THE BLUE BOOKS AND THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Notwithstanding the imposing aspect of these azure tomes, technically termed Blue Books, we confess we do not look upon them without a feeling of suspicion or incredulity. No doubt the usages of Parliament and the will of the Crown require the production of documents relating to every important transaction connected with our foreign policy, and they are intended to furnish ample and accurate details of our international acts, and to unfold to the public the intricacies of complicated and tedious negotiations. Such is the object of those expensive publications; but, for the attainment of that object, they should be not merely authentic, but complete. And when we say that we do not regard the Blue Books with all the respect that full confidence inspires, it is because we know that the papers they contain are well sifted and culled: those parts which would prove the weakness, the ignorance, and the imprudence of a Minister, are so carefully kept out of sight, and so curtailed, and those in his favour so prominently brought forward, that we have, after all, a very partial, and consequently a very imperfect, view of the manner in which a negotiation has been conducted. Truth, they say, lies at the bottom of a well: the Foreign Office may be that well, but the eye of the public is not always enabled to pierce its depth. Moreover, we have heard it related that some Ministers indulge a vicious habit of communicating instructions to their diplomatic agents in notes or letters marked private, or evidently meant to be so from their familiar style and tone; and that some letters contain hints or instructions sometimes contrary to the official despatches. This is unjust to the public, and unfair to the diplomatic agent himself, who, in case his conduct should become subject of inquiry or censure in Parliament, is thus debarred from defending himself, because the real instructions on which he acted bear the stamp of privacy, which delicacy forbids him to violate; and it is quite certain that the Blue Books contain no trace of those confidential missives. There is one personage in particular whose name has been more connected than any other with our foreign policy, who is said to carry this habit to such a point as to force complaints from his own subordinates.
We are not exempt from human weakness: we confess that we have more than once cast a curious and a longing glance on those plethoric Jacks which daily issue from Downing Street, and the safe conveyance of which to their distant destination costs the country annually a handsome sum of money. We have often desired to dive to the very bottom of these round white leathern envelopes, which are so tenderly handled and so scrupulously guarded. What profound thoughts, what foresight, what eloquence, and what wisdom, must be contained, we have often thought, within that mysterious covering of calf, of more than aldermanic rotundity, tightly closed at the neck with whipcord, and the genius of England protecting the orifice in the form and fashion of a huge red seal. It is true that idle or blabbing clerks, and supercilious or rollicking messengers—the external “gentlemen” of the Foreign Office—are said to indulge occasionally in a laugh, whilst lounging in their waiting-room, at the reverential awe with which the vulgar are wont to look upon the “despatch bags.” Strange stories, too, are said to be current of the miscellanies which sometimes fill them, the curious olla podrida, the several parts of which are so well adapted to the tastes of the youthful employés of our foreign embassies. Packages of pomatum, bottles of hair-dye, pots of varnish, patent-leather boots, and dress-coats, are occasionally conveyed to the capital where we are blessed with a representative who unites in his own person the conflicting tastes of dandyism and parsimony. Gossipping tongues speak of even more important cargoes—not, of course, in the bag, but outside it—that were sometimes conveyed, at her Majesty’s expense, to her “Honourable” or “Right Honourable” representative, under the care of some bustling “gentleman,” whose official character is indicated by the Windsor uniform, and a minute badge with the royal arms, and the effigy (a harmless irony) of a greyhound—the latter symbolical of the speed at which he is presumed to travel.
Taking the present Blue Books at the value set upon them by the Government, we believe that every impartial man who has glanced over their contents, and who has read the debates in Parliament, will be convinced of the blindness, the weakness—we will not say the criminality—of the Cabinet, in all that relates to the Eastern question. It is in vain that we attempt to defend their conduct on the ground of ignorance, for there are abundant proofs in the documents before us, however imperfect they may be, that they were not ignorant, and were not unwarned of what was going on. The evidence is too clear even for audacity to deny, or hypocrisy to diminish. They themselves have been forced to admit that they were outwitted and duped as no men were ever duped before; and however a generous and forgiving people may pardon the fault for the frankness of the confession, such imbecility in the past is but poor encouragement for the future. The noble lord who holds the post of Prime Minister is indeed unfortunate in his general estimate of men and things. When the Revolution of February was on the point of bursting forth, he is said to have declared his conviction that King Louis Philippe and his dynasty were firmer than ever on the throne of France. After a long, and, we presume, conscientious study of the President of the new French republic, the same acute intellect pronounced Louis Napoleon to be little better than an idiot, and in contemptuous terms described him as incapable in thought and action. When the votes of millions approved and confirmed the daring illegality of the act of December 1851, he believed that his rule could not last three months: and in the latest exercise of his discrimination and knowledge of the world, our great statesman laughed to scorn the fear that the Emperor Nicholas ever contemplated any attack against the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, and this at the moment when every post was bringing home news of the hostile attitude of Russia; when the newspapers teemed with accounts of the movements of armies in the south of Russia; when that force was placed on a war footing, and provisioned as if on the eve of a campaign; when a fleet was at Sebastopol ready to weigh anchor; when wood was cut down for the construction of pontoons and bridges for the Pruth and Danube; and when Constantinople itself was menaced with a coup de main;[[8]] when the magazines of Odessa were gorged with military stores for the complete equipment of 150,000 men; when troops had already marched to the Turkish frontier; when Prince Menschikoff was outraging the Sultan in his own capital, and dictating who should, or who should not, be his minister. And with the reports of our own diplomatic and consular agents confirming all those facts, the noble Lord at the head of her Majesty’s Government was smiling complacently at the compliments lavished on him by that great master of irony, Count Nesselrode, who chuckled with his imperial master at the simplicity of the statesman refusing to believe the evidence of his senses. We have seldom witnessed so much prevarication, so much barefaced misstatement, as have been exhibited on this question. It was denied in the most positive manner in the House of Lords that Russia had ever required from the Sultan the dismissal of his minister Fuad Effendi; or that the resignation of that minister was voluntary. The repeated warnings in the public press, the official communications of his own agents in Turkey and Russia, went for nothing. The intentions of the Emperor of Russia were in his eyes moderate and pacific, even so late as the end of April. The arrogant language of the Russian Envoy at Constantinople, the menaced occupation of the Principalities, were, because Count Nesselrode pronounced them to be so, not merely exaggerated, but “destitute of any foundation whatever.” The “beau rôle” which the wily chancellor of the Russian Empire congratulated Lord Aberdeen for having preferred, was in point of fact the meanest subservience; and we are satisfied that it was to the conviction that this “beau rôle”[[9]] was to be played out to the end, that we owe all that has since taken place. The same truckling spirit characterised even those acts of the Government which had the appearance of energy. When our ships entered the Dardanelles, and anchored before Constantinople, the country was made to believe that their presence in the Bosphorus had no reference to the acts of Russia, but to the protection of British subjects and property, and to the defence of the Sultan from the violence of his own subjects at a moment when it was known that not the slightest danger menaced either the one or the other. Abdul Medjid must have felt indignant at the imputation thus cast by his friends on the loyalty of his subjects, and even Lord Aberdeen’s own ambassador declined to accept such an explanation of movement of the fleet without a pretext. