by excluding itself from knowledge. The House of Commons has the nomination of ministers ; the Crown the prerogative THE EUROPEAN RECOGNITION. 15 of peace and war ; servants of the Parliament they conceal from their master their acts ; servants of the Crown they impose on it their persons. These are not individual acts of tyranny ; these are not achievements of individual art ; this is the system a system existing by the nation's will and approval, of which the individual members of Parliament are the victims ; of which the Ministers, for the time being, are the victims ; of which the actual wearer of the crown is the victim. They are all victims, especially in this, that they know not what themselves would be conceive not what themselves would do had they come into the exercise of their respective functions according to their original institution. In consequence of this usurpation the nation becoming indifferent the minister is reduced to dependence upon Foreign Powers, having to defend British and public right against extrinsic action. The nation does not even know of the existence of this struggle ; it is neither intent at his back watching and urging him if he errs or fails, applauding and strengthening him if he is right and successful. Pressure is constantly applied on the one side without countervailing resistance on the other. It is the intellectual application of the steam engine in its new combination of high and low pressure ; the piston-minister is driven by the expansion of vapour on the one hand, and dragged by the exhaustion of vacuum on the other. To what does Russia owe her pre-eminent station and her vast ambition, whence that faculty of aggregation which has converted her life into a theory of expansion? Is it the ennobling impulse of freedom is it the discipline of discus- sion is it the compactness of resources the order of a well-regulated society is it the legitimate influence of refined literature and of polished manners is it homogeneity of race, language, and faith ? Is it, in a word, by any one of the elements of greatness which remarkable Empires have possessed and remarkable reasoners conceived ? The answer I need not give ; there is no mind however common-place, no prejudice however inveterate, that has not anticipated it. She has risen, then, to the possession of a power, and to the concep- tion of a purpose, by which she menaces all things existing on the face of the earth, the embattled fortress, the thatch- covered hut, the cities of kings and the wanderers' tents, the icebound fiords of Scandinavia, the sultry plains of the Deccan. 16 TIME IN DIPLOMACY Her arm is raised over a caliph of the Mussulman, it is shaken from afar at a Lama of the Bhuddhists ; her one foot is placed upon the neck of the Pope of the West, and the other is lifted, ready to fall on the patriarchal remnant of the faith of the East, crushing the very cradle of Christianity. She has made herself a god upon earth, placing herself la the seat of Providence, intending to take from the human race the soil upon which they tread, the habitations in which they dwell, the bodies in which they live, and the very souls which God has given them. But let us content ourselves with saying " She has rendered herself the most powerful State in Europe, and is actually engaged in purposes of active aggression, while the rest of the world is quiescent;" to what does she owe this station if not to some faculty of mind which has not been correspondingly cultivated by the other States What that faculty is, it is not difficult to apprehend, although that apprehension will not give us the possession. It consists in knowledge of man, not of man in the abstract, but of man dwelling in society. When you consider him thus, and with a practical purpose that of considering what you can do with him, how you can play off this faction against that, how you can convulse this state or that, how you can misdirect the action of this state upon that, how you can excite the animosity, or persecution, of this faith or sect against that, and how you can bring into collision this Govern- ment with that then, indeed, is there nothing visionary and nothing impossible in the scheme, seeing that we live in an age where opinion is rife and virtue is rare ; and, when once you get the practice established that one Government shall interfere in the affairs of another, and the maxim introduced that the decision to act shall be taken in secret then may the Russian representative in every capital in Europe stand aa an irresponsible adviser, an occult and inviolable influence behind the throne, and every nation be governed from the Russian Embassy. It will not be denied that the present Cabinet of Englan J is a fair representation of the knowledge and capacity that lielong to the race. If we fail upon the present the greatest occasion ever offered in our time it will not be in conse- quence of our affairs having been for a moment entrusted to inferior hands. It cannot be said that a popular triumph, or backstairs intrigue, has cast, or tricked into office, a knot of THE EUROPEAN RECOGNITION. 17 demagogues or sycophants ; neither can it be said that we are in the hands of a worn-out official, or compact family clique, effete by established routine, or insolent by nepotism : it cannot be said that we have new men, inexperienced in the arts of government, or unpractised in those of diplomacy. Our Cabinet contains all in mind, or character, qualified to ennoble power and command fortune. It has struck deep its roots in every intellectual soil ; it has spread forth its branches to every lucid and varied breeze of celebrity ; and, whilst its venerable summit is frosted with the dignified experience of half a centuiy, green vigour shines through its humbler leaves. Need I refer to the Nestor or the Ajax of diplomacy ; to the rational earnestness of the expounder of a national conscience; to the unshackled energy of the asserter of colonial liberties ; to the young and bold promise of Celtic originality ? We have, in fact, a Government repre- senting all opinions, combining all capacities, honoured by the confidence of the Crown, and not dependent on the will of the Parliament ; bound by no pledges, but possessed of all knowledge ; propped by no faction, but guided by libe- rality ; led by no sordid ambition of power, but starting from power to win an easy way to fame. It is at such a moment that England is unfit to deal with an insult and an injury; to unmask a knave, and repress a bully ! I write these words under the painful anticipation of to- morrow's debate. I took up my pen, intending to proceed with practical details, but I have yielded to the overpowering thought of your character. What signify facts, when you have got no men ? what signifies what Russia is doing on the Tigris or the Danube, on the Nile or the Pruth ? that only is of moment which she is doing in the drawing-rooms of London : there is to be lost and won the dominion of the world won by a phrase or two, lost by a single weakness. England, you have no voice in that conclave. Your Ministers can never listen to the exposition of your sufferings, of your rights, or of your fate. You have put them in that position ; and therefore, when the evil day comes upon you, wolf-like, you will die with the growl of a wild beast, never having charged your wrongs as a man. "The evacuation of the Principalities is," said Lord Clarendon, " a sine qua non preliminary to any settlement." But that evacuation to be a settlement must be unconditional, 18 XIXEVEH AXD PARLIAMENT. as far as Russia is concerned, and provision must also be made against present injury and future aggression. First, then, the evacuation will be without any engagement entered into by Turkey. Secondly, an indemnity to Turkey for pecuniary loss, and to the trade of all nations on account of the accidents at the mouth of the Danube, resulting from her neglect. Thirdly, the abrogation of all existing Treaties between Russia and Turkey, and consequently of any pretence of interference with the subjects of the latter country. Fourthly, the abrogation of the Treaties of 1840 and 1841, equally violated by her act, and the consequent admission of men- of-war of all nations to the Black Sea. Fifthly, the modifi- cation of the English Treaty of Commerce of 1838, so as to obtain the free exportation of Turkish grain. Sixthly, the renunciation of all claims upon Persia, whether pecuniary or territorial. Seventhly, ithe abrogation of the Treaty o"f the 8th of May, 1852, and the consequent restoration of the succession and constitution in Denmark. There is no more difficulty in obtaining all than in obtaining one. If you do not, you will be, in the words of Lord Clanricarde, " parties to the present act of piracy, as you have been to all the previous steps that have led to it." " Of the seven points, the essential are the admission of our vessels to tlie Black Sea, and tJie exportation of Turkish grain ; no one will pretend that there is the slightest difficulty in ob- taining either. They have even nothing to do with Russia, but only with Turkey. XIXEVEH AXD PARLIAMENT. August Ut/t. The civic crowd nightly rushes to behold the conflagration of Nineveh, with restored decorations, presenting to us the very image of a splendour buried in its own catastrophe, and exhumed after 3000 years. Little do those who flock to the drama imagine that they have represented on the stage before them the ancestors -of the two great empires, whose actual conflict presents a spectacle to Europe. The parts are, how- ever, reversed, and it is the descendant of Sardanapalus who NINEVEH AND PARLIAMENT. 19 stretches forth his hand upon the diadem of the successor of Arbaces. Here the scenic thunder rolls to reprove the impious descendant of Nimrod, assuming the place of God, but on the theatre of real events no lightning strikes the descendant of Peter, and it is the thunders of a Christian world that applaud and approve the sacrilege. This affiliation might be accepted, on the spiritual claim of descent, for two races could not have been found to admit a pretension so repugnant to human nature, to universal evidence arid belief. It rests, however, upon more practical evidence. The learned Michievicz, in his lectures at the University of Paris, has endeavoured to establish the identity of the Russians and the Assyrians on philological grounds. One of the most curious of his illustrations bears upon this very point of the adoration of a " human God." It appears that the name of Nebuchadnezzar is nothing more than the Russian phrase for " There is no GOD but the CZAK." As to the connection of the Medes and the Turks little doubt can remain, after the discoveries of Messrs. Layard and Botta, and the interpretations of Rawlinson, Hincks, and others, where the learned have discovered, to their infinite surprise, the Turkish or monumental language in pre-historic times. If this be so, it is certainly not one of the least remark- able events of this wonder-making age, that at the moment when Turk and Russian are about to mingle in deadly con- flict, and that for a position which is to command the world, facts should be brought to light which carry back through thirty centuries the origin of this strife, and that the tombs of these nations should give up to us the body, feature, colour of their daily existence, their modes of being and acting, their gestures and adornments, the arts which they practised, the monuments they reared, the language they spoke, and the very objects they gazed upon. There is something appalling to find oneself in presence of the long-forgotten dead ; but what is this to finding our- selves in presence of long lines and races who have played their part on the great stage of the Universe thousands of years before our name was heard, with characters permanent as the objects of nature, and impulses fluctuating, but regular as her laws? Such a contemplation furnishes some relief from the nausea and the common-place of the " Eastern 20 XIXEVEH AND PARLIAMENT. Question, 55 and we can forget for a moment Diplomatists, Cabinets, and Parliaments the rats and weasels of the day -for the lordly bulls and winged lions of Ezekiel, and the Prophets of Esarhaddon and Cyaxares. Let us then for a moment consider the mental features of the descendants of the Medes, who, in early times, of all the nations of the earth combined warlike energy (they were the institutors of discipline) with patriarchal freedom ; wealth, arts, and splen- dour with mild and beneficent rule ; and of whom it has been said that they exacted tribute as the sign of dominion, not as the reward of conquest. The Turks of the present day afford to Europe several great lessons in the art and practice of government ; the first of which is the placing of local usage on the footing of, and invested with, the attributes of written law, and so dis- pensing with the process of legislative compilation, as to enable the government to be carried on by means of a few simple maxims, capable of adjustment and application to every variety of local circumstance. They present a monument of religious toleration. It is not indifferentism ; they are not merely neutral, or passive ; they adopt into their administration the hierarchy of the respective creeds, giving currency and effect to its legitimate decisions, and overruling and setting aside the law of the Koran, when- ever that^ law for its Christian subjects is in conflict with*the lights, or rules, of the Church. That toleration extends also to finances. Xo taxes are imposed as a religious disability, and no payment is made under any form whatever for the advantage of the predominant Church. In matters of finance, currency, protection, and ail that regards the pecuniary interests of the Government, and con- sequently the material condition of the people, a class of facts are afforded for our study, not less important than the foregoing. We must 'not here allow recent infractions, im- posed by exterior considerations, to deprive us of the value we may derive from the examination of the system itself. That system is one of pure simplicity ; it has no Tariff, and does not complicate with the question of taxation the interest of classes. The consequence is, first, that there is needed no Parliament to protect the liberties of the nation, because the amount of taxation is invariable ; secondly, that there are no opposing interests of classes, because taxes fall on NINEVEH AND PARLIAMENT. 