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, while expressing his thanks for the interest taken by the British Government in the preservation of British life and property at Constantinople, said, at the same time, that he applied his gratitude also to that part of the instructions which authorised him to consider the presence of her Majesty’s squadron, if he thought proper to require it, as intended to embrace the protection of the Sultan in case of need: from whom the Sultan most needed protection, no man knew better than the English ambassador. The defence set up for the delays, the hesitations, and the inaction of the Aberdeen Cabinet, was, it seems, the doubt entertained of the co-operation of France. Now, nothing is more clearly shown, even in the Blue Books, that the contrary was the fact. It is proved by the despatches of the French Ambassador in London, and of the English Ambassador in Paris. They show, beyond the possibility of doubt, not only that such was not the case, but that every proposition of active measures, from the very beginning when the squadrons appeared in the Bay of Salamis to their entering the Black Sea, originated exclusively with the French Government. The despatch of Lord Cowley of the 28th January confirmed the intelligence published in the London papers, that it was the French Government who had invited the English to join the French fleet in the expedition to the Greek waters, and the fact is corroborated in the despatch of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs to his ambassador in London, dated the 5th June. Again, on the 13th July the French Ambassador proposed to Lord Clarendon that, in the event of Russia not accepting the Vienna note, or showing a disposition to persist in a violent policy, the French and English fleets should forthwith enter the Dardanelles. That proposition was repeated in the beginning of September by the French Government; and once more, on the 23d of the same month, Count Walewski urged the presence of the fleets in the Black Sea as indispensable. On this important point there was not the slightest divergence of opinion between the head of the French Government and his Minister of Foreign Affairs; their views were the same, their opinions identical; and the Blue Books prove no fact to be more indisputable, more certain, than that their conduct throughout the whole of the affair was frank and straightforward. It is not alone in the French despatches that we find this proof. We see it in the correspondence of Lord Aberdeen and Lord Cowley. The latter noble lord, who had the best opportunity of ascertaining the truth, and who is not a person to be easily deceived, repeatedly informs his Government that he invariably received from the Emperor, or from his minister, the same assurances of a desire to act in concert and in cordial alliance with England, and that he never could discover, though he was evidently on the watch, the slightest difference between them. It is all very well to say that the time which has been spent in, as it now appears, useless negotiation, has not been lost, and that the Government has been enabled to prepare the means of resisting the encroachments of Russia, and of wresting from her the territory she has seized. It is a poor defence to allege that fortune has, after all, favoured us, and that we are not in so bad a condition as we might have been. A blunder is not the less a blunder because its results are not so mischievous as they might be. But if we are prepared at this moment, as there can be little doubt, the credit is not due to Ministers, who have exhibited throughout a credulity and a simplicity we believe to be unexampled. We have no reason to believe that if, in the very commencement, a firm and imposing attitude had been assumed by our Government, the Emperor of Russia would not have recoiled before he had yet placed himself in a position, to retire from which, without striking a blow, is shame and dishonour. Had it been announced that the squadrons would enter the Black Sea the moment the Russians crossed the Pruth, we believe that that passage would not have taken place, and in that menace we are confident that France would have joined us.
On perusing the despatches published by the French Government in its official organ, we have been particularly struck by the clearness of views and the intrepidity, mingled with good sense, which pervade them. From the moment that the question assumed a more general character; when it ceased to refer exclusively to French interests, we remark the masterly view which the Emperor’s minister of foreign affairs took of the whole question as it then stood; of the accuracy with which he judged of the future conduct of the Czar, and the marked line of conduct which he proposed to follow. Yet the difficulties in the way of the French Government were great. With the cunning which distinguishes the policy of Russia, this power had the tact to present the Eastern question, from the outset, in a light most disadvantageous to France; and the excessive zeal and indiscretion of M. de Lavalette indisposed the other powers, and afforded a pretext to our own Government to stand aloof. In this country the policy and person of the French Emperor had been unpopular. With the prejudice, mistrust, and ill-feeling which his name inspired, it is not to be wondered at that all his acts were viewed with suspicion; and the question of the holy places was at once, and as this result has shown, unfairly interpreted as the forerunner of new and more important pretensions,—as the continuation, in fact, of the plans of his uncle, whose hostility to England he was supposed to have inherited with his crown. It was at the moment of the invasion panic—which was so far useful that it roused us to strengthen our defences, and organise a naval and military force which we then little thought would be employed against Russia—that the French minister at Constantinople succeeded in obtaining immunities in favour of the Latin church, of which France assumed to be the protector. We will not now examine whether these privileges were of the exorbitant and unjust character ascribed to them. It is sufficient that they were so considered by Russia, and that the advantages extorted from the Porte for the monks of the holy cities were understood as placing the Greek communion in a condition of relative inferiority, and as realising a triumph over Russia in those places where she had long reigned supreme, and where she would brook no rival, much less a superior. From such a quarrel between rival churches, with the dogmas of which we had nothing in common, England properly kept apart, and France was left to find her own way, unaided, out of the unpleasant position in which her agents had placed her. No moment could be more propitious to Russia, ever watchful as she has always been of dissension between the Western powers, and ever ready to take advantage of it. The French Government soon saw and met the danger. Its ambassador was recalled and disavowed. Explanations were promptly and frankly given, and readily received; and M. de Nesselrode himself, however disappointed or checked, was forced to admit that these explanations were perfectly satisfactory, and that the redress obtained in favour of the Latins was not of a nature to trench upon the immunities of the Greeks. That admission completely closed the question of the Holy Places, in which France was exclusively interested. But scarcely had it terminated when the mission of Prince Menschikoff assumed all at once a strange and startling aspect. It was soon seen that the holy places were but the mask which covered pretensions of far greater moment. The French Government, struck by the haughty and menacing tone of the Russian envoy, quickly understood the true cause of the vast military preparations of Russia, and became aware that they were the prelude to a state of things which would endanger the independence of the Sultan and the security of his states. It considered that France was bound by the Treaties of 1841, to which she was a party, as well as by her position in Europe, not to regard with indifference the proceedings of Russia; and, as a precautionary measure, it ordered the Mediterranean fleet to proceed on the 20th March to the Greek waters, and to remain there until further events rendered a nearer approach to the Sultan’s capital necessary. When that order was issued, France alone declared its belief in the grave and threatening character of the pretensions of the Czar. Austria affected to give credit to the repeated assurances of Russian moderation, and continued to keep aloof; and Lord Aberdeen, whose attention had been drawn by the public press, and, no doubt, by his own agents, to the coming storm, could perceive no cloud, no angry speck in the political horizon. The French Government, as is proved by the despatches in the Moniteur, persisted in its conviction that the most serious dangers were at hand; and that Russia believed that the long-expected moment had arrived for realising her traditional policy in the East—the annihilation of the Ottoman Empire, or its absorption, by the process of previous degradation. France considered that, under such circumstances, complete obstruction was impossible, and that, so far as England was concerned, the necessity of maintaining her maritime