21 property ; thirdly, that there is no pauperism, for the ex- change of labour is unartificial. The last great principle which we shall notice is the sub- ordination of the regal and executive power to the judicial in matters of peace and war that is to say, in the judicial matters affecting the State as a State. Hence has arisen a sense of honour in regard to transactions with foreign powers, at once discountenancing projects of acquisition, and encou- raging throughout the nation a spirit of resistance to foreign violence. It is to this division of authority that is ulti- mately to be attributed the fact, that the most aggressive position in the world the Dardanelles, is at present con- dered as a point to be guarded, not as one to be guarded against. Now, if we turn to the antagonist of Turkey, we will not find analogous subjects of study, or grounds of sympathy. There is enthroned a system of intolerance and persecution, of restriction arid prohibition, of complication of laws without liberty in their enactment, of complication of func- tions, and multiplicity of functionaries, of concentration of all power in the hands of the Chief of the State, and the extinction of religion, both by its conversion into an instru- ment of statecraft, and by the attributes conferred upon the Czar. There remains absolutely but one branch in which we have anything to learn from Kussia, and that is diplomacy ; but this study is imposed solely in consequence of the use which slie makes of that art against ourselves. But Turkey is not merely remarkable in maxims, she is so also in events. A. quarter of a centuiy ago she had nearly fallen to the ground, not less by internal decay than by external violence ; not merely had her Christian populations risen in arms, but her Mussulman subjects had denied their allegiance. The whole of the great organisations of the State were simultaneously in revolt namely, the regular force, or Janissaries ; the great feudatories, or Dere Beys ; the irregular feudal militia, or Spahis ; while the viceroys of the extreme provinces of the west, the east, and the south, were preparing to erect for themselves independent sovereign- ties. The Executive power entered simultaneously on a contest with all these bodies, and on a war with Russia. The result is that its authority has been restored from one 22 DENMARK AND THE TIMES. extremity of the Empire to the other ; that each of these organisations has been swept away, even to the very name ; that an absolute dependence and subordination of adminis- trative authority has been instituted ; that a disciplined army under the direct orders of the State, amounting to 300,000 or 400,000 men, has been created ; that the revenue of the Treasury has been increased threefold, and the commerce of the Empire fourfold. It deserves also to be noted, that in the course of this change two tides of convulsion had swept over Europe, once in 1830 and once in 1848, and that neither Russia nor Turkey were, in any degree, shaken by these events, or in any degree conscious of their passage further evidence of the permanency of these societies, or of their fortunes resting upon foundations not assailable by the fluc- tuations of opinion, which periodically submerge the powerful and intellectual Empires of the West. It is in anticipation of the debate in the House of Lords this night, that we offer these reflections, as possibly they may strike, in those who may take part in it, a nobler chord than those which have given forth on similar occasions their wiry discords. Yes, Senators of England, it is into a great presence that you are about to rush, whether it be that of the Turk and his dignity, or the Russian and his genius. See that you disgrace not by unseemly words and unworthy thoughts the name that you bear, and the land that you ought to adorn and to protect. DENMARK AND THE "TIMES." August The Russian organ of Printing -house-square, yesterday re- turned to its Danish vomit, and drubbed its readers with a daring rechauffe of its old and exposed falsifications. Our readers were made acquainted at the time, by our corre- spondent at Copenhagen, with the coup d'etat of the 19th of July. That catastrophe was the flagrant exposure of the Treaty of the 8th of May, 1852 a Treaty which the Danish Minister required the Diet to accept as a " European neces- sity;" and, because of the Diet's refusal to accept it in an DENMARK AND THE TIMES. 23 unconditional manner, the Constitution has been violated, in fact and deed, by four reiterated dissolutions. The Times, in the course of these operations, by a calculation which we traced day by day, suppressed in as far as depended on it, and, in so far as it could not suppress, falsified the facts for the British public. It played its part in Denmark by threatening and bullying the Diet into the acceptance of the Treaty. It condescended to implore their submission in the interests of the preservation of the Constitution a Con- stitution which it then extolled as a " successful result" of the events of 1848. When the coup d'etat took place, it announced that no coup d'etat had occurred, and it described, on July 30th, the Eoyal measure as " a constitutional way of modifying an impossible constitution." It now announces the Eoyal project as a great provident and beneficial act, ad- mitting, nevertheless, that it is a " self-denying ordinance, which undoubtedly curtails," &c. In the earlier stage of the proceedings it gave the people of Denmark to under- stand that Russia was the Power anxious to abolish their liberties, and that its own deep interest in the question, and the advice to submit to the Treaty, were founded upon its anxiety to thwart Russian projects. Now, it boldly asserts that Russia has had no hand in the matter, but " on the contrary, the Russian Minister at Copenhagen has taken every means in his power to express his disapproval of the Ministerial scheme." Who but the Times was acting at Copenhagen ? All hail to the diplomacy of Printing-house-square ! It has beaten off the Czar from the Sound ; while that of Downing Street, with its fleets and its " Talents," has been surrender- ing the Dardanelles. It goes on to say, " Similar misconceptions appear to have arisen with reference to the Danish succession." "Ay, there's the rub," said the Prince of Denmark not that new "Prince of Denmark" of the play-bill of the Times of yester- day, but that pallid detector of treason, and punisher of crime, who communed with gravediggers, and moralised on a skull " Ay, there's the rub/' British journalist and Russian tool, deceiver of confidence, suborner, false witness who uses the faculty of vending type doubly, to sell him who buys your news as foreign, and him who trusts your words as British ! Now, after you have consummated your work, and performed your task not a gratuitous one, for 24 THE RELATIVE POWER OF the honour of knavery, be it hoped after you have extin- guished Denmark : for you have the honour of the work after all Europe has detected the imposition, and though, alas ! too late, the consequences you dare to proclaim that Russia has "formally sacrificed her own eventual rights,' and you have the face to warn the Ministers of Denmark that :. rowing themselves under the influence of Russia" they will "forfeit the confidence of the nation," Here is a case liable to no ambiguity. Any man of ordi- nary industry, by spending an hour in turning over a file of the Times, commencing from May, 1S52, wilTsee it at once. There is statement, perversion, suppression, contradiction, regularly adapted, for cam-ing out the views of the Russian Embassy, by misrepresenting England 'to Denmark, and Denmark to England, together with the constant assumption that the journal itself has undertaken to act against Russia. In what sense, then, we ask, must the Times have been act- ing in reference to Turkey ? Then come two other questions what rewards has the Times received from Russia ': What does it deserve at the hands of England ? THE RELATIVE POWER OF RUSSIA AND GREAT BRITAIN. August 13. SIR, Providence in granting toman but a limited supply of reason, has guarded against the dangers thence accruing to societies by implanting a compensating instinct of honour ; it may be ind'eed a question of war with Russia whether the attribute of the lower order of animals does not assume the precedence even in matters the most humane and practical. To designate an individual a man of honour, would not convey the idea of dexterous management, or successful fortunes; but when you have said " honourable nation," you have implied talents to acquire, courage to defend, virtue to enjoy. On the other hand, " dishonourable nation " implies resources squandered, and degrading crimes. These reflections are suggested by the debate in the Lords of last night. It has also brought to my recollection some incidents of the past, and particularly one in which the RUSSIA AND GEEAT BRITAIN. 25 Member of an Assembly of a State somewhat similarly affected with our own, addressed it in these words : "The necessity of freemen has long impended over you the necessity of slaves may you never know ; the necessity of slaves is stripes, that of freemen is honour." Instinct is, doubtless, no less than reason a process of ratiocination ; but the distinction, like that between mesmeric and natural action, rests on a supercession of the use of the senses, or the results obtained by them. Thus, the rationalist politician would require, in order to form a judgment of the present negotiations with the Emperor of Kussia, to master a library of useful information, requiring six months for its perusal even if it were collected. Having neither the time nor the materials, he is reduced to a conscientious nullity, or becomes a loquacious sentimentalist. For the honourable man, it is enough that he should be indignant ; he requires no statistics, and thus instinct is safety. Such valour may, indeed, deserve at times the character of Quixotic, but that is when honour is weak, and insolence mighty. In the debate of last night, the background of the picture was war, and, doubtless, it is the dread of war, whether con- scientiously entertained or perfidiously suggested, that has placed England and Europe in their present ludicrous and humiliating position, and to this point I intend to address myself in this letter. I confess that it is painful to do so, but I make the sacrifice. It is so upon more grounds than one. It is an equal crime not to make war when just and necessary, and to make it without cause and necessity. It is not in your option to make it or not, if it be a just war, for the injustice is the act of others ; but if you are known to be ready to submit through fear of consequences, those con- sequences which you seek to avoid will most assuredly fall upon you ; if, on the other hand, you are known to be pos- sessed of spirit, that alone will guard you better than fleets and armies. There is, in the present generation, no danger, save that which is based on a calculation of your cowardice. Peace as an end, but justice as a means. Peace as a means, is war as an end ? a war following degradation. Now, let us take the case of a war with Russia. Will it be aggressive or defensive ? Will she attack you, or will you attack her ? On what element, on what field will the conflict take place ? what forces will have to be employed ? what 2 26 THE RELATIVE POWER OF interests, what troops compromised in case of failure? what results in case of success ? how much blood will be shed, and what will it cost ? We may set it down as a preliminary, that Russia will not send a fleet into the Thames, and that England will not send an army to Moscow. The power of the one state is on the sea, and that of the other on the land ; and as Cossacks cannot attack squadrons, nor line-of-battle-ships Calmucs, as England is enclosed in the seas, and as Russia environs the pole, there remains no field on which they can meet, except in so far as the one or the other may travel beyond its own territories, engage in aggression upon a third state, be compromised in a war with that state; then respectively they may supply resources, and so indirectly make war upon each other. On the present occasion Russian armies have travelled out of her own territories into those of Turkey. If the latter country accepts the visitation, you have nothing to say ; if not, then the war is between Russia and Turkey. We have first to consider the relative power of the principals. In their last war, namely, in 1828, with the exception of a single fortress, Russia encountered no opposition until she had crossed the Danube. She then overran the Principalities, as she has done in 1853, and no importance was attached to that fact. The contest was considered as commencing only after the Danube was passed, and the theatre of it was held to be exclusively Bulgaria. The whole resources of Russia were called up, " after two years of preparation," 200,000 men and 300 guns crossed the Pruth. On the other hand, the defence of Turkey, from temporary circumstances, to which it is superfluous to refer, was, to use the words of Pozzo di Borgo, reduced to the mere Mussulman population on the seat of war. She had, however, 30,000 of her new levies, and about an equal force of irregular cavalry. This was all that she could oppose to the invaders in the field. The Russians were defeated, and driven back at every point, save Varna, the capture of which was owing to our having destroyed the Turkish" fleet at Navarino, to which circumstance is also to be referred the unfortunate issue of the subsequent campaign. The resources of Russia have not increased since 1828, but, on the contrary, they have diminished. The condition of her army, from reasons too long to enter into, is no longer what RUSSIA AND GREAT BRITAIN. 27 it then was, and even then it was, by the avowal of the Russian authorities, no longer what it had been in the previous cam- paign of 1810. The resources of the southern provinces of Russia have not increased, but, on the contrary, diminished. They are actually proceeding towards depopulation : the Steppes, being adapted to a pastoral people, and requiring the camel even to be tenantable, are reduced to a wilderness, in proportion as the Tartar population is expelled, and a Russian one attempted to be introduced. The navy of Russia in the Black Sea has not increased; she had then thirteen sail of the line ; she has thirteen sail of the line now. In respect to the populations, which form, as it were, the two advanced wings of the Ottoman Empire, her position is wholly reversed. In 1828 the Polish Constitution had not yet been put down, nor had the Poles commenced to suspect the identity of their interests with the Turks. The Circassians had not commenced that wonderful political agglomeration and course of military triumphs, tvhich have constituted them so great a weight in the balance of European power. The Cossacks still lent themselves with docility to the Russian Government, nor had yet been awakened amongst them those aspirations, political and religious, which now point to a reconstitution of the ten millions of Malo -Russians, as an independent state. Finally, the commerce of Southern Russia has declined, partly through the depopulation to which I have referred, partly through the competition of the Turkish provinces. The condition, there- fore, of Russia has become worse in every point. Now let us turn to Turkey. Here has occurred one of the most extraordinary revolutions ever observed, and the maxim signally disproved that nations cannot recover. Each of the diseases, severally judged lethal, has been eradicated : bloodthirstiness, anarchy, dilapidation of finances, milkary disorganisation, and political disruption. The central authority has regained possession throughout the entire empire, and every province has been subjected to the conscription, furnishing now its quota to the army. A yearly- sum (3,000,000), amounting to nearly the entire revenue in 1828, is now expended upon the army, the material of which surpasses that of any troops in the world. At this moment the judgment of General Bern will not fail to be read with interest : I give it as expressed in a letter to the present Grand Vizier, then Minister -at -War : 28 THE RELATIVE POWER OF UR, Not seeing the order arrive to com- mand my presence at Constantinople, I conceive it to be my duty to address to your Highness some considerations which appear to me to be urgent. " I commence by declaring that the Turkish troops which I have seen cavalry, infantry, and field artillery are excellent. " In bearing, instruction, and military spirit, there cannot be better. The horses surpass those of any European cavalry. That which is inappreciable is the desire felt by all the officers and all the soldiers to fight against Russia. " With such troops I would willingly engage to attack a Eussian force double their number, and I should certainly be victorious. " And as the Ottoman Empire can march against the Russians more troops than that power can oppose to them, it is evident that the Sultan may have the satisfaction to see restored to his sceptre all the provinces treacherously with- drawn from his ancestors by the Czars of Moscow. " I have the honour to remain, Sec., " MB RAD." This opinion may be considered tinctured by the feelings of the man, but the fact is unquestionable that Turkey can now muster on the theatre of war twice the number that Russia can bring against her ; and if these are not all regulars, they are the same irregulars who in 1828, at Kurterpe, under every disadvantage of position, beat twice their number of Russian regulars. As to their quality, the opinion of General Aupick, expressed to the Sultan in 1S49, tallies with that of General Bern. " Your Majesty's troops," he said, " are able to give a good account of any enemies that will be opposed to them." Such, then, is the first ally that England would have in a war with Russia ; one singly her match, and which will fight against her, once the contest is engaged, to the very death, conscious that existence is at stake ; but this would be only the./M. From what is publicly known respecting the dispositions of Persia, I may content myself with merely stating that the fact of a war of England and Turkey against Russia would bring of necessity a declaration of war by Persia, and the placing of the resources of that state at the disposal of the rnalit.inn. RUSSIA AND GREAT BRITAIN. 