superiority ought to be a sufficient motive for her participation in a more active policy. The instructions to M. de Lacour, dated the 22d March, presupposed the adherence of the British Government to that policy; the co-operation of the English squadron was anticipated for months previously; and, in his despatch of the 3d June, M. Drouyn de Lhuys presumed that the policy of the French Cabinet would soon become that of the Powers who were equally if not more interested than France in the maintenance of the Treaties of 1841. This energetic conduct, and the conviction which began to creep over the slow mind of Lord Aberdeen, produced some effect. On the 3d June the English squadron received orders similar to those of the French, and at length it sailed for Besica Bay. In the course of the same month, Austria and Prussia, roused to a sense of the impending danger, mustered courage enough to show symptoms of resistance to the pretensions of Russia, and in the month of July these two Powers united with England and France in the Vienna note, with the avowed object of maintaining peace. We are bound to admit that throughout this operation the French Government acted in a manner that redounds to its honour, and that subsequent events have fully justified its original apprehensions and precautions. The Vienna note was very properly regarded by the Divan as leaving a door open to the encroachments of Russia. The instinct of impending danger rendered the Porte more acute than usual, and its fears, which had been termed puerile, were completely justified by the commentary of M. de Nesselrode, who accepted the note for the same reasons that made the Sultan reject it. The plenipotentiaries were confounded (or at least affected to be so) on learning that the elaborate state paper, which had been so carefully worded, and which had stood the scrutinising glance and the keen criticism of the collective statesmanship of the Four Cabinets, was, in point of fact, nothing less than the Menschikoff ultimatum, which had been indignantly rejected by the same conference that adopted the Vienna note. Matters now became more complicated and alarming. The war which began to rage on the banks of the Danube, with every prospect of a long duration, produced its fatal effects on the commerce of western Europe; and as the hope of preserving peace became weaker each day, the union of the four great Powers was found to be more necessary. The consequence of this resolution was a new conference, which opened on the 5th December 1853. The note of the 13th January was the result. It was, no doubt, intended as the bond by which the Powers pledged themselves to act together for the peace of Europe; for, notwithstanding the suspicious conduct of Austria, it was clear that she, even more than any other, was interested in resisting any attempt to violate international law. The French Government acted throughout this affair with much prudence, foresight, and loyalty. We have it on record that Louis Napoleon and his Government saw from the commencement the aim of Russia, and fully appreciated the grave and alarming character of the events which were preparing in the East. The Emperor of the French had, as we have said, been exposed to a great deal of obloquy in this country. He had encountered the sullenness or hostility of our Government; he had to contend with the intrigues of political parties in France, the most selfish and unprincipled of all, the Fusionists; and he exhibited throughout the sagacity which foresaw, and the judgment which estimated, the full importance of the situation—as well as the courage to face it. He who had been suspected of a design to trample all obligations under foot, to disregard faith and honour, stood forth boldly, first, and alone, to defend the inviolability of treaties; and he summoned the nations of Europe to co-operate with him. Insulted by suspicions of his good faith, and baffled in his attempts to conciliate his enemies, he yet did not abandon the task he had undertaken. He at length succeeded in bringing over England. Austria and Prussia, ever timorous, hesitating, and slow, inclined to the manly policy of which France had set the example, and the question of the Holy Places, which had been confined to Russia and France, soon lost its original character, and assumed another, which now interests and agitates the whole of the European continent. We live in strange times! One of the strangest events to which the Eastern question has given rise is, that Napoleon III.—the “idiot,” as a noble lord in the present Cabinet was wont to call him—the penniless adventurer, the man regardless of all ties, of all faith, should be the person to remind the Conservative Governments of Europe of the treaties they themselves had framed, and to summon them to execute them faithfully. Louis Napoleon is no longer an outcast; nor is France isolated. His alliance, on the contrary, is courted; and among his former foes are some who find no terms too extravagant to celebrate his disinterestedness and his loyalty. The French despatches do honour to the sovereign who inspired, and the minister who drew them up; and they are in every respect worthy of the great nation whose title to our friendship is, that she has been the most formidable and honourable of our enemies.
Foresight, moderation, and firmness are, as we have observed, the characteristics of French policy in the Eastern question. In these despatches we see the French minister anticipate the moment when negotiation would become fruitless, and when all honourable mode of arrangement would be rejected by Russia. In its earlier stages we find the French ambassador in London, earnestly and repeatedly urged to come to an understanding with the English Cabinet on the conduct which, in such an emergency, it would be necessary to adopt. It is to the repeated instances of M. Drouyn de Lhuys we owe it, that identical instructions were given to M. de Lacour and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, which directed that the fleets should enter the Dardanelles if the Russians did not evacuate the Principalities which they had invaded. Yet the fatal hesitation of Lord Aberdeen may be traced even in the resolves of the French minister. In the decided measure adopted by M. Drouyn de Lhuys, there appeared an unwillingness to break off rudely with Russia. In his despatch of the 1st September, that minister informs Count Walewski, that the presence of the fleets at the entrance of the Dardanelles—outside the castles—if demanded by the Porte—was rather a measure of precaution against the weather, than an encouragement to the Porte in its refusal to the reasonable demands of Russia. It may be that such a declaration was with a view to allay any alarm which might be felt by the German states at the onward movement of the fleet. We find additional evidence of the unwillingness to occasion fresh embarrassment in the cause assigned for the first appearance of a detachment of the squadron before Constantinople. That pretext was the apprehension of insurrection against the Sultan by the Ulemas, and the massacre of the Christian population. We have no doubt that there was considerable dissatisfaction manifested by the Turks at the delays of their soi-disant allies; and that there existed much irritation at the conduct of the western Courts, who had advised the Porte to resist the demands of Russia; excited it to use all the means at its disposal to maintain that resistance; and who, when Turkey was left exposed to the wrath of her formidable enemy, still lingered at the mouth of the Dardanelles. But we look in vain for satisfactory proofs of the plots of insurrection and massacre attributed to the Mussulman population, and assigned as the cause of the presence of the fleets at Constantinople. We regard the whole thing as one of those paltry subterfuges, of which we find so many instances throughout this proceeding. Nothing was, however, gained by it; and neither the Emperor of Russia nor the public was deceived. The Christian population of Stamboul showed no sign of apprehension, and we have reason to believe that they disclaimed, so far as they were concerned, any such motive. The Turks were offended at being accused of a crime which they had not contemplated, and outraged by being falsely accused by Christians of treason to their own sovereign. With the arrival of the fleets before Constantinople vanished the danger of the Christians, of which, however, they were perfectly unconscious; as also of the Sultan, who, though informed that the vengeance of his subjects had placed his crown and life in danger, yet, in all the consciousness of security, had not ceased for a single day to appear in public, in the streets and public places where the population is in greatest number;—that population which our Ministers pretended to believe was watching the first favourable occasion to depose or assassinate him. He never failed to pray at the stated hours in the mosque, where the plotting Ulemas and the fanatical Softas explained or studied the Koran. Not only no insult was offered to him in word, act, or perhaps thought; but his Highness was on all occasions received with the same respect, reverence, and affection which Abdul-Medjid, ever since his accession to the throne, has proved himself deserving of.
The fleets having gone up for a special service, which they were not called upon to perform, the next question was, what was to be done with them, and where they should go next? An extract from the despatch of M. Drouyn de Lhuys to Count Walewski, of 4th September, shows the anxiety of the French Government to get as quickly as possible out of the awkward position in which their assent to that contemptible policy placed them. The French minister took up the matter with courage, and like a man of business:—“The question now is to determine as to the employment of our naval forces. The Emperor is of opinion that our fleet is destined to play an important part in the defence of the Ottoman empire. It might serve to cover Constantinople, and to operate, if necessary, on the western coast of the Black Sea, as far up as Varna,” &c. This plan was not, however, executed. Some difficulty arose on the part of Austria and Prussia, and these powers did not think, notwithstanding the intended massacre of the Christians and the deposition of the Sultan, that the appearance of the combined forces in the Bosphorus, much less their entry into the Black Sea, was sufficiently called for. Whether right or wrong, their influence arrested the further proceedings, which, if we are to credit M. Drouyn de Lhuys, had been already contemplated by the Emperor of the French. The fleets of France and England remained, therefore, in a state of inactivity near the Golden Horn, and negotiations again commenced. New collective notes were drawn up, and the idea of another quadruple intervention, with, of course, a view to a pacific solution, was again revived. The prospect grew brighter. The inexorable Czar appeared to take pity on our Cabinet; to smile graciously on the minister of the “beau rôle,” the gentle and confiding friend of Nesselrode. The Emperor of Russia, whose preparations were not as yet complete, showed a disposition to treat; and, false throughout, gave assurances that he would not assume the offensive on any point. “Our latest intelligence,” says M. Drouyn de Lhuys, so recently as the 15th December—“our latest intelligence from St Petersburg is to the effect that Russia is resolved to treat, and, above all, to adopt no offensive measures, and our confidence in this may suffice to explain the inactivity of the fleets.” But the pacific declarations of Russia, which we fear M. Castelbajac too readily believed, were but the cloak under which the attack on the Turkish squadron of Sinope, and the massacre which followed, were concealed. With such a deed perpetrated at so short a distance from the spot where the flags of England and France were floating together, the fleets could not linger any more in the Bosphorus. They entered the Black Sea, and what was termed a policy of action commenced. Prussia and Austria were startled from their propriety, but they still followed on in the pursuit of that peace which, when nearest, always eluded their grasp,—and
“Like the circle bounding earth and skies,
Allures from far, yet, as they follow, flies.”
The attitude of France and England became more decided, and at length, after much hesitation, the Russian ambassadors were recalled from Paris and London.
In the course of the long operation which preceded the rupture of diplomatic relations, the judgment of M. Drouyn de Lhuys appeared nowhere to greater advantage than in the accuracy with which he divined and unmasked the real designs of the Czar in the matter of the Holy Shrines, while our noble Premier looked on credulous and confiding. The anger of the Czar, so much out of proportion to the offence, had, to be sure, something suspicious in it, and to the uninitiated or unsuspecting was utterly inexplicable. M. Drouyn de Lhuys knew well the cause of that immense wrath. It was not on account of the miserable squabbles of Latin and Greek monks that vast bodies of troops traversed the plains of southern Russia, that stores sufficient for an immense army and for a long campaign were accumulated in the magazines of Odessa, and that vast preparations were made at Sebastopol.
The absorbing interest which attached to events in western Europe since the revolution of 1848—the revolution which had convulsed nearly every Continental state—had occupied the public mind to the exclusion of everything else; and Russia availed herself of the storm which raged everywhere, except in her own territory, to realise her aggressive projects. Her political and religious influence had long been paramount at Constantinople. The arrival of M. de Lavalette first threatened to disturb that monopoly. Indeed, any allusion, however slight, to the capitulation of 1741, instantly alarmed Russia; and Prince Menschikoff, finding that the secret of the Czar was discovered, hastened to present his ultimatum, with all the aggravating and insulting circumstances already known. The French Government explained at length to the Cabinet of St Petersburg the motives and the extent of the French demands with reference to the Holy Places; but the Head of the Orthodox Church refused to listen—he would bear no rival in the East. “There is established,” said M. Drouyn de Lhuys in his despatch of the 21st March to General Castelbajac, “an important political usage in Europe. It consists in this, that the Powers interest themselves in common in certain general interests, and overcome, by means of their diplomacy, difficulties which at another period could only be terminated by force of arms. Be so good, then, General, as to demand of M. de Nesselrode if the Cabinet of St Petersburg, repudiating the principle which has prevailed for thirty years in the relations of the great Powers with each other, means to constitute itself the sole arbiter of the destinies of Turkey, and if for that common policy, to which the world is indebted for its repose, Russia means to substitute a policy of isolation and domination which would necessarily constrain the other Cabinets in the approaching crisis to consult only their own interests, and to act only with a view to their private views.” Russia did not choose to comprehend the full significance of that intimation; and though she herself had often been among the first to solicit a European combination when there appeared a chance of her deriving advantage from it, she yet haughtily rejected the proposal when it crossed, or did not promote, her ambition. Her great object was to treat with Turkey without the intervention of a third party; and it was the arrogant manner in which she met the advances of the Western Powers, or rather forbade them to meddle in what she regarded as a domestic quarrel between a vassal and his master, that attracted general attention to the question, and gave it a European character. We find no point more strongly insisted on by M. Drouyn de Lhuys, in his despatches to General Castelbajac, than not permitting Russia to assume this exclusive right of dictating her will on the Oriental question. It is superfluous to say that France had no intention of excluding her from a fair share; but beyond that she would not go. Fearing the probability of a cordial union between England and France—an event which, so long as Lord Aberdeen directed the affairs of state, he would not believe possible—the whole force of the Emperor’s policy was directed to prevent it, or break it off if it had been already formed. Heretofore the Czar had fully approved the conduct of his noble friend, and we find more than once, in the papers laid before Parliament, the warm expression of imperial gratitude. Happy minister! It falls to the lot of few to be enabled to boast of such certificates of conduct as those from Louis Philippe in 1846, and from Nicholas in 1853. It is true that the excellent qualities so much admired rendered it easy for a hypocrite to overreach, and an overbearing despot to insult, England. The English and French alliance must be broken off at any cost. The insults to the French Emperor, and the French people, were still ringing in the ears of the public. The impertinencies of two members of the Aberdeen Cabinet—the wriggling of miserable sycophancy which met with the contempt it merited—when alluding to the ruler of France, were fresh in the memory of all. The invasion fever had not been entirely allayed; the old suspicions of the insincerity of the French Government, and the jealousies and hatreds which had been dormant, might again be roused. France must be isolated, and the partisans of the Orleans family, the “Fusionists,” or by whatever nickname they are known, already exulted in the shame which they invoked at the hand of a foreign despot on their own country. The Chancellor of the Russian Empire brought all his ability to the task. He accused France of ambition, and reproached her with being the cause of the quarrel by her conduct in the question of the Holy Places. The point was a sore one, as, however disingenuously it was revived by Russia, it was nevertheless a fact that the quarrel followed hard on the demands of M. de Lavalette. M. de Nesselrode, with true Muscovite candour, omitted to add that he himself had expressed his satisfaction and approbation of the fair and honourable manner in which the French Government had brought that question to an issue. That account had been finally closed. A considerable portion of the despatches of M. Drouyn de Lhuys is taken up with a refutation of those charges, and it is admitted on all hands that his refutation of them is satisfactory and complete. With the history of Russian aggression for the last century before us, the charge of ambition against another power was strange in the mouth of a Russian minister. But the capitulation of 1741, which confirmed the previous immunities of the Latin communion in the East, were not, after all, of a nature to offend or alarm any one. The sort of protectorate which they established, was not menacing to any power in Europe, inasmuch as they applied to establishments which were under the protection of all alike; whilst the Greek protectorate was of the most exclusive character, and, as has been shown in a previous article, was not religious, but political, and aimed at placing the whole Ottoman Empire at the feet of Russia.