29 The third is Circassia; but this one has not to be invited, and requires not to be supported ; Circassia is at tear, and winning daily triumphs. By the very last accounts, another fortress on the west has been captured, and movements of such importance have taken place on that side that a blockade of the coast has again been proclaimed. If they have stood their ground alone, and if, while Russia can bring to bear upon them her undivided resources, they are able to drive her back, take from her fortified places, and to beat her in the field, what would be the effect of their finding themselves suddenly supported by Turkey, Persia, and England ? From offensive, the war would at once become aggressive, and 100,000 Circassian cavalry would be on their way to Moscow. Here I must pause to point out that the new organisation of the Circassians has come from the Cossacks. There are no less than 500 Cossack naibs (newabs) or chiefs, under the orders of Shamyl Bey ; and taking this fact, in conjunction with the altered dispositions of the Cossacks towards Russia, it may not be too much to assume that the Cossacks should, even as a body, enter themselves on the list of aspirants for freedom, arid join their forces to those of the Circassians, who, in the supposed case, would not appear alone in the plains of Eussia, but in company with a Turkish army. Such are the allies whom England will have at her disposal, east of the Dnieper and south of the Danube. But after these come the Poles and the Hungarians, of whom it would be superfluous to speak. In fact, 70,000,000 may be moved against Russia, and her territories to the west, south, and east, encircled with a flame of insurrection. Lord Ellenborough, indeed, called attention to the fact, that a war with Russia would be an " offensive " one, because it would in its consequences put in motion the Poles and Circassians. The character of offensive or defensive depends on the acts which give rise to a war, not on the incidents which arise out of it ; but the world's attention requires to be called to the fact, that Russia is ever at war with the rest of the world, though she will not gainsay you while you call it peace. The casus belli arises out of the advance of an army, con- sisting of her whole available force, into a territory where it will be entirely at the mercy of the power possessed of the maritime supremacy in the Black Sea. 30 THE RELATIVE POWER OF At the period of the French African occupation, the English Government was taunted with suffering a course of policy to be commenced which would bring France into collision with England ; it replied by the then organ of the Foreign-office, the Globe, that this measure placed, on the contrary, France in entire dependence upon England, for we had got 100,000 Frenchmen as hostages. Such is precisely the position in which a Russian army would find itself in the Principalities : the Carpathians descending from the west ; the marshes of the Danube extending from the east, narrow to a single point, and that, defended by the Sereth, the communication between the vast Russian and the Turkish Empires. By transporting a Turkish force to the north-west angle of the Danube, the communications of the Russians would be cut off in the rear ; an English squadron in the Black Sea without even taking part in the conflict, but merely by locking in its harbour the Russian naval force, would enable the Turks, with their own means, to effect this operation. The army in the provinces is, under every circum- stances, dependent on supplies by the Black Sea and the mouths of the Danube : by cutting off the communications, that army must capitulate from starvation. The trade of the Black Sea is also exposed ; you have but to occupy the line of Perekop, to insulate the Crimea and as effectually extinguish Russia's maritime force by a land operation, as her military force by a sea operation. The only point to be considered is the force that would be engaged on the Euxine. Turkey has the actual superiority in steam ; she has nine or ten line-of-battle-ships, of which five are splendid vessels, of first-rate power, and magnificent in equipments. With the African reinforcements, the Otto- man navy may be considered as quite a match for that of Russia, if not more so. The British squadron now at the Dardanelles is itself far more than a match for the Russian force in the Black Sea. consequently the two conjoined, it would be impossible for a Russian flag to show itself; these results would be thus obtained without the expenditure, ex- cept for salutes, of a single charge of powder ; there would be no further expense incurred than that which the squadron at present costs, whilst the occasions for that expenditure, or for future armaments, would be removed. No subsidies would be required for Turkey ; she, on the contrary, would be RUSSIA AND GREAT BRITAIN. 31 glad to afford the provisions for your squadron. That this is Russia's vulnerable point is sufficiently proved by the secret article of the Treaty of Hunkiar Skelessi : the most valuable concession in Turkey's power, to grant Russia then selected and that was the exclusion from the Black Sea of the men-of-war of any nation with which she happened to be at war. Of such a war costing nothing, England would be uncon- scious ; it might be prolonged for years, or centuries ; it would cost Russia at the least 20, 000 a day (her present ex- penditure exceeds 12,000). Tor England there would be the alternative of continuing gratuitous operations, or a peace with securities against future aggression ; for Russia the alternatives would be continuing a war at the rate of 6,000,000, and 100,000 men, or the disruption of her empire. But this is not the only field of contest, nor the only means of coercion. The Baltic is equally open ; 110,000 Swedes are filled with a spirit fraternal to that of the Nizam, and, not to speak of Norwegians and Danes, there are, Fins and Lithuanians as well as Poles and Cossacks. Evolutions in the Baltic would cost no more than evolutions in the Channel. But what would become of the trade of Russia all this time ? What would become of her revenue ? What would her nobles, threatened with bankruptcy, be about? Nor would this be a temporary matter. It not that the exports of Russia would be stopped for a time, but that the demand would flow into other channels never to return to her. 1 therefore conclude in the words of Sir John M'Neill, " Eng- land being -with Turkey, all aggression on tJte part of Itti.ma becomes impossible." I have subdued my feelings to enter with patience and laboriousness into this review, in order to remove, not by reason but by facts, the obstacles presented to ajust estimate- of our position by a vague dread of war ; and for the same reason I have spoken of England as acting alone, not of her acting in conjunction with France, although it is impossible for her to act in this sense unless in conjunction with France. Whatever the dispositions or obligations of the Sovereign or Ministry of France, that Government could not stand still if England went forward, unless, indeed, the Ministry 32 THE RELATIVE POWER OF were disposed to sacrifice their posts and the Emperor his crown. I think I have shown war to be impossible : it is so upon two grounds the one intellectual, and the other physical. If it required war to curb Russia, you would never make it, because you are no match for her in mind : it is an insolence for Englishmen to talk of war with Russia. Make war with your equals make war with France. It may be, however, supposed that Russia's power may pro- gressively advance to that point where collision will become inevitable, and her arrogance "reach that limit where subser- viency will cease to be endurable. Even then I declare war to be impossible. In the first stage it is so, because Russia cannot cope with you ; in the second, it will become so, be- cause you will not be able to cope with her. From the one condition to the other, the two countries will pass, not by slow degrees, but in a moment of time, in the twinkling of an eye a moment that you will not anticipate, a twinkle that you will never perceive. This will come in consequence of the peculiar configuration of the countries to the south, and the anomalous mixture there of land and water, so adjusted that the turning of a Bramah key fetters at once continent and ocean. On the dispositions of Turkey, who holds that key in her hands, the issue rests. So long as she continues to strive for independence, the key is in your pocket ; when she resigns that hope, the key goes to St. Petersburg ; then will England's trident be laid down by Poland's spear; one hour will give to Russia the empire of the east, and take from England that of the ocean. Heretofore, to a heedless world I have cried aloud and in vain, " Until the Darda- nelles are occupied, Russia must submit to your decision ; afterwards, you will have to submit to her acts." I now repeat the warning to an alarmed world. I repeat it while your fleets are anchored at its portals, seeking not daring or not willing honestly to enter. I repeat it to England, conscious now of consequences and of power. Dismiss at least idle speculations dismiss hollow fallacies take credit for the support you do yield assume the merit of the power you exercise let the world know that Russia's fortunes spring from your munificence. Your Minister has declared " the Evacuation of the Prin- cipalities a sine qua nan of any settlement." The Evacuation RUSSIA AND GREAT BRITAIN. 33 of the Principalities is no settlement, and can be none ; and if it were so, you would not obtain it. Your Minister will feed on his own words as heretofore without fattening. Yet, in 1851, the Principalities were evacuated without England's help, and by Turkey's sole act. Would this, then, be a triumph, even if obtained ? Russia will evacuate to-morrow she will make compensation to the Turk renounce every pretension surrender every claim and every existing right which she possesses if you make her doing so the con- dition of not sending your squadron through tlie Dardanelles. Far be it from me to advise so base a course. Enter the Dardanelles first, and then make your conditions ; but as this is the course that England has to pursue, so is it the course she will not pursue, and the present fluster of opposition will, like every one that has preceded it, serve only to betray the cause, or the interest, by which it was provoked. You never have drawn the sword against Eussia ; you never will. " I dare any many in this house," said Lord Derby, on one oc- casion, " to utter the word war." Such is the language of Nicholas to Europe ; and thus it is, that the only power that has to dread a war, solves every question in her own favour, by its menace. DENMARK AND RUSSIA. August IQth. The events in the East have at least had the effect of open- ing the eyes of this country, and of Europe, to the perfidy of the Russian Government in respect to Denmark, whilst the simultaneous operations had established the unity of her action as bearing upon the two great positions of the Dardanelles and the Sound. It appears, however, by the ministerial explanations on Friday night, that the Government of England has not shared in this enlightenment, nor admitted this con- nection. But in this respect the Governments stand, as it does in Oriental matters, in direct opposition to the nation. There is the nation on one side, and the Government on the other. Unfortunately, however, the one is passive and the other active ; and the opposition, instead of having the effect 34- DENMARK AND RUSSIA. of relieving the Government from foreign thrall, forces it into dependence on foreign protection and, seeing what it no longer hesitates to declare respecting Denmark, we can no further doubt as to what it will do respecting Turkey. The question of Mr. Blackett was by no means a formi- dable one. He commenced by assuming what was false, and thereupon asked a question which was futile. " He had in- formation," he said, " that the Court of Russia had executed full renunciations of its right of succession ;" and asked why " those renunciations were not included in the Treaty of last year, as similar renunciations by the House of Bourbon were incorporated in the Treaty of Utrecht ?" We are at a loss to know whence Mr. Blackett derived his information ; and we do know, not only that Russia has executed no renunciation?, full or empty, but, further, that she has, in the most emphntir mann d her rights. It is but a few days since we extracted a passage from a despatch of Count Xesselrode to the Baron Ungern-Sternberg, Russian representative at Copen- hagen, which was made public in that city on the 2-ith of July, and in which the Russian Government fully reserves her rights. The answer, therefore, to his question was, simply that the renunciations were not inserted in the Treaty, because no renunciations had taken place. It is true that Russia has waived her claims in favour of the Duke of Glticksburg, and it was solelv by so doing that she obtained that settlement, by which were excluded the lines and in- dividuals that come before him, as also the lines that come after him, removing every other impediment to her absolute succession to the entire monarchy. This could not have been Mr. Blacket 's meaning, as is clearly shown by his reference to the Treaty of Utrecht, that is to say, such renunciations as should prevent the eventual union upon the same head of the Crowns of Denmark and Russia. This reply is, however, not that given on the part of the Government by the Home Secretary. It is a very different and a very curious one. '* If," said he, " the honourable gentleman named the ' renunciation ' of Russia, or any par- ticular documents, he would ascertain whether there was any objection to their production, and apprehended there would not." We will now see the breadth and depth of Mr. Blackett's information and ingenuity, and we await with im- patience alike the tditio//s." Now, what was the answer made by the Powers to its first appeal ? Their representatives on the 21st of May replied : In a question which touches so nearly the liberty of action and sovereignty of his Majesty the Sultan, his Excellency Eed- schid Pasha is the best judge of the course to be adopted, and they do not consider themselves authorised, in the present circumstances, to give any advice on the subject." On this the Porte took its stand against the demands of Prince Menschikoff. When the occupation came, then they conceived that the " liberty of action and the sovereignty of the Sultan" was no longer in danger, for they interposed with an " opinion," that is to say, they artfully compromised Tur- key into acting alone, on the affair of the Holy Sepulchre ; be it also recollected that Prince Menschikoff had prior commu- nication of that step of the Porte upon which the subsequent MR. ROEBUCK AND THE GALLEY SLAVE. 