Another point which M. Drouyn de Lhuys has handled successfully, is that which relates to the difference in the measures adopted in common by France and England, when affairs reached a most alarming point, and those which Russia, in the impatience of her ambition, adopted, at the very outset. In the despatch of the 11th June, General Castelbajac is enjoined to apprise the Russian Government of the position in which it was about to place itself with respect to the rest of Europe; to warn it that it was grievously mistaken if it counted upon allies in the realisation of its designs, and particularly upon the German states. Indeed, it was not probable that these states would see with indifference the Lower Danube in the possession of a powerful government, which might at will obstruct its navigation, and at any moment block up a commercial outlet of so much importance. The French Minister clearly showed that the conduct of Russia was in opposition to the general interests of Europe; and that the realisation of the doctrines of the Russian Chancellor meant, in point of fact, the subjugation of the weaker states to the will of one great power. The replies of M. de Nesselrode are, of course, replete with the same pacific declarations which had produced so soporific an effect on our own Government, and with solemn denials of ambitious views, which present a curious contrast with the warlike preparations which were never for a moment suspended except by difficulties independent of the will of Russia. It was soon seen that, coûte qui coûte, Russia was determined not to give way. Smooth and hypocritical, like a thief at the bar, who profits by the scantiness of the evidence at first brought against him, earnestly to protest his innocence, she became bold, insolent, and defying, like the same culprit when accumulated proofs leave no doubt of his guilt. There are some despatches that have not been inserted in the Moniteur, but we have little doubt that the omitted ones are not less moderate, less firm, and not less characterised by good sense and dignity, than those we have noticed; and if any such doubt existed, the ultimatum, which was at once followed by a complete rupture of diplomatic relations, would suffice to remove it. Towards the close of December all was over. The massacre of Sinope had taken place, and no further hope remained of obtaining any satisfactory result from a power which, in its diplomacy as its hostility, appeared to have all at once lost every sentiment of truth, justice, and humanity. The autograph letter of the Emperor Napoleon is little more than a summary of the despatch of the 25th December, of the notes addressed to M. de Kisseleff before his departure from Paris, and of the last letter of M. Drouyn de Lhuys to the French ambassador at St Petersburg.
We believe the Emperor of Russia to have been led into his present difficult position—a position from which escape, unless through a disastrous war, seems almost impossible—by the erroneous information he received with respect to the state of public feeling in France and England, from “antiquated imbecilities” of both countries. In ordinary times it would be no easy task to so impose on any person of intelligence, even much inferior to that of the Emperor Nicholas; and his facility of belief in the present instance can only be explained by the social and political complications supposed to exist in a country which has gone through so many violent changes. Under the regime of Louis Philippe, the female diplomatists of the Rue St Florentin were enabled to ascertain with accuracy, and communicate with fidelity, the secret policy of the Tuileries. In the Russian salons of Paris, the centre of the more important espionage, were nightly assembled ministers, ex-ministers, functionaries past and present, and, in fine, all who, in official parlance, were supposed to represent France. The secrets, the gossip, the scandal of every political coterie in the capital, were discharged, there, as in one common reservoir; and were thence transmitted for the information, or amusement, of the Imperial Court of Russia. The ministers of the citizen-king were too eager to propitiate the favour of the northern Court, to withhold their confidence from any of the Czar’s agents, official or non-official. The revolution of February rudely interfered with that machinery, directed by a well-known intrigante. Attendance at a half-dozen saloons no longer sufficed to obtain a knowledge of the state of the country. Whilst a dozen dowagers of the old schools, and as many retired, discontented, or broken-down statesmen, and a few amateur republicans, were indulging in reveries of a restoration, or the re-establishment of a convention, with its appendages of committees of public safety, the dream was broken by the acclamations of millions, who bestowed absolute power on the only man capable of saving them. The Cabinet of St. Petersburg could not be expected to know more about the country than those who had for so many years administered its affairs. The agents of Russia beheld the struggle that had been going on so long among political coteries, the selfish disputes of discarded placemen, and their ephemeral and hollow reconciliations; and they supposed that, because adventurers quarrelled, or political coteries made war on each other, the nation was similarly divided. The diplomatic communications of that period must be curious; and we confess we should like to be permitted a perusal of the confidential correspondence of the well-known diplomate in petticoats, who for so many years was the pet agent of the Czar, and for whom existence was valueless unless passed in the atmosphere of political intrigue, to which it had been so long accustomed. When speaking of confidential correspondence, we do not, of course, allude to those indecent libels penned daily in the French capital; and, we regret to say, with the knowledge, or under the superintendence, of persons who, though known for profligacy in private life, were the confidential companions and bosom friends of personages whose praises we have heard, even to satiety, for austerity of morals, and who are held up as samples of every public and private virtue. Those chroniclers of scandal spared neither sex, nor age, nor rank. The meanest agency was set to work to furnish amusement for the Cabinet of the Czar during his hours of recreation; and to record stories and anecdotes in the style and manner of Taillement des Réaux, the Œil de Bœuf, or the Chevalier de Faublas. With such unerring guides, it is no wonder that the Czar believed that the propitious moment was come. It was represented to him that the Court of Paris was more corrupt, more profligate, than that of Louis XV.; that all France was impoverished, degraded, and discontented, anxious to throw off the yoke of the Buonaparte, eager to receive a sovereign flung to it by any foreign despot; or, at all events, utterly incapable of resisting any encroachment, much less avenging any insult from abroad. The ruler of France, he was told, was overwhelmed by the difficulties that naturally encompass every government in its commencement. His declaration of the pacific policy of the empire was but the unwilling avowal of his weakness, and of his fears. The agitation of political parties, he believed, ruined the country, though, since 1789, political intrigues, secret societies, and conspiracies never were more powerless than at the moment we speak of. The agents who thus instructed the Emperor of Russia crowned those reports by depicting Louis Napoleon as apathetic, because they saw him calm; as hesitating and timid, because they saw him patient and moderate.