141 quarrel was made, and expressed no dissent when the inva- sion arose out of the pretext, they interposed to prevent Tur- key from sending forward its own troops, by which Russia would have been at once checkmated. Such are the grounds upon which the Porte is now held to be bound by the deci- sion of the mediators, and to demur to that decision at its peril. On the very day that the Russians crossed the Pruth (8th of July), the Times stated that " Russia could do but little against a people as military and as fanatic as herself," except through the " co-operation" of her Allies. So soon as they were in, it declared that all the navies of the West and the armies of the Moslems could no more drive them back than they could stop the north wind. Now, then, what is the practical result for us ? It is this that we are a degraded people. The opinions which we shall hold are promulgated from the Russian Embassy. Our governors are the nominees of the Russian Ambassador. The simple knowledge of these facts would yet retrieve everything at Constantinople, as regards the East, but would it restore " honour and character " to Englishmen ? It is the loss not merely of character and honour, but of sense and courage in England, which is the curse of the world. If England does not in its rulers put down hasi m-ss, cowardice, and treachery, every Englishrnan^Ja^cg^i A \ bast- man, a coward, and a traitor. ME. ROEBUCK AND THE GALLEY September StL The Sheffield meeting took place on the 1st inst. The Times, after due deliberation, put forth an article npon the 3rd. We ourselves upon the 5th, and also after due delibera- tion, in which that article has its share, devoted considerable space to the same subject. The Times, after eight and forty hours' further consideration, in which our remarks had their share, publishes a second article. The Cutlers must feel very much honoured, and perhaps somewhat surprised, at such unheanl of distinction. We, though not surprised, feel equally 142 MR. ROEBUCK AND THE GALLEY SLAVE. honoured. We are, moreover, flattered by the concurrence of so unerring a judgment. On the 5th, we pointed out that the article of the Times was intended to "burke" (sic} Lord Fit zwilliam ; and iden- tified its purpose with that of Mr. Koebuck's speech, to which, of course, it had never alluded. Now it has disco- vered its importance, and re-echoes, after a week, the eloquent periods which it had contemptuously disregarded, and the meeting furnishes the occasion, on the 7th, for beating great drums about English honour, which had on the 3rd suggested no higher considerations than those of mercantile integrity. On the 5th, we had dwelt upon the great importance of Lord Fitzwilliam's letter, as being the first authoritative denunciation of the indecent outrage with which the session was concluded. With this truly British, manly, and states- manlike letter we contrasted the craven spirit and the tinsel slang of the Member for Sheffield, and we parenthetically referred to the bombastic article of the Times as a piece of forced labour imposed by its master, valuable only as indi- cating that master's sense of the incident. Now will be understood the drift of the Times, commencing thus : ts Everybody must have admired the spirit which took Mr. Roebuck to the Cutlers' Feast at Sheffield, after a severe illness for many months, and after having//^ been pounded up with the Lord Mayor of London, the Bishop of Lincoln, and a dozen other notables, on the Great Northern Railway." We have heard of men commended for the spirit which they exhibit in regard to some matters, but never before of that which takes them to a place. The spirit which comes over from so respectable a mash must unite the qualities of the ingredients in the mortar a Bishop, a Lord Mayor, and endless notabilities, Mr. Roebuck included. Here is a perfect " Venetian treacle," composed of all plants, and a specific for all maladies. We only want a Doge, a Hospodar, and a Caliph, and then it would be " a dish to set before the Queen." Buffers of the Northern Railway ! for how much patriotism and poetry is not the world your debtor ! The text we borrowed from Mr. Roebuck was this : " But that day gave the world to understand that England was prepared, and, believe me, it w T as a glorious sight." Our homily having furnished, in turn, the text for the sermon of the Times, we must extract from it also : We ME. ROEBUCK AND THE GALLEY SLAVE. 143 said, on the 5th, " what was this ' day,' and what this ' sight?' Was it that on which the self-moving keels stemmed the current of the Dardanelles? That on which the flag of England was gazed at from the tented heights that crown Sebastopol ? Was it the day on which the echoes of the Caucasus answered the acclaim of a nation of brother freemen? Or the people of the Danube sunk upon their bended knees on their dusty plains, to call down blessings on the 'protectors of social liberty and independence' throughout the globe ? Was the spectacle, perchance, the floating bat- teries of England defiling along the walls of Elsinore, and teaching the Baltic to be free ? No, ye gods of ridicule ; it was the Portsmouth parade. Nothing was spared save the camp at Chobham, and we render thanks. We had only the naval drug ; he let us off the artillery vomit and the military cathartic." The Times re-quotes Mr. Roebuck's passage, giving it at length, and then goes on to say that such are precisely the reasons upon which it had always urged the necessity of being prepared ; and it further has the hardihood to eschew " dishonourable treaties, mismanaged conventions, peace- makings precipitated and marred !" Is not this the story of the gipsey stealing the child, and bringing it back disguised to beg at its parent's door ? However, Mr. .Roebuck, it avows, was " rather excited," and we must bear with him, in consequence of his having been pounded, " if he spoke in a tone somewhat too defiant." No doubt the recollected Buffer suggested those wonderful thoughts about bullies and the other displays of animal spirit which fill the Blackfriars' clerk with complacent wonder and sympathising admiration. Heaven ! what would have hap- pened had the squeeze been a little tighter ? The Spithead peace-meeting must have been swamped, and " all the bullies of Europe" down upon the " screw propellers." However, we have escaped ; but, let us ask, does the Times revert to the subject because it has not done justice to Mr. Roebuck, or because it has to make an apology for him ? Again, we must ask, does Mr. Roebuck stand in need of apology ? Did he ever say that the Portsmouth exhibition was a " miscalculation ?" Did he ever assert that it " had failed to produce the effect that was expected from it on the Northern Courts?" No ! Mr. Roebuck has been consistent. 144 MR. ROEBUCK AND THE GALLEY SLAVE. He does not daily contradict himself; he believes that the " glorious sight" was a very alarming one for Russia. He believes that the " policy of the last few months" has been characterised by a spirit analogous to that which he practically admired on board the vessels, and had obtained results credi- table to the spirit of the Cabinet and useful for the well being of Turkey. Well may he exclaim, " Heaven defend us from such friends protect me from such an advocate." The apology was therefore for itself. If Mr. Roebuck was galled by our remarks, he was quite able to defend himself, and has plenty of opportunities for so doing. We shall be rejoiced to have him as an antagonist ; it is the next best thing to having him as a friend ; but in his name we scorn the discreditable mantle that would be thrown over him by the tool of a Foreign Power, already exposed and known. We return to the subject, not in reference to Mr. Roebuck, but as pursuing the exposure of a journal which the instincts of self-preservation ought to exclude from every house, as well as from every kingdom. No doubt that the Thu-es, persevering as it does after the other journals have exhausted their transient indignation and their slender stock, would have beaten them in the long run, and carried round opinion, fluctuating from its very nature; and, therefore, is it a necessity imposed upon us to persevere in like manner in our chase of this privateer, with two flags whose sails the " North wind" fills, and whose barques, like those of the galleys of Turks and Venetians, are manned by captive foes." " We lean on the strong, not the weak, and require in protectors that they should be able and ready to protect themselves." Very true, O Times. Let us see the applica- tion. " England may not command the Continent, because she cannot cover the earth with h.er legions, but she can sweep from the surface of the ocean every plank of the State that presumes to come across tier in that element." Ad- mirable, O brave Times ! only England avoids the occasion of coming " across." " We have the strongest conviction, and would not express it if we did not feel it [certainly not !] that she has the power of driving every boat of the foe, whoertr that may Le, far HV 'into rivers and lanoom, to skulk under batteries and breakwaters, and ensconce itself MR. ROEBUCK AND THE GALLEY SLAVE. 145 behind sunk rocks and sandbanks. 1 " Insinuating Times, who will put dots to the i's and strokes to the t's " far up the rivers and lagoons," "sandbanks and sunk rocks." Do say " banks artfully accumulated and rocks laboriously sunk." Here is the finger pointed at the Danube, the Blackfriars compositor has laid his open hand positively on the map of the Black Sea. Of course " it would not be pleasant to any power to see year after year an utterly unapproachable sea, and to behold in the line of the horizon the circumference of its world." Not the least doubt of it, and a great deal more ; but such is precisely the language we held in refuting the Times, when that veracious journal was telling us that " all the navies of the West could not incommode the Russians in the Principalities" when it was telling us that the very contemptible " army of Moslems," backed by all the screw propellers of France and England, could no more drive out the Russians than they could stop the "north wind." That was the word no mistake about it ! Boreas and Muscovy, Gog and Magog, equal giants, and, coming from the same quarter, equal strength and parentage ; and as they, not one, but both, blow down the Dardanelles ; " the-marching-against-wind-and-tide-magnincent-vessels- without-semblance-of-motion-save-their onward- progress"- cannot get up beyond Besika Bay ; and being so unable to reach the " unapproachable sea" on Russia's horizon, we can shiver her timbers, submerge her planks, cut high up into rivers, dive deep down into " lagoons," and skim over " sunk rocks" and " sandbanks," all in the Times newspaper, without awakening an emotion in the heart of any peace meeting ashore or afloat, whether presided over by a Quaker or an Admiral. But how suggestive the passage we have cited. Here we have the horizon again that " horizon fleet " that so delighted us in the latitude of the Isle of Wight, recalling all the naval emotions of those glorious days. We have also " year by year " (what can the Times mean by year by year ?) Russia is year by year to look out upon a " horizon sea," as " unapproachable " as the sky. Well, we had forgotten it, until reminded in this fashion, that some two weeks ago we did ourselves speak about making the borders of that sea the limit of the Russian " world ;" a sea, hitherto, in the Black book of the Times, and always sunk by it ; and we spoke of 7 146 MR. KOEBUCK AND THE GALLEY SLAVE. its being so not for a season, or a campaign, but for a series of years. In exposing the absurdity of the dread of a war with Russia, we stated that a squadron, or even a frigate, in the Black Sea, joined to the Turkish squadron, must her- metically seal up the Russian navy in their harbours, and that, if the Emperor chose to prolong the war, he might do so, as far England was concerned, "Jor centuries" as it would cost us not a single penny, and cost him, at the very least, 5,000,000 and 100,000 'men yearly, besides the loss of the corn and all other trades. Evidently this statement has rankled in the breast of the Times, and hence the pre- sumption about the unpleasant look-out "year after year on utterly unapproachable sea horizon." We will stake a pretty good sum that no man in London, save a born Russian, felt the point of that remark, and that no hand but a Russian's could have penned the comment. We have repeatedly had to remark that the Times asserts everything, on all sides : not only one day one thing, and the next day the other ; but that it composes an article by means of a series of contradictious, and certainly there is no better device for bamboozling a nation. But amongst all the things, said and unsaid, and carefully avoided beins: said, is the simple point of passing the Dardanelles. Whatever is said, whatever is contradicted, there is always the occult inference that that never must take place. One day Russia is decrepid and powerless we need not pass them. The next day she is terrific and irresistible we dare not pass them ; and amidst that unceasing activity of illustration, and unbounded range of observation, the incident of the passage upwards of three American frigates, has hitherto wholly escaped. We must give to the Times one credit it is that of assiduity. If it twists like a snake, it toils like a hero. We, too, persevere ; but we are but creatures of circum- stances. There are such things as public character and honour, as public interests, as abhorrence of meanness, as indignation at sycophancy or venality, and when thev are visibly presented to any man he must toil. The Times finds its resources in its own character. It has no inducement either of motive or feeling; an all power- ful Government triumphantly pursues the policy it ap- plauds the opposition to its views is beneath contempt THE FABIAN POLICY. 147 and above reproach. Practically, it can harm nothing; morally, it can arouse no indignation by its anti-national leanings or its sordid ends. Nor have its animal spirits been super-excited by any railway pounding of its imma- terial self. There is but one resource and one explanation it is a galley slave. THE FABIAN POLICY. September 9M. The perusal of the note of the Turkish Government of the Four Powers further exemplifies the process of letting out information by driblets, upon which we have already severely commented. We first had the suggested note of the Four Powers, with the opportunity of comments upon that singly. Two days later came the modifications made by the Porte ; new comments upon these. Now, at last, we have the ex- pository note of the Porte itself, and, of course, with the directing and disparaging comments of the Times. No one can read the document without drawing this inference, that if the Turks had been let alone, they would have mastered the Russians at diplomacy no less than at arms. We do not speak either of the diplomacy of detailed machi- nation and cunning, or of that of far reaching foresight and comprehension, but that which consists in the argumentation of a case, where sense of dignity and right lends point to a sentence no less than strength to a conclusion. We quote a single instance. In reference to the paragraph of the con- joint note : " If at all times the Emperors of Russia had given evidence of their active solicitude for the maintenance of the immunities and privileges of the Greek orthodox Church in the Ottoman Empire, the Sultans have never re- fused to consecrate them afresh by solemn acts." Redschid Pasha observes "It would be inferred that the privileges of the Greek Church in the states of the Porte, have only been maintained by the active solicitude of the Emperors of Russia * * and would offer pretexts to the Russian Government to mix itself in such matters. * * Not' a single servant of the august Imperial Ottoman family would dare, or be capable to put in writing, words tending to impugn 148 THE FABIAN POLICY. the glory of institutions which the Ottoman Emperors have founded by a spontaneous movement of their personal gener- osity and innate clemency." This is precisely the point of the note which the Times now undertakes to impugn, after having formerly treated the modifications suggested therein as " insignificant." It charges " the critics " in London who have exercised their ingenuity in picking holes in this compromise, with " making out a far better case for the Turks than they have done for themselves." We will now see whether the Times makes out a better case for the Russians than they could venture for them- selves. At all events, it takes up grounds for which the Christians of Turkey will not thank it. It meets directly the argument of Redschid Pasha by a negative : it asserts that it is owing to the " active solicitude" of the Emperors of Russia " on behalf of those privileges, that the Sultans have been ready to secure them." " It is notorious," it further says, " to all the world, that these privileges have been powerfully assisted, not by the active solicitude of Russia alone, but of all the Christian Powers." Supposing this to be the case, would that be a reason for the insertion of the averment in such a document ; and would it not equally hold, that the consequence of its insertion must be the interference of Russia in the domestic concerns of the Ottoman Empire, to the exclusion of the other Powers. But what shall we say if the averment itself be false, than which falsehood there is at this present moment nothing more " notorious ? " The unexpected fact of the refusal of the persons in whose behalf this Protectorate is to be established to accept it, still runs through Europe. It would be an insult to our readers to go back upon a subject on which we have so largely treated, but we point to the audacity of the Times, which we venture to predict will not be imitated by the Czar. Alter this announcement, we might expect a rehearsal of the benefits which the " active solicitude " of the Emperor had conferred ; and what do we find ? Nothing. That audacious and venal penman is not able to adduce a single fact in corroboration, and takes refuge in an act of the English Government, which, if meritorious, never was adopted by Russia ; but, on the contrary, used by her for irritating the Porte against England. It goes on to say : THE FABIAN POLICY. 149 tc For instance, ten years have not elapsed since the in- fluence of Lord Stratford de Redeliffe obtained from the -Sultan, as a remarkable concession, that Christians who relapsed to their first religion, after having embraced, arid subsequently renounced Islamism, should not be put to death, as the Turkish law required." The measure here referred to, it will be observed, affects Mussulmans, not Christians ; it gives Mussulmans the privi- lege of embracing Christianity, without incurring the penalty of the law. It was a direct attack upon the institutions of Islam, and of course served Russia by opening the way to interference on the part of foreign Powers. Its practical effect was null as regards the Mussulmans, for none of them have become converts to Christianity. The tendency is exactly the other way, and millions of Christians have be- come Mussulmans, the bar placed to the return to their ancient faith was a main obstacle to apostacy ; practically, therefore, the measure carried by Sir Stratford Canning had the effect at once of a blow at the institutions of the State, and of a blow at the existence of the Christian communities. Besides, had it not been a measure beneficial to Russia, would the English Government have proposed it and carried it ? Look at the whole course of policy within the ten years speci- fied, and for long before. Whatever the English Government has succeeded in, as in whatever it has proposed and failed in, the ends of Russia have been served. If the English Government could stop, as it did stop the Danube canal, and the Suez canal, if it forced the Porte into making a military road for Russia between Erzeroum and Trebizond, while at the same moment it thwarted the making of a commercial road for traffic in the centre of the Empire, if it has unceas- ingly laboured to impose the conscription upon the Christian subjects, at the same time placing arms in the hands of populations which it held to be disaffected, surely in every other measure it must have equally kept in view its invariable rule " The service of the Czar." The Times gives us credit for making out a far better case for the Turks than they have done for themselves. We do not deny the imputation. The note of Redschid Pasha is, after all, but a special pleading upon a point that ought to have been scouted out of Court. The admission of any con- nection between the matters debater) duriny the mission nf 150 THE FABIAN POLICY. Prince Menschikoff and the invasion of the Principalities, diplomatically prostrates the Ottoman Empire. But that was the result of the position in which Redschid Pasha personally stood to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe. The Turkish Minister had been displaced from his high office and great authority in consequence of the disclosures which followed upon the failure of the project of loan negotiated at Paris. The removal and subsequent flight of the Greek intriguer, who was the titular Turkish Ambassador at that capital; the detection of the Armenian banker who managed the funds of peculation and corruption resulting from the English Treaty of Commerce, gave hopes that these two inflictions of the empire Greek Diplomatists and Armenian Financiers would be swept away. Redschid Pasha, implicated in this system, fell. The first act of Lord Stratford de Redcliffe was to obtain the re- appointment of Redschid Pasha, and, consequently, when the representative of England " advised the Turks not to con- sider the occupation of the Principalities as a casus belli, the advice was well received." It is, therefore, the English Go- Yerninent which has placed the Porte in this false position, prevents it, consequently, from having any rights to stand up for ; and then we hear no longer of evacuation as pre- ceding a settlement, or of indemnity for the wrongs suffered : and it comes in ordinary course that the Powers should con- jointly interfere, and, as all such conjoint interferences have hitherto led to a common diplomatic act, we may rest assured that, upon the present occasion, we shall have, not the abro- gation of anterior treaties which had fallen ipso facto, if the passage of the Pruth had been held a ca^us belli, but some new treaty, little suspected at this hour, which shall involve the Powers in a more practical sanction of Russia's inter- ference than that already granted by their undertaking to draw up its note. With an independent Minister in Turkey that is to say, with Redschid Pasha himself, before reduced into personal "dependence upon Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the mere fact of the redaction of the note at Vienna, irrespec- tive of its contents, must have caused its absolute rejection. The words above given within inverted commas, are from the Times itself, and from the Times of yesterday ; not, indeed, from its Leader, but from its Constantinople correspondent. We are glad to be able to give the fact from its own columns, that, without Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the Turks would THE FABIAN POLICY. 151 have considered the passage of the Pru'th a casus belli. The correspondent explains, indeed, differently the motives for admitting the advice, and refers them to the desire of gaining time. However, we quote the remarks which follow as the most condign refutation of the opinions which the Titnes has been endeavouring to circulate for the last two months in England and in Europe : " The tamely submissive way in which the Turks accepted the advice of foreign Governments seems to have taught the latter to ignore the existence of anything like independent opinion on the part of the Porte, for when a note, prepared by the Four Powers, and assented to by Russia (since it gives all desired), has been sent to Constantinople to be signed, all the European organs of public opinion congratulate themselves that the difficulties are over. Since the occupation of the Principalities, however, times are changed, and now, with an army of 200,000 men under arms on the frontiers, with the Egyptian contingent and fleet on the Bosphorus, and every- thing in readiness for a desperate conflict, the Sultan takes higher ground, and is determined not to surrender tamely to a foreign Power his rights of Sovereignty over 13,000,000 of his subjects. For some months past the very fact of such enormous warlike preparations being undertaken, and such untold treasures expended, must have taught diplomatists that the Turks foresaw and determined upon a struggle, and as such preparations continue, the peaceable solution of the question becomes daily more difficult." After getting in her troops, it is Russia's object to gain time. By it, in Turkey, she exhausts, without danger, the martial spirit, and imposes charges upon the Treasury, for which she has to make no equivalent expenditure, and eats up meanwhile the two richest provinces in the empire. She also monopolises the corn trade.* In Europe she has stood the blast of indignation, and now will come the reaction. The subject will be exhausted, the public mind fatigued ; anything that can be called a settlement will be accepted with joy, and her organs will continue with their galley task, and the anger to-day evinced at the strength of the Ottoman Empire, * 120 vessels waiting to get out, and 400 to get in at Sulina. The corn in the former is getting heated, and must be tossed over- board. 1,000 vessels will be wanted to transmit the corn which has been unable to cross the bar. 152 A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES. will, before long, be converted into reasons of State, for curb- ing either Mussulman fanaticism or Ottoman ambition. Russia's policy is therefore procrastination. She profits by every hour of delay ; her gain and game is TIME. It is easy to be a Fabius without a Hannibal. Who would not be a Russian when it suffices to send some hordes to feed on its plains, to convulse the whole of Europe, without suggesting even a thought of retaliation ? A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES. September IM/t. Yesterday the Times having been silent, we have leisure to revert to matters belonging to the past, but eminently useful for the present. Supposing that, in the early part of this year, the Russian Government had addressed to its representatives at London, Paris, Vienna, and Constantinople, a despatch ordering them to draw up severally a report, in which the five following points should be reviewed, namely, " First, Whether any concert exists to oppose the views of the Imperial Cabinet. " Second, On the degree of intensity that such opposition might acquire. " Thirdly, On the part that England (France, Austria, or Turkey, as the case might be) might take therein. "Fourthly, On the best means of disconcerting this system. " Fifthly, and finally, In the double case of an insurrec- tion in Turkey, and the rejection of our demands in reference to the Principalities on the nature of the means best calcu- lated to secure our rights, interests, and dignity, without compromising the peace of Europe." If, we say, such propositions had been addressed to these Ambassadors, and they had accordingly drawn up reports, and by some accident these reports had found their way to the public press, with what avidity would they not be devoured by the politicians of Europe. Now it so happens that these very questions were addressed to its representa- A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES. 153 tives at those Courts in the autumn of 1825, and that the reports themselves sent in reply were taken at Warsaw amongst the papers of the Archduke Constantine. They did not, however, appear when many of these documents were published in 1836, they have, therefore, the interest of freshness, as well as a direct application to present events. " Nothing changes," says Karamsin, " in our external policy." Never was aphorism more perfectly confirmed than by the present exposure. The circumstances, indeed, have altered, in so far, that in 1825 Turkey was in the last state of decre- pitude, and that Austria maintained an independent bearing, which, indeed, caused the scheme, as then propounded, to be adjourned for execution. As regards England, there was this difference, that the connection was intimate with Austria, and that Canning was at the head of affairs, and not reduced to the subserviency in which he closed his days. We will now allow the Kussian diplomatists to speak for themselves. Comment would only invalidate the effect of their words. The despatch of Pozzo di Borgo, from which we shall principally extract, consists of 43 pages of print. He writes from Paris, but embraces the whole field, and, in fact, has laid down precisely the process of operation recently adopted. We can, of course, give but a slender outline of this remark- able State paper. "The conference of St. Petersburg has acknowledged that it was just and prudent to propose to the Turks a collective intervention. The Imperial Cabinet has suggested, besides, the adoption of coercive means, in case the Porte refuses to yield to our friendly insinuations. This proposal the Allies have declined (within the year they were brought to adopt it), and the agreement which appears to be established amongst them, threatens to paralyse our action on' the East. " It would have been the part of the Sovereigns who, in a great measure, have taken upon themselves the responsibility of the conduct of the Turks towards us, to have, on this event, adopted our views : but they found it more convenient to remain tranquil. It therefore belongs to us to see, by ourselves, to the execution of a plan already accepted by all, and to employ those coercive means which we have already declared to be indispensable. " If the Allies had preserved the union for which we have made so many sacrifices, and in the case of their consenting 7 154 A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES. to coercive means, the Emperor would have caused the Turkish Provinces up to the Danube to be occupied, justifying the step on the provocative measures of the Forte, as well as on the necessity of maintaining the tranquillity and pre- serving the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. " In occupying the two Principalities the Imperial Cabinet might declare . . . that the Porte never would evecuate those Principalities (the Turkish troops having been sent thither to suppress an insurrection to cross over from the Russian frontier) that she keeps there at this moment a corps of Bach-Beschys-Aga, whose presence and authority are in express contravention of the treaties with Eussia. " That in keeping those troops in the two provinces, and in exercising their authority contrary to treaty, the Porte cannot put forward the pretext of protecting a country against internal troubles which had been appeased three years ago. Its object is, therefore, to change their political state, and to efface the stipulations which have defined and established it in the most clear and notorious manner. " The Court of Russia, convinced that neither its own longanimity, nor the intervention of its Allies, can ameliorate a state of things become in all respects intolerable, has decided to cause to cease, in the two Principalities of Wal- lachia and Moldavia, the abuses of authority which the Turks exercise there in despite of treaties ; and, as neither remon- strances of the Sovereigns, its allies, nor its own, have been able to attain the desired end, it finds itself under the necessity of making use of the only means which remained to it that of causing the aforesaid provinces to be occupied by its troops. In taking this determination, the Emperor does not intend by any means to change the political question. " In supposing the adoption of this plan, it would be requisite to enter into explanations with the Porte in the most measured terms, and to assure it that if it did not wish to precipitate itself into a war, the Emperor was ready to terminate these differences by conciliation. It would be advisable to communicate -all these acts to the United States of America, as an evidence of the regard of the Imperial Cabinet, and of the importance which it attaches to enlight- ening its opinion and even to obtaining its suffrage. It would also be desirable to put Sweden, in a confidential manner, in possession of the facts, so as to flatter the self-love of him A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES. 155 who governs it, but without neglecting defensive precautions in Finland. " In regard to the other Powers, the evil that we would have to fear from them will always be in the inverse ratio to that which th-ey have to apprehend