We have no doubt that the Emperor of Russia was led into similar error with respect to this country. He was assured that it had become selfish and apathetic from its unexampled prosperity; and that so opulent and so sensual a nation would never expose itself, after so long a peace, to the chances and the dangers of a long war, for the sake of maintaining the integrity and independence of an empire whose people preferred the Koran to the Bible. Their commercial prudence, the love of ease engendered by opulence, the long period of time that passed since the wars with the first Napoleon, the many important interests which have grown up since then, religious antipathy—everything, in fact—indisposed the English nation to interfere with his designs in Turkey. But the presence in the Government of a statesman, recently so ridiculed and insulted by those who were now his colleagues, believed to be a warm admirer of the Emperor of Russia, and known for his cold hatred of the Emperor of the French, was considered the most fortunate circumstance of all; it was, at any rate, a guarantee against any favourable understanding with France or her ruler. Letters, said to be from that statesman, addressed to one of the former ministers of Louis Philippe, were read in one of the principal Russian saloons in Paris, the most notorious of all for intrigues, and the resort of the leaders of every anti-national party. These letters, asserted to be genuine, are described as having alluded in terms of the greatest contempt to the person, the character, and the intellect of Louis Napoleon; and as containing declarations that, under no circumstances whatever, could England act with France so long as its present regime lasted. The scum of the Orleanist agency were sent round to circulate the news, and despatches addressed to St Petersburg repeated the same. The tone of a portion of the daily press in England with reference to France seemed to confirm those assurances, and to render the formation of a coalition against the French Emperor, in which it was hoped England would join, by no means a difficult nor an improbable task. The falsest of all these calculations was unquestionably that which represented England as labouring under an oppression of wealth, a plethora of opulence, of which indifference, timidity, and inaction were the consequences. Yet such is the description given of us to Russia by Orleanists, whose incapacity and cowardice produced the overthrow of the dynasty of July. The acquisition of wealth and power supposes the possession of great energy of character; for those qualities we have been distinguished above all other people. That we have not become wearied or satiated, the events of each day that passes over our heads prove; and whatever be the period at which we are destined to reach the declining point, and which such scribblers as Ledru Rollin and the like maintain we have attained, we ourselves believe that the fatal moment is still far distant. We have shown energy without example, since the time of the Romans, in making ourselves what we are; and we are ready to let the world see that we know how to maintain the power which was supposed to have enervated us, with more than Roman courage. With admitted social and political evils—far less, however, than any other nation on earth—we have not become corrupt or effeminate. It is not true that the extraordinary development of our public and private fortune has buried us in that shameful indolence which made the Romans so easy a prey to the barbarians. Prosperity has not made us forget or disregard our rights. The wonderful development of our railway communications and our steam navigation, the extension of our commerce, the pacification of India, the colonisation of Africa, ought to have shown the Emperor of Russia that we have not yet fallen from our high estate in the political or moral world. The mighty fleets and the gallant bands of warriors that are even now conveying to him our answer to his insolent defiance, will show him the magnitude of his error. Our courage and our activity, our resolution in council, and our sternness in execution, are in proportion to the grandeur of the interests we have to defend. Our decline, much less our fall, has not yet commenced; and if any foreign or domestic friend has persuaded Russia that we resemble the Romans in the latter days of their empire, and that we are in a condition to fall a prey to the barbarians, he is an idiot or a calumniator.
Nothing is now so clear as that the Emperor of Russia has been most grossly deceived with respect to Turkey; but it is just to admit that the error has been also shared by many who should know better. Prince Menschikoff, during his short sojourn at Constantinople, had only time to insult the Sultan and his government, but also time to rouse a spirit of resentment and resistance. The backwardness of Turkey in civilisation was taken as a proof of her weakness and her deficiency in moral courage. But, with all her shortcomings, the old Mussulman spirit still subsisted amid the ruins of her former glory. It has been said that there are qualities which are effaced or destroyed by refinement, but there are others which live without it, though the occasion may have seldom occurred to call them forth. Turkish patriotism was regarded as a byword, Turkish loyalty as a mockery; Turkish courage was more than doubtful; and nothing remained of the daring valour which, in other times, made Christendom quail before the Crescent, except that vigour of faith which once distinguished the children of the Prophet: and even that, we were led to believe, had degenerated into a brutal and ignoble fanaticism, capable of vulgar crime, but unequal to a single act of heroism. The arrogant envoy of Russia rendered an essential service, not to his imperial master, but to his intended victim. His insults roused the dormant spirit of the Mussulman. The Ottoman army was undisciplined—unprovided with the commonest necessaries; the navy was but the melancholy remnant of Navarino; the Sultan’s authority was weakened by internal abuses and disorders; his territory dismembered by the separation of Greece, and by the all but successful rebellion of Egypt. Those to whom he looked for aid or protection against his colossal foe were long cold, if not hostile to him; yet Turkey rose with a courage and a dignity which have extorted applause, and won respect, even from those who were most indisposed to her cause, politically and religiously. She summoned her children about her; appealed, not to the relentless fanaticism of their creed, but to their manlier and nobler instincts; and after making every sacrifice, every concession consistent with self-respect, to appease or disarm her unscrupulous and faithless enemy, who was bent on her destruction, drew the sword in the cause of her independence. Whilst still uncertain whether she was to maintain the struggle alone and unsympathised with, against fearful odds, she advanced to the contest with a bravery worthy of better times, and with a success which has astonished her friends as well as foes. The feelings which Prince Menschikoff believed he could most safely outrage were those which quickened the nation into life and vigour. The Emperor of Russia was astonished at a result so different from what he was led to expect. The advices which had reached him from his friends in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and Constantinople, were such as might have been true some twenty years ago, but were false in 1853. France and England were said to be divided, and likely to remain so as long as a Buonaparte ruled the destinies of the former, and as long as Lord Aberdeen directed the administration of the latter. France had become exhausted by revolution, discontented with her new chief, demoralised, and rotten at the very heart;—no remedy to restore her, till the Count de Chambord, or the Count de Paris, was restored to the throne; and with England, satiated and unwieldy with unwholesome prosperity, no desire remained, no passion survived, but that of enjoying in undisturbed tranquillity what she had hardly acquired. Count Orloff has learned something at Vienna; but it does not appear that the lesson has much profited him or his imperious master.