from us." " In consequence of Mr. Canning's entrance into power, confidence in England is shaken. She is represented as suspicious and jealous, so that she may possibly become hostile. This presumption is not likely to convert itself into a reality ; we must, however, be prepared, otherwise the sur- prise would be too great if it came to be verified A rupture with us would alarm the capitalists and manu- facturers to a certain degree, and so render money which they call ' circulating medium/ more rare and dear, and so ruin those who have speculated upon abundance and cheap- ness A deluge of riches, realised or fictitious, has manured its treasury, and puffed up its pride. " Such a war might do us damage, but would produce for them no compensation, because they have no positive hold on us ; their only advantage would be the pleasure of injuring us. In blockading our ports, they would exercise their pretended maritime rights in respect to neutrals. This the United States would not suffer; thence would arise bitter discussions and dangerous situations." We may here add, to complete the subject, that Count Lieven, in his despatch from London, does not give an equal weight to the supposition of resistance on the part of England ; but, on the contrary, declares that nothing is to be appre- hended from that quarter. He answer the question in respect to any possible combination against Russia as follows : " Up to the present moment no such combination exists. England, at least, does not belong to it, and a league which does not include that Power is not to be feared. Nothing menacing can be formed without her concurrence or without her being opposed to it." Austria is the point to which Pozzi di Borgo devotes his solitary attention. He looks upon England only as dan- gerous, in so far as she may be influenced by Austria, and mentions the fact of a meeting between Prince Metternich and Lord Castlereagh at Hanover in 1821, where they adopted in common the resolution to " arrest the intervention of Russia in the affairs of the East, whether singly, whether 156 A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES. collectively of the other Powers." The measures he suggests with reference to Austria are not those of deception but of coer- cion, in which he indicates internal revolution no less than war, and thus concludes : " Our policy, therefore, commands that we shall show our- selves to this State under a terrible aspect, and by our pre- parations to persuade it that, if it makes a movement against us, the fiercest of storms that it has yet had to bear will burst upon its head." In this dilemma Prince Metternich will be reduced to one of two alternatives : " either he will declare to the Turks that our entry into the Principalities is a resolution that they themselves have provoked, or he will throw himself on other provinces of the Ottoman Empire more to his convenience. In the first case we will be agreed, in the second ice will become so. The only chance that we have to run is that of an open declaration against us If Prince Mettemich is wise he will avoid War; if he is violent lie will be punished. With a Ministry placed in a situation such as his, a Cabinet such as ours will find in events a thousand ways of termi- nating differences." France is represented in a state of prostration, her ministry in one of hesitation : " This state of things will endure until we adopt a step which will establish a crisis. France is far from nourishing sentiments of ill-will, far less of hostility, against Russia. The Minister who governs it may be able to tell a lie, or to concoct an intrigue, but never to pronounce the word war against us, without the Minister who had uttered it, or the King who had listened to it, being exposed within six months to a ruin almost certain." If France against all probability were to adopt this course, " where," concludes the writer, " would she find a field of battle ? Her fleets would add nothing to the force of Eng- land ; and her armies, if they succeed in getting into contact with ours, know the fate that awaits them." As to Prussia, it is represented simply as a subordinate ally, and it is stated that "if the Court of Vienna had yielded to its views and good intentions, the plan of the Imperial Cabinet would already have been accomplished that plan not being limited to the occupation of the Principalities, but extending to that of Constantinople, and even to the expul- sion of the Turks from Europe." A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES. 157 The writer again returns to Austria, or rather to Prince Metternich, on whom, he says, " everything depends." And this remarkable passage occurs " If matters are driven to extremes, and the Turks are expelled from Europe, that course will be the conclusion least desirable for the Court of Vienna." If the Allies do not prove sufficiently tractable, they are to be told that their refusal to concur in measures just and necessary, for the reason that they themselves might thereby be " inquieted," is " a proceeding which contains something insulting, not for us, whom it cannot reach, but to simple reasons and to common sense." The report from the Ambassador in London is of similar character arid tendency. His voice is also and decidedly for war a war which must be prompt, and which must take Europe by surprise. However, that war was not made till three years later. The Russian representatives had all this while taken no ac- count of Turkey. They considered that empire entirely at their mercy ; the only obstruction was Prince Metternich ; and that individual Minister did arrest the operations during the years 1826 and 1827, in which Turkey was in reality at their mercy. After the destruction of the Janissaries, Pozzo di Borgo entirely recast his opinion. Then, in a despatch published in 1826, he more vehemently urges war than in that from which we at present extract. But it is on wholly different grounds. It is no longer the conquest of Turkey that is the object, but it is the necessity of breaking down the new system, and averting the " dangers for the future" which he thence foresaw for Russia herself. But in the mean time circumstances had changed in Europe; the Ministry of Mr. Canning had been so situated, that a Cabinet such as that of Russia did find in events a thousand ways of termi- nating differences. The co-operation of England and France was secured by treaty ; the coercive measures which the Allies had repudiated, were now adopted by themselves, and carried into execution; and the Turkish fleet having been destroyed, and the English and French Ambassadors withdrawn from Con- stantinople, Prince Metternich was gagged and chained, the 200,000 Austrians collected on the frontier could be laughed at with impunity, and the war was made. We shall, at a future time, give the judgment of Count Nesselrode upon that war, at the moment of its conclusion. 158 A PEEP BEHIND THE SCENES. Some of our readers may have been surprised at what we have on several occasions said respecting the anxiety of Russia to involve the United States, in her sense, in the affairs of Europe. Those opinions did not result from any private intelligence as regards the present moment, but from the nature of the case. The United States have commerce and subjects on the soil of Europe, in the dominions of the Sultan, on the shores of the Baltic, and their inen-of-war navigate those seas. As Russia's plans are based upon infractions of law, which other nations tamely endure, or submission to international compacts drawn up for her peculiar advantage, to which the other Governments of Europe have meanly and traitorously adhered, it is essential for her to place the United States in a similar position, for otherwise the most trifling incident might blow up the whole scheme. How singularly is this judgment confirmed from the mouth of Pozzo di Borgo, in 1825, when he recommends making the Cabinet of the United States their confidant. Seeing how perfectly the plan of operations then suggested has been followed at present, is it not probable, if not certain, that the Cabinet of St. Petersburg has proposed to the United States that role of mediatrix, which Austria has been subsequently forced to accept ? For this conclusion we have more than inferential grounds. One word as to Sweden. Besides the United States, that was the only Government whose " self-love " was worth nattering ; but nevertheless " precautions " were necessary in Finland, so that there was one insecure point throughout the Russian dominions. Intelligence from the Black Sea, yesterday, reached London, to the effect, that from on board the Russian squadron the native Russian sailors and the Poles had been discharged, and that the crews remaining were exclusively composed of " Fins and Greeks" that is to say, that the fleet which holds in check the united navies of E'ngland and France, is manned by the inhabitants of a province, the tenure of which Russia herself holds to be insecure, and by those of a foreign country, in protection of which those squadrons of the West are assembled at Besika Bay. Again we say, who would not be a Russian ? 359 BUSSIA AND CHINA. September \Wi. At no moment can it be more desirable than at the present, to view the position of Russia, in reference to her world not that bounded by the Euxine, but that of the globe itself. Something has been said of plans respecting Little Thibet, but they have been treated as extravagant and visionary. It is not however contested, that communi- cations have been made by the Court of St. Petersburg to that of Pekin, with reference to the insurrection ; that these consisted in offer of support upon conditions, and that the conditions were, the cession of Little Thibet. They were made in the month of October last, long before our residents in China had any suspicion of what was in progress. That the Indian Government has received com- munications from Thibet itself, bearing upon the same matter, is equally true, although it could not clearly understand or believe what they meant. We have therefore this inference at least to draw, that Russia is not indifferent to the extra- ordinary events now occurring in the Chinese Empire, and that she is seeking to take advantage of them to extend her own dominion over the stupendous plateau of Western Tartary and the Inter-Himalaya, or the mountains of Tsong- Ling, Pamer, and Kien-Lung, the real Indian Caucasus of the ancients the country of wild horses and camels, and there- fore of conquerors, and probably the cradle of the human race. It is from the side of these mountains that in all times have descended the subduers of the world, but along their flanks have been marked " nulla vestigia retrorsum." China on the east, India on the south, Russia and Europe on the west, have thence, from the dawn of history, been periodically replenished, colonised, and devastated; such events must have likewise occurred before there were pens or chisels to relate them. But the sources were hidden, the effects were patent, the causes unknown, and the Tartarian lands remained gene- ration after generation, a marvel and a mystery, However, in the course of the last century, and while England was establishing her rule in Hindostan, the Chinese, or their Mantchu rulers, were making their way upwards towards these fabulous summits, and the great Emperor Kien- Lung established his authority in the ancient Tartar capital of 160 - RUSSIA AND CHINA. Ouguz-Khan, Kashgar. Incredible as it may appear, the force under the command of the Chinese general who effected this conquest did not exceed 400 men ; and it increases the surprise which such a feat was calculated to excite, that these Western Tartars were Mussulmen, while the Eastern Tartars were Buddhists. At the time, they appealed to Russia for support, but it was denied them. Amiot declares his con- viction that Russia might easily have frustrated the Chinese invasion, and seized the opportunity of establishing there her dominion, or, at least, her paramount influence. It seems, however, that she only bided her time. These past circumstances will throw light upon those mys- terious communications which our statesmen are pleased' to disregard, because they believed the supposed end impracti- cable. How would they have treated, had they lived at the time of the expedition of a few hundred Cossacks under Yerma- loff, which ended by putting her in possession of Siberia ? The possession of Siberia has made Russia and China neighbours, and brings the frontiers of the former all round Tartary. She has even encroached upon the proper Tartar territory, and established her city of Albasgna in the centre of Mantchuria itself. This district had indeed never belonged to China, but was considered the private domain of the Imperial Mantchu family, after it had succeeded to the throne. The Chinese, after various failures, succeeded in capturing Albasgna, carrying as prisoners to Pekin, its Cossack defenders. But this disaster has become the foun- dation of the action of Russia upon the whole Chinese empire. The Cossacks were settled at the capital, where their descend- ants are to be found to this day, and furnished the pretext for the establishment of that Russian monastery at the capital, where no foreign establishments of any description are admitted. In the wars and negotiations from the year 1688, Russia will be found, under the greatest disadvantages, steadily pursuing two ends the opening of the Chinese trade, and the obtaining possession of the district of the Amour, both of which are directly connected with the development of the resources of Siberia. The Chinese trade confers no benefit on Russia Proper. " The Government,", says Haxthausen, " supports it for the future, and Russia herself is sacrificed in order to elevate Siberia." The great want of that country is water communication, and the main channels of that RUSSIA AND CHINA. 161 enormous district pass by the Amour to the Pacific. Now, the early conquerors of Siberia had gained possession of this district, but Eussia had been forced to cede it back. ." The loss of the Amour," say% the same authority, "is so serious for Siberia, that it is easy to see that Russia, by fair means or foul, will soon get possession of it. What the shores of the Baltic are for Russia itself, the district and mouths of the Amour are for Siberia. When this is gained St. Petersburg will easily be connected by water communication with the Pacific, and the grand idea of Peter to open a way to India, Japan, and America, will be carried out." An English authority Cottrell confirms the same view, stating that a canal of 300 miles' would enable vessels to pass from St. Petersburg to the Pacific, a distance of 10,000 miles. We have italicised the word Japan, as indicating the con- nexion with those projects of the movements of the Russian vessels actually in those seas, the only ones of Europe there to watch the operations of the Americans. In the meantime her measures are pushed in the intervening districts with sequence and comprehensiveness. The Persian flag has been excluded from the Caspian ; she is actually engaged in forcing the cession from Persia of a district on the south-east of that sea and of the fort of Astrabad. Steamers are being constructed, or are already completed, for the navi- gation of the Aral and Syraria, which will bring her in direct communication up to the neighbourhood of Kashgar. On the other side, she is in possession of Okhotsk, into the sea of which the Amour enters ; both which positions may very possibly fall to her through the present convulsions of the Chinese Empire. It would be indeed not very " pleasant" if at such a moment any circumstance should constitute the Euxine " the horizon bounding the circumference of her world," the neces- sary effect of any incidents in the Levant which might shake the treaty of 1841, and enable an English squadron to appear in the Bl*ack Sea. In the meantime, we may well ask how it happens that nothing is done to promote the cutting of a canal at Suez, by which the whole of these ambitious projects would be quietly laid to rest ; as also why, wholly irrespective of the Ottoman Empire, and entirely for the security of our own possessions, we do not insist on the free entrance into the Euxine ? 162 COMMERCIAL DIPLOMACY. September \W>.. There have been two ancient, Respectable, and standing maxims in England the first, to abstain in India from con- quests ; the second, to avoid in Europe continental alliances maxims which have been honoured in the breach and not observance. In respect to the first, there may have been, up to a certain point, justificatory reasons and profitable results. The most dexterous special pleader would be hard put to it to show a reason for any alliance which we have contracted, or any war which we have made for the last three-quarters of a century, and still more so to discover the advantage we have gained. It is in consequence of this maxim that England has always abstained from treaties of guarantee, a rule departed from only on three exceptional occasions Portugal, Den- mark, and Persia which had reference to the curbing of the ambition of great States Russia and France. But even from these bonds we are now disentangling, and by a curious process, not the abrogation of the treaties, but their violation by England herself, who, in 1813, took to herself a portion (Heligoland) of the territories she had guaranteed to Den- mark, who, in 1827, violated her treaty with Persia, refusing the stipulated aid in her war with Russia ; and in the events of 1847, by interposing to support in Portugal internal despotism, passed by the obligation of supporting her against external violence. There remains, therefore, no political sys- tem of alliances for English diplomacy to prosecute ; and, in fact, by the repeated violations of the treaty of Vienna, there is no public European law even to maintain. Laboriously searching for what possible legitimate object there may be in keeping gentlemen at foreign Courts to have interviews with its Ministers, and to entertain the society of the place at dinners, we are reduced to Commerce. Here indeed we have a wide field. England is the workshop of the world, but, with the ex- ception of iron, she draws from other countries the raw materials ; cotton, silk, hemp, hides, &c., come to her from the distant regions of the earth ; so also do dye-stuffs, tanning, oil and tallow used in their preparation ; the sugar which she refines, the timber for her navy, as well as the principal ob- jects of consumption for her people, including at present a COMMERCIAL DIPLOMACY. 163 large amount of grain. She stands, in reference to the world, in the same position as Venice to the Levant ; and here no doubt is open the vastest field for diplomatic action directed to obtaining the reduction of the import and export duties of every land , and having this as its ultimate end. England's riches depend upon the nations, its customers, being wealthy, and the countries which supply her raw materials being pros- perous. The amount of her trade, and the sense of her power and policy, thus place an enormous influence at her disposal : on the one hand, she supplies the capital by which the fields of poorer countries are worked ; on the other, she can control their Governments by the use she can make ef her own tariff, holding, as it were, the commercial balance between the four quarters of the globe ; such, at least, would be her position if turned to account in the same spirit and with the same capacity by which were raised the palaces of St. Mark amidst the marshes of the Adriatic. Such is the end, such the means at the disposal of British Diplomacy. Has the one been attained or the other exerted ? The answer must be No. Indeed, one condition was re- quisite which has not been fulfilled : that condition is, neu- trality in political opinion. Unless it was known that Eng- land took no part in forms of Government, every party in every State must look with aversion on our commercial pro- sperity, and turn a deaf ear to our economic theories ; and as she has signalised herself (without effect it is true, or only with the most disastrous effect) as a political partisan, now on the one side, and now on the other, she has positively furnished to every State an internal inducement to introduce a restrictive system, upon the grounds of thereby weakening her authority and arresting her interference, and to this under- current of feeling may be attributed in a great degree the restrictive system which, in the last quarter of a century, has developed itself to that point, that the Minister of England has himself avowed that our trade has been cut off with all our old customers. We might content ourselves with this declaration, as proving in this particular that general nullity of Diplomacy which we assert, had it not been that the same Minister, whose words we have quoted, has taken credit for eminent usefulness and activity in this line, and asserted, in respect to its pre-eminent claims to distinction : " There never was an Administration which in the same COMMERCIAL DIPLOMACY. space of time devoted more attention, with more success, to the commercial interests of the country, than the Administra- tion which conducted affairs from 1330 to 184-1." Such were the words of the chief of the diplomatic depart- ment up to the year IS 41. We have, however, a different view of the case from the chief of the commercial department, Mr. Labouchere, who, treating: the whole matter with merited contempt, but not very decent jocularity, told the British Par- liament that " Tariff treaties were delusive and tantalising things, reminding one of those lines which mathematicians mention which were always approaching but never came in contact ; that, however, they were now at a discount ; that when he was last at the Board of Trade Sir Robert Peel was at the time in office he had found such treaties com- menced with France, Naples, Portugal, and other countries, and had done his best to advance them, but had had no reason to congratulate himself upon his success. He trusted that the expectation of the Eight Hon. Baronet to conclude such treaties, if he ever entertained them, would be doomed to dis- appointment." The ex-President of the Board of Trade, in this wonderful statement, was repeatedly cheered by the House of Commons ; he was more than cheered, he was laughed at four times was he interrupted by " laughter ;" and it was evident that, in the opinion of Parliament, in respect at least to commerce Diplomacy was a joke. It was, however, but a very poor joke, and there are docu- ments within the reach of any man, which prove that those commercial treaties, so extolled by the chief of the foreign department, so ridiculed by the chief of the commercial, not only could have been carried, but were prevented from being carried solely by British diplomacy. It is a singular fact, that the more important of those measures, whether as to the principles which they contained, or the countries to which they applied, did not originate with the Government, but were urged upon it by persons standing without the service, namely, the treaties with France, the Austrian and Turkish empires, and the Italian Peninsula ; and we have the testimony of every one of the gentlemen engaged in these negotiations to the effect that they were frustrated by the interposition of the foreign department. In regard to that with France, in particular, the allegations were made in the strongest manner in the House of Commons, and COMMERCIAL DIPLOMACY. 165 on the authority of Mr. Porter, of the Board of Trade, who, before he accepted the mission to Paris, made it a condition that the Foreign Office should not be allowed in any way to interfere, being satisfied, from his previous experience, that if it did, the matter would fail. The promise was given and violated. It did interfere, and did break oft' the negotiation after it had been brought to a final and perfect adjustment. This has been stated in the House of Commons, arid has not been denied. The trade which would have been opened by these treaties, the object of which was the mutual reduction of duties, has been estimated at 20, 000,000 yearly the laugh was on the wrong side of the face. But there is a matter graver even than this it is the having endured violations of both natural and treaty rights, to the interruption of trade. Thus, while, in consequence of our positive acts, obstruction has been successfully placed to the opening of new channels of trade, the old ones have been suffered to be blocked up by endured violence. "Tariff treaties," in the words of Mr. Labouchere, "are now at a discount ; " but worse has now happened they are forgotten. But some ten or twelves years ago, it was one which possessed interest for the nation ; and that interest prompted the activity of the Government, by which activity the nation was disgusted with the subject. We cannot, however, do better than borrow from the contemporary dis- cussion an estimate of the sacrifice; up to that time, incurred by frustration of treaties and infraction of rights. CIRCASSIA.* By sacrifice of rights of com- merce since 1831, yearly export lost, say 100,000 1,100,000 POLAND. By sacrifices since 1831 of com- mercial rights, secured by the Treaty of Vienna, yearly 500,000 5,500,000 GREECE. By sacrifice of rights of British bondholders of two first loans, say 3,000,000. By payment of subsidy in violation of Act of Parliament, say 600,000. By fraudulent accounts pre- sented to Parliament, say 370,000. By sacrifice of anterior right of export and import, at 3 per cent, duty, yearly 100,000 Aggregate 5,000,000 * Morning Herald, July, 1842. 166 COMMERCIAL DIPLOMACY. Ersso-DuTCH LOAN. Payment of, after declaration of law officers of the Crown that no obligation to Russia was bind- ing, Russia having violated her treaties with England, aggregate 3,500,000 COAST OF AFRICA. Sacrifice of the right of export and import, at 5 per cent., from 1834. GUM TRADE. Submission to interference from 1835. PRUSSIAN LEAGFE. Submission to the establishment, and transference of, to the small states of Germany, of the tariff of Prussia PERSIA.* Neglect of the establish- ment of a commercial treaty in 1836, affecting the trade of Central Asia. Yearly loss 200,000 1,600,000 TURKEY. Sacrifice of commercial treaty, from 1836,t and imposition of special restrictions on British commerce, since signature of the changed treaty, in 1838. Yearly loss 400,000 2,400,000 AUSTRIA. Sacrifice of treaty with that country, which was to have been fol- lowed up by a treaty for the navigation of the Danube for the provinces of Wal- lachia, Moldavia, and Servia, and which projected treaty was frustrated through the signature oi'a falsified Turkish treaty. Effects of this treaty enormous and in- calculable. Yearly loss 1,400,000 6,000,000 NAPLES* Sacrifice of treaty since 1839, say " 500,000 1,500,000 FRANCE. Absence of commercial treaty since 1840. Say annual loss . . . ". 1,500,000 3,000,000 * A treaty has recently been established, after Persia has been entirely given over to Russia, and after England has been brought back there for her own ends. t The loss it is convenient to calculate in all these cases, only from the period when a practical measure was prepared. J Three hundred and eighty-four British ships were at once thrown out of employment by 'the differences with Naples (See Mr. Macgregor's Report/ p. 4). * Russia benefited to the amount of above a million sterling by the existing of the difference between Naples and England, as affecting the price of her tallow and the amount of her export. COMMERCIAL DIPLOMACY. 167 CENTBAL ASIA.* Loss of trade since commencement of warlike operations. Yearly loss 200,000 - 800,000 CHINA. Loss of trade since 1838, say . 1,500,000 6,000,000 THE PENINSULA. Diminution or preven- tion of trade since 1835, by warlike ope- rations, or by the neglect or frustration of commercial advantages, say ... 500,000 3,500,000 MEXICO AND BUENOS AYBES. Submis- sion to an illegal blockade, loss inflicted on British eommerce, or augmentation of the cost of produce exported from those countries 3,000,000 Annual sacrifice of exports 7,000,000 Aggregate loss 43,000,000 Shipping thrown out of employment, tons . . . 500,000 Seaman ditto 50,000 Loss OP LABOUR. In diminution of yearly exports, equivalent to 2,500,000 quarters of grain burnt or thrown into the sea. This calculation was made in the year 1842 ; some of the items are excessively underrated, such, for instance, as that with France and Turkey. But taking the annual sacrifice at 7,000,000, we have from that period down to the present 77,000,000 of sacrifice upon the export trade alone, and adding to that the aggregate results of the Administration which have been so busy and successful in commercial diplo- macy, we have an amount of 120,000,000 cast into the sea. Be it however observed, that the point we aim at estab- lishing, is not the noxiousness, but the iuutility of Diplomacy. We do not want to have it mended, but rooted out. In a former article we have shown, on the authority of Lord Palmerston, that in regard to political objects diplomacy is a nullity. He takes his stand exclusively on commercial diplo- macy. We may discard the statement above cited, and rest our case exclusively on the counter-statement of Mr. Labouchere. There is, however, another view of the case suggested by * Russian trade in Central Asia has doubled, and 7,000,000 of sju'cie has been carried into that country and deposited there, to assist in carrying on the trade. 168 COMMERCIAL DIPLOMACY. the above items, that is, the cost of diplomacy. Financial reformers have always been eloquent upon this head, but they have looked no farther than salaries, house-rents, couriers, French cooks, and secret service money, and while intent upon items thus frivolous and contemptible, their minds have been dark in regard to the great features of the case ; not com- prehending the system, they could not entertain that intelli- gent " terror " at its endurance which must fill the mind of every man who apprehends its power and its character. The cost of diplomacy is not some tens of thousands, but it is the silent undermining, as we have now seen, of the very props of national existence, which again, as we shall presently see, is but a small matter compared with the deadly superin- cumbent weight which it has placed upon the fortunes of this empire nothing less than the NATIONAL DEBT. Now, let us make a practical application. Public opinion rules this land. If there is any branch upon which public opinion is informed, and therefore fit to rule, it is in matters of trade. AYas ever such an exhibition as this not the exhi- bition of figures, but of statement and of maxim ? The two ministers, members of the same cabinet, and specially engaged in the transactions referred to, severally declare, the one that it has been successful in those measures, the other that it has not ; the one lays down the principle upon which they were undertaken as of the highest national importance ; the other treats it with ridicule, and opposes it in the persons of their successors. Thus it may be that individual ability may coincide with aggregate imbecility. AYhat then are we to expect in the present pending matters in political diplomacy, where public opinion is not informed and is not permitted to have a voice ? Of course it is, that two ministers shall be enunciating contradictory maxims and making directly opposed statements. Nor will we be dis- appointed. Also, we may expect that the public capital of honour shall be lavished exactly as has been lavished the capital of trade. Thus, too, it may be, that individual courage may result in aggregate cowardice, and that friendship for an ally may practically resolve itself into the service to a foe. 169 THE SAFETY OF TURKEY AND THE HONOUR OF ENGLAND. September \Wi. There are two points involved in the pending negotiations the one the safety of Turkey, the other the honour of England. The second is implicated in the first, and neither ought to be matter of uncertainty, even were it attended with difficulties and dangers. We may even go the length of saying, that, were there difficulty or danger, there would be no uncertainty upon either. Difficulties of fact would call forth faculties presence