In these multiplied and intricate transactions, in which Russia was alternately the deceived and the deceiver, there is one point in particular to which we would direct the attention of our readers. We allude to the claim made by the Porte to the intervention of the great powers in its quarrel with Russia. It is a claim based on equity and on international law, which it is impossible to dispute. Previous to 1841, Turkey was hardly looked upon as forming part of the general combination of European states in the settlement of any great international question. Rightly or wrongly, the Turks were considered less as forming an integral part of the European family of nations, than as an agglomeration of various tribes of warriors, bound together only by a common superstition and a common fanaticism; not rooted in the soil they occupied, but merely encamped on the outskirts of Christendom. The Treaties of 1841, which facilitated to France the resumption of her place in Europe, after her separation the previous year, also admitted Turkey to that general political association. That privilege or right Turkey has not forgotten in her hour of need, as we believe she would have done in her hour of prosperity; and in her appeal to the world against the pretensions of Russia, she summoned Austria, France, Prussia, and Great Britain, in the name of those solemn obligations, to come to her aid. She maintained that her participation in what is termed, in diplomatic parlance, the Concerte Européen, was recognised; and she showed, we think successfully, that henceforth all questions affecting the independence and integrity of her territory should be brought before the great tribunal of European states, and not left to the judgment of a single and an interested power. The principle of the right claimed by Turkey was admitted by the Cabinets of Vienna, Berlin, Paris, and London; and that recognition is manifest in the documents that have been made public. In the note addressed to the Austrian Cabinet on the 31st December 1853, we find this declaration:—“The multiplicity of the relations and the alliances of the Sublime Porte and of the European States, giving to it, in every respect, the right and the faculty of participating in the community which binds these States to each other, and to the security which they derive from them, the necessity will be felt of confirming and completing in that sense the Treaty of 1841, and for that it reposes on the friendly efforts of the allied Courts.” And the allied Courts, in turn, declared, “that the Russian Government, which invaded the territory of the Sultan, had placed itself in opposition with the resolutions declared by the great powers of Europe in 1840 and 1841. That, moreover, the spirit of the important transaction in which Russia took part in 1841 with the other powers, and with Turkey herself, is opposed to the pretension that the affairs of the East should be treated otherwise than in common, and in the conferences in which all these interests should be examined and discussed. And it must be well understood that every such question must be treated by five; and that it does not belong to one or to two cabinets to settle, separately or apart, interests which may affect the whole of Europe.” The allies of Turkey also added, “that the Treaty of 1841, in the meaning of which all are this day agreed, is to serve as the basis of operations. All the powers who have signed that treaty are qualified to appeal to it. We present ourselves as the defenders of that treaty, violated in its spirit, and as the supporters of the equilibrium of Europe, menaced by the power which seemed, more than any other, to have the pretension of constituting herself the guardian of it. The cause for which we are armed is that of all.” That claim of Turkey to form part of the European community is precisely the one to which Russia is inexorably opposed. Its admission would destroy the monopoly of interference and protection which the Czar wishes to maintain over Turkey, and we need not therefore be surprised at the stern refusals which the good offices of any other power have invariably encountered at St Petersburg. Russia insisted throughout that the question only regarded Russia and Turkey; it denied the right of any one to interfere, except in advising Turkey to submit to her dictates; and to the last she rejected all intervention or mediation. It is true that intervention menaced the fundamental principle on which the traditional policy of Russia is based; and the day that the Treaty of 1841 forms part of the international law of Europe, the designs of Russia on Turkey are at once arrested. Russia will then have lost all exclusive rights; and all questions of public interest affecting the Porte must be treated by all the states who have affixed their signatures to that important instrument.
We are decidedly of opinion that the view taken by Turkey of the rights created for her by this new state of things, is the correct one; and we submit that the interpretation which gives the greatest effect to the joint engagement of the four powers, is that which is most conformable to the spirit and meaning of its framers. “The important act of this Convention,” said M. Guizot in the Chamber of Peers, “is to have included the Porte itself, the inviolability of the sovereign rights of the Sultan, the repose of the Ottoman Empire, in the public law of Europe. Therein is comprised the general recognition—the recognition made in common, and officially declared—of the inviolability of the sovereign rights of the Porte, and of the consolidation of the Turkish Empire. It cannot be supposed that France would have refused to facilitate by her adhesion the execution of that act.” “The Turco-Egyptian question,” said the same minister in the Chamber of deputies, “was settled—the question of Constantinople remained. What is the object the policy of Europe has in view for a long time past with reference to Constantinople? It is to withdraw Constantinople from exclusive protection; to admit Turkey into our European law; and to prevent her from becoming the Portugal of Russia. Well, then, a step has been made towards that end. It is true that the Porte has not been secured from ambition of all kinds—from all the chances of the future; but, at all events, we have an official instrument, signed by all the great powers of Europe, which admits Turkey into the European law, which declares that it is the intention of all the great powers to respect the inviolability of the Sultan’s rights, and to consolidate the repose of the Ottoman Empire.”
There is no doubt that Russia is deeply interested in the possession of Constantinople. It is equally certain that, whenever she becomes mistress of both shores of the Bosphorus, she will, in an incredibly short time, add to her present pre-eminent military character that of a first-rate commercial and maritime power. The populations that would then acknowledge the supremacy of the Knout would be over eighty millions; and the seventy millions of Christians professing the Greek faith would bow their necks to the political and religious autocrat. Russia would then indeed hold at her girdle the keys of the Caspian Sea, the lake of Azof, the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean. The possession of Syria and Egypt would before long follow, as a matter of course, that of Turkey in Europe; and soon the fairest regions in the world, the most fertile shores of that inland sea, would fall under her rule. A single glance at the map will enable us to comprehend the magnificence, the vast extent, of such an acquisition; and the mind may dwell with wonder on the immensity of the new Russian Empire in Europe and Asia, and anticipate the supremacy she would gain by the conquest of Constantinople, which opens to her a path to the very heart of civilised Europe. That Russia should make gigantic efforts, and risk, as she is now risking, her rank as a first-rate Power, if not her existence, to attain such an object, is not astonishing. The fair capital that stands on the Bosphorus is the guarantee of the empire of the world. It is more than the ambition of Alexander, of Charlemagne, or of Napoleon, ever dreamed the realisation of; and if treachery or violence ever gives it to Russia, the irresistible and universal domination of Rome over the rest of the world, after the fall of Carthage, alone furnishes an example of what Russia would then become.