of danger awaken courage. If, there- fore, doubts do impend over either solution, it arises from a confidence in the strength possessed by the one nation and the power possessed by the other. We have here a debate upon a matter of right. The parties are nations amenable to supreme tribunal, and seve- rally dependent on their respective might to maintain their right, or to push their pretensions. The discussion has been displaced from this basis, and withdrawn from this arbitra- ment. The question of right is excluded, and the power and disposition of the aggrieved party to protect itself overruled and suppressed. In this consists the ambiguity which im- pends over the security of the aggrieved and the honour of the umpire. The case is that of a match of bodily strength referred to the decision of a game of dexterity, or that of a litigated case in a court of law remitted to decision by a game of chance. It is, in fact, both. A war and an adjudi- cation are severally suspended, and the matter is referred to an anomalous procedure, in which enters chance and dexterity, chance being the lot of the one party, dexterity the attribute of the other. Thus to remit the matter is however to decide it, and to decide it against the safety of Turkey and the honour of England, severally compromised to the other, in the decision by which both are sacrificed. If Turkey alone were in a condition to guard its own security, and England in a condition to protect its own honour, how much more were each in a position to ropd aggression, destructive to the one and dishonourable to the other, when interests were united in the same point as 170 THE SAFETY OF TURKEY, ETC. strength. It is therefore to the overwhelming preponderance of that strength that must be attributed the security by which both have been compromised. There are two processes of superior mental combination which have constituted the internal springs of pre-eminent success the one contempt, the other admiration ; not feel- ings to be entertained, but suggested, a disposition of mind to be superinduced, and to obtain which must be adjusted acts, words, and gesture. The employment of the one or the other process depends upon the perfect appreciation of the character of antagonists. Those in whom the sentiment of admiration can be evoked are not available to be le 1 into error by self-esteem, and therefore through contempt ; whilst those who are exposed to the latter failing, are incapable of being inspired with the sentiments of admiration. T\vo conquerors furnish in their lives and fortunes illus- tration of their respective processes, and at the same time demonstrate the diversity of the characters to which they apply, in two different quarters of the globe. The maxim of C.nesar was, to cause himself to be mis-estimated by his antagonists that of Alexander to make himself the object of admiration to his foes. The one dealt with a material intellect, the other with an imaginative disposition; the one conquered Europe, the other subdued the East. The qualities of Caesar were also those of a material intellect, highly organized, perfectly disciplined, but inca- pable of incurring hazard, or, except from necessity, of risking life. Those of Alexander belonged to the imagination, based upon the practical part, but ascending beyond it to the sphere of genius, playing with fortune as his competitor for fame practised upon illusions, and dazzling at once the imagination by victories, by designs, and acquirements, by results and daring, compelling fate and defying chance. Systems are personalities. The man, to be great, must have system ; systems, to be successful, must have qualities. In our days, Csesar and Alexander have a competitor in fame and fortune, and that competitor acts simultaneously upon both the fields to which severally their study was applied, and upon which their greatness was achieved. Russia stands between the East and the West; she operates upon both; transfers the reflections accumulated in each to the other; uses them reciprocally against each other. That solemn MASK AND ANTI-MASK. 171 inquiry not hurried by events, nor narrowed to the space of a single life, but matured by centuries has led her to a common judgment with both. She presents two faces, making herself, like Caesar, despised in the West ; seeking to make herself like Alexander, admired in the East. The grade of mental power differs, however, widely in re- spect to the attainment of those objects ; and consequently, while equalling the dexterity of the Roman Dictation, she has not attained the standard of the Macedonian Prince ; it thus is, and thus only, that the Taurus and the Paropamisus have remained virgin to her armies, whilst the great military and naval power possessed by Europe is seen to be incapable of the slightest movement to paralyse her action, or to con- trol her will; Europe, despising her, is managed by her strategy ; Asia, not dazzled by her genius, is refractory to her arms. MASK AND ANTI-MASK. September 14^. So says the Times "If Lord Clarendon's despatch had been produced at an earlier period, and before Parliament closed, it would have made the position of the Government perfectly plain and unassailable ; and it would have relieved the public from some uneasiness." Why, then, was that publication left for the " weekly paper of Sunday last," to be given, " abounding in gallicisms and inaccuracies of every kind." The Times was in possession of the document from the beginning. "As, however, the import of this important State paper has been-thus imperfectly made public, we proceed without further delay to lay a correct copy of it before our readers." The first question is, from whom did the Times get the original ? If from its English Government, it surely must have published it before ; if not, then it must have had it from its Russian Embassy. Where, in that case, is Count Nesselrode's reply. It is careful to inform us that it does not know " whether Count Nesselrode attempted to r< ply to Lord Clarendon's argument, which, in many respects, admitted of 172 MASK AND ANTI-MASK. no refutation." Clearly the Times is in the confidence of the British Government, or of the Russian Embassy, which, after all, is one and the same thing. The next question is, how Lord Clarendon's despatch comes to render " perfectly plain and unassailable the position of the English Government." That position, if we remember aright, as taken up at the close of the Session, was that England confided entirely in the " honour and character" of the Emperor of Russia. Now, the Times tells us that Lord Clarendon's argument, in many respects, admits of no refu- tation. It does not tell us in what respects it does admit of refutation, but it specifies those in which it does not. " It establishes" (these are its own words) " beyond the possibility of doubt that it was not because the fleets were Si j nt to the Dardanelles on the 2d of June that Russia invaded the Prin- cipalities The date alone suffices to convict the Russian Ministers of gross inaccuracies." Gross inaccuracies ! Are these the terms that would be selected by an indignant denouncer of such conduct, or by the advocate of Lord Clarendon's "views," or those of a perfidious apologist? How could Russia be " inaccurate" in such a matter? She did not require to look at the date of despatches to know what she herself had done ; we collate those dates to discover what she has done, and we find therein evidence of a falsehood. She did not misdate, but she deceived. It is falsehood that Lord Clarendon charges a falsehood covering a fact, and made use of as nn insult. Does this statement, however glozed over by the deprecatory epithet of " grossness," administer any amount of plainness and unassaihibility to the position of the English Government that position being that the honour of the Emperor was " plain" and " un- assailable?" The Times goes on to say, in regard to the substance of the dispute, that the despatch of Lord Clarendon had " equal force," and commends it for denouncing the "invasion of the Principalities as a violation of territory, and an infraction both of special treaty and of public law, c." But this covers the whole ground. In what, then, are the "respects" in which Lord Clarendon's despatch does admit of a Russian refutation ? However, again we ask, what is there to render the " position of the Government plain and unassailable," or to relieve the public from "uneasiness?" Far more is it MASK AND ANTI-MASK, 173 difficult to imagine how this publication can be construed into " the most complete and decisive answer conceivable, to the attacks of those who had misconceived or chose to mis- represent the line of policy adopted by this country." We, on the other hand, are of opinion that a more com- plete and decisive answer can scarcely be given than the despatch of Lord Clarendon to those who adopt and approve the line of policy pursued by this country, being in direct opposition to all the motives which must be supposed to influence men who have concurred in Russia's recent acts, and have come forward to vouch for her " honour and cha- racter;" and if such had not been the conviction of the Times, as well as the conviction of the Russian Embassy, and of three out of the four Foreign Secretaries composing the Cabinet, its publication would not have been delayed until the Session was closed, the occasion passed, and it could come only to accumulate a new load of dishonour on the nation, and of infamy on the Cabinet. Here we have the official declaration of falsehoods employed by the Russian Govern- ment, and submitted to by the British. Had the publication been made during the Session of Parliament, could that Session have closed with the Ministerial declaration of Eng- land's reliance on the " honour and character" of the Em- peror. " Dates " now show that the despatch was communi- cated to the Russian Government before the declaration was made in Parliament, vouching for the veracity of the Russian Emperor. Is not this to drink the very dregs of humiliation ? Hence the reason of suppressing it then, and publishing it now. But did the Russian Government ever expect to deceive the British ? It would have been a very silly Government if it had. Qui est ce que Von trompe ici ? Was it necessary to prove to the Russian Government that it was " inaccurate ?" There was but one course for the British Government to take and that was, to break off all intercourse. Any course save this, was to give to the insult its effect, and, above all, to prove the falsehood without requiring the necessary repara- tion, and taking the consequent steps, was to do precisely what Russia intended you to do it sealed and published the bond of your servitude. You argue the case forsooth, and the man who has insulted you does not condescend to reply. Why should he ? His object is not to establish his truth, but I 174 MASK AND ANTI-MASK. your meanness. You have taken the burden of his " honour" on your shoulders. Strange indeed if he were to come to the rescue and relieve you of the load. Again, this is not all. By this falsehood you are put for- ward as the cause of the invasion of the Principalities. You argue, indeed, the contrary. But is this a case for argu- ment ? This is a matter of will and declaration. It is so when Russia states it. She says " 1 invade Turkey because Turkey is too great friends with you ;" and you say " Oh, you did no such thing ; you intended to do so long before a certain date, and therefore you say what is false." Nevertheless Turkey is invaded, and the falsehood is not retracted ; and yet the policy pursued upon this occasion is rendered " plain and unassailable," by the avowal of the fact ! Oh, it is not our cheek that smarts it is our friend ! Well, and if you are content, what will your friends say to your " plain and unassailable" policy ^ The Times goes on to give us the detail of the stupendous results obtained bv this note. " What," it says, collecting its energies for a great effort, " was the effect of this despatch ?" Listen, attentive world. " We know not whether Count Nesselrode attempted to reply." On the first point, therefore, the question which the Times puts to itself it leaves where it puts it. But something grand is now coming. " But we have positive evidence of a more important result." The first impor- tant result of Lord Clarendon's despatch is, that it should not be answered ; in fact, that it should be unanswerable. The next is, either that the Principalities are evacuated, or that the Czar has shot himself; and all that we have heard from the East since the middle of July must be a dream. But, no, the facts are facts ; it is the reasonings that are incredibilities. It goes on, " Namely, that after the Prussian Government had been told in this unequivocal manner, what opinion was en- tertained in Europe of its proceedings, and what resistance trotild be offered to its attacks, it instantly accepted the very first terms of compromise offered to its consideration." The words italicised are its own ; yet, in its own corre- spondence from Constantinople, in a passage which we our- selves inserted from that paper, this note, so instantly accepted, is described as " giving to Russia all that it desired, " We again quote the passage. After speaking of the tamely sub- missive way in which the Porte accepted the advice of Lord MASK AND ANTI-MASK. 175 Stratford de Redcliffe, the Times' Correspondent asserts that the European Governments had been tempted into ignoring " the existence of anything like independence on the part of the Forte : for, when a note proposed by the Four Powers, and assented to by Russia (since it gives all desired}, has been sent to Constantinople to be signed, all European organs of public opinion congratulate themselves that the difficulties are over." How does the Times not establish a more effectual cen- mre for its Foreign Correspondents ? It has often been charged with concocting letters ; probably it will be more guarded for the future. We have not, however, done with this wonderful despatch. It seems that it has balked Russia completely and at all points, for, " far from being a step nearer to her object, she has retracted, &c." Her object, therefore, was not to occupy the Principalities, not to disgrace England, not to bully Europe, not to extinguish the Turkish corn trade, not to prolong her occupation in the Principalities until she can convulse or invade Austria or Turkey, or both. She has, of course, done none of these things ; and because an unex- pected unanimity, spirit, and power have revealed themselves in Turkey, it is all owing to this despatch of Lord Clarendon's, which does not touch the subject matter, which only stamps disgrace upon England, and, in so far as the opinions of the writer are revealed, is in direct opposition to the acts of his colleagues. We have more than once foreshadowed a proposition which has now taken body and shape ; we have said that, failing to drive the Porte, into acquiescence, through its weakness, Russia would next seek to alarm the nations of Europe by its power. We have used these words We shall be called upon to " put down Mussulman fanaticism, and to resist Turkish ambition." See now how closely the game is played on both sides. The Times of yesterday has the words, " We have no inclination to back the passions or the fana- ticism which may one day let loose a Turkish army upon Europe" Just so. We ended an article the other day with these words : " If you prevent the Turks from fighting your battles against the Russians, the day will come that you will have to fight them (the Turks) yourselves." The Times does not know "whether Count Nesselrode attempted to reply to Lord Clarendon." Now, we do know MASK AND ANTI-MASK. that he did not ; and, without the penetration and information of Printing-house-square, we find that fact in the document itself. Could we, indeed, have in our Foreign Office such a breakers of windows, as a man demanding an answer from Russia, when it was not convenient, to give one ? We trace in the despatch signed " Clarendon," two hands -. the one a lcrks do not dread war if Englishmen do. IK God's name* then, let the/it fi