Russia has, by the tolerance or apathy of Europe, been singularly favoured since the seventeenth century; and she whose name was not even mentioned in the Treaty of Westphalia, which defined the limits of the great European states, has risen to gigantic proportions since then. She has invariably availed herself, as she is now ready to do, of the dissensions of the Western kingdoms; she has absorbed provinces and nations of various tongues, religions, and races; and has opened her way, through the territories of her neighbours, to the shores of two seas. Her hand it was that put an end to the existence of Poland. It was she that paralysed Sweden and Denmark; and it is by her that Persia and Turkey have been pushed on to their ruin. The history of her crimes in Poland is the same as that of her plunder in Turkey, Georgia, and Persia; and the partition of the ancient northern kingdom is now to be repeated with the Ottoman Empire. The means she employs are ever the same;—menaces and caresses by turns;—attempts at exclusive intervention;—a slow but steady system of dismemberment;—pretensions and claims, as impudently advanced as they are unfounded; then apparently withdrawn, postponed, placed in abeyance, seemingly forgotten, but never finally abandoned; revived with hypocritical humility, or with arrogance, according to circumstances; pretexts of quarrel of the most imaginary and untenable kind; intimidation mingled with seduction. Nothing is too bold, too base for her selfishness. Her princes and nobles are spies; her princesses—worse. No profligacy is too gross, no crime is too enormous, that advances by one inch the influence of “Holy Russia.” War is undertaken for no other object than to arrive at conventions ruinous to the conquered. Such is the hereditary policy of Russia; such it has been since she first assumed a standing in Europe; and we say it to our shame, that her unexampled success is in great part owing to the selfishness of some, the exaggerated fears of others, and the indifference and apathy of all the states of Europe. If England and France had but pronounced a veto in 1774, Poland might, with a reformed constitution, and an improved administration, still be an independent kingdom, and stand the barrier between the barbarism of the north and the civilisation of the west. If the Western Powers had directed their attention a little more frequently, and more earnestly to Turkey, the events against which we are now preparing might not have taken place. Even now, it is not too late; and we firmly believe that it is in the power, as we have little doubt it is the desire, of Europe, to arrest for many years the aggressive policy of Russia.
We have heard one argument advanced against our interference to save Turkey from Russia, and which seems to have made a certain impression in some quarters. We think the argument to be more specious than real; and the only reason we notice it here is, because it has been dwelt upon by persons whose opinions are in other respects entitled to consideration. We are told that it is a shame and a scandal for a civilised and religious nation to go to war in support of a barbarous and unbelieving Government. If such an argument mean anything, it must mean that England is to have no ally but such as can boast of equal civilisation, and profess the same faith as ourselves. We deny that we go to war, and in support of Turkey, in order to insure the supremacy of the Koran over the Bible, of the Crescent over the Cross, of barbarism over civilisation. We take the part of Turkey, not on religious grounds, but on political; to prevent the extension of Russia in those parts of Europe and Asia where her power would seriously endanger the vital interests of Western Europe; to maintain what is termed the balance of Europe; or, in other words, to prevent any one Power from growing to such a colossal size as that all the others would be at her mercy. We do not go to war to continue Mussulman barbarism, or to perpetuate the despotism under which the Christian populations have groaned. The conditions on which France and England afford succour to the Sultan are, that the reform long since commenced by Sultan Mahmoud, and continued by Abdul Medjid, shall be still further developed; and that the Christian subjects of the Porte, whose condition has materially improved, shall be placed on an equality with the Mussulmans. As well might it be said that our wars in Spain had for their object the protection of the Roman Catholic religion, the consolidation of the influence of the Pope, the re-establishment of the Inquisition, or the perpetuation of the stupid despotism of Ferdinand. We entered on the Peninsular war, not for such objects, but for reasons similar to those which now lead us to the East;—to rescue the Spanish territory from the grasp of a usurper, from the power of a conqueror whose ambition of universal rule was not less than that of Nicholas; to prevent the whole of Europe from falling under the dominion of a single potentate. In this country we denounce the doctrines of the Church of Rome as contrary to Scripture, and we, a Protestant Government, employed its armies in defence of a nation whose principle has been, and still is, intolerance of all other creeds but its own, and against a Government which, whatever may have been its faults, had not, at all events, religious intolerance among them. In no country is the Roman Catholic religion made to assume a more odious form than in Spain. We are told that the Turks speak of Christians as “dogs;” but, in Christian Spain, English Protestants are actually treated as dogs, or worse. We have seen, and this within a very few years, those who fought, and bled, and died in the cause of Spanish independence, flung, like offal, into a hole, or left to rot on the sea coast below high-water mark. We have, within the last few months, witnessed the tedious negotiations carried on between our Minister at Madrid and the Government in whose cause our blood and treasures have been spent with profusion, to obtain a secluded spot of earth wherein the bones of those of our countrymen, who still labour to introduce civilisation into that country, may be sheltered from pollution; and we have no cause to rejoice at its humiliating conclusion. When we are told of Turkish bigotry and intolerance, we would point to Madrid, to Naples, and to Tuscany. Turkish honour and Turkish fidelity to engagements will not suffer by a comparison with the Government of her most Catholic Majesty, as we presume those Englishmen who have had anything to do with it will be ready to admit. We are not of opinion that the barbarism of the Turks is greater than that which may be found in many parts of the Spanish peninsula; and those who have travelled into the interior of both countries may bear witness to the fact that her Catholic Majesty’s subjects, with the exception of the large towns, cannot be surpassed by any others in ignorance, sloth, and bigotry. Corrupt as the Turkish Government may have been, and badly administered as the country unquestionably is, we doubt whether the general run of Spanish statesmen have exhibited much more probity, integrity, and talent in government, with all the advantages of our example; and, in the matter of private morals, we think we could point out Spanish sovereigns who, with all their piety and attachment to Catholicism, have not much to boast over Sultan Abdul Medjid. We are not of opinion that, as respects mere civilisation, the Russian serfs are superior to the Turks. We have no evidence that Russia has made any improvement within the recollection of the present generation; while it is undeniable that, within the same space of time, Turkey had made, and is still making, material progress in its administration. Since the time of Mahmoud, Turkey—though, of course, still far behind France and England—has effected immense ameliorations in all matters connected with internal navigation, with her military and naval establishments, and her political and judicial administration; and, from the great improvement that has taken place in the condition of her Christian populations, we are confident that, before long, she will realise the wish of Mahmoud, and those populations will be placed on a footing of political equality with the Mussulmans. We doubt whether all these things can be stated of Russia.
The Grand-duke Michael is said to have predicted the dismemberment of the Russian Empire soon after the death of the present autocrat. Whatever be the claims of that prince to the character of a prophet, it is evident that Russia is now approaching a more important crisis. Russia will give way, or she will not. If the former, her prestige is gone, and the pettiest Continental kingdom may regard her with indifference. If the latter, a more terrible fate may await her, for she can scarcely resist all that is powerful in Europe combined against her. Russia has been to Europe, for the last forty years, what a ball remaining in an old wound is to the limb of a veteran. Every change of temperature, the heat of summer, the cold of winter, produces uneasiness and pain. The ball must now be extracted; the wound must now be entirely closed up, that we may be all at rest.
Since the preceding pages were written, a “Confidential correspondence” has been brought to light, which no longer leaves any mystery in this once incomprehensible question. Our readers will find these important documents, and the indefensible conduct of the Ministry in the matter, fully discussed in the concluding article of this Number.