The great event of the Session of 1853 was Mr. Gladstone's Budget, a bold and sweeping measure which contained an important novelty in the shape of a succession duty, estimated to produce some £2,000,000 a year, and a reduction of the income-tax, of which two-sevenths were ultimately to be abolished. It also contained the reduction of duties on 133 articles, their total abolition on 123, and, taken altogether, was one of the most comprehensive financial statements ever produced by a Chancellor of the Exchequer. Not content with these innovations Mr. Gladstone proposed a conversion of the National Debt, by which the old 3 per cent. bonds which stood at par were to be exchanged for Exchequer bonds or for 31/2 or 21/2 stocks which stood at 163. It was a magnificent Budget, based however on a false assumption, that the era of peace was to be long protracted, a sanguine estimate which was very far indeed from being realised. Moreover the new succession duty did not produce one-fourth of the sum which its author had anticipated, and owing to the advent of war the reduction of the income-tax was found to be wholly impracticable. "The best-laid schemes of mice and men aft gang agley."
Europe was allowed scant breathing-time after the wars which sprang from the political movements of 1848 had come to an end. An old danger, one which at intervals, sometimes as a grim shadow, sometimes as a near reality, had threatened the general peace, appeared once more. In 1852 it became known that the Emperors of France and Russia, were, in the names of their respective Churches, wrangling over the Holy Places of Palestine, where members of both the Latin and Greek Churches had set up rights of worship. The Prince-President of the French Republic had raised the demon of the Eastern Question, and the policy which Prince Louis Napoleon initiated as President, he pursued with fresh vigour when he became Emperor. That policy was one of the causes which led directly to those great events which we know under the collective name of the Crimean War.
The first movement of France in this Eastern Question was made in 1850. The Latin priests in Jerusalem were always clamouring against their rivals, and a fresh complaint reaching Paris, the Prince-President directed his ambassador at the Porte, General Aupick, to claim the fulfilment of a treaty in favour of the Latin Church, obtained in 1740. The gist of the grievance was that, by Russian influence, and by degrees, the Greeks had gained possession of certain churches and other holy places, in contravention of this treaty, and by the connivance of the Porte. And it was natural that as, since 1740, Russia had exercised a greater pressure on the Porte than France, so she had brought it to bear to exact concessions in favour of the priests of her faith, and give them a predominance at the holy shrines. For a century France had acquiesced; but in 1850 the country had fallen under a ruler more active in the employment of French power than any ruler since Louis XIV., except Napoleon I., and for purposes almost personal he determined that France should acquiesce no longer. The clerical party in France were gratified by the mere knowledge that General Aupick had raised the question of the Holy Shrines at the instance of the President. Throughout the year 1850 nothing was done of a serious character. The French Minister made demands, and the Porte evaded them as best it might. But in the very beginning of 1851 General Aupick imparted new life to the negotiations. M. de Titoff, the Russian Minister, struck into the fray, and warned the Porte that he should insist on the status quo. Then General Aupick grew still warmer in his language, and the Austrian Minister supported him. In the spring, the Marquis de Lavalette, a more energetic, indeed, a "zealous" man, replaced General Aupick as the representative of France at the Porte, and in his hands the business soon began to make progress. During this period the British Minister, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, acting on instructions from home, held quite aloof from the disputes, and contented himself with watching closely the contest between the Porte and the French Minister. He thought that the Porte would not give way unless forced, and the Emperor of Russia was so fully persuaded of the strength of his influence at Constantinople that he felt convinced that no change in the matter of the Holy Shrines would occur. But in this respect, as in so many others, he was mistaken. In the autumn of 1851 the British Minister began to see the gravity of the contest going on under his eyes; for the Marquis de Lavalette, growing impatient at the delay of the Porte in according his demands, talked in a menacing tone of the use that France could make of the strong fleet then assembled at Toulon. It was at this moment, November, 1851, that the quarrel visibly assumed the character of a struggle between France and Russia for influence at Constantinople and throughout the East.
THE BURIAL OF WELLINGTON. (See p. [11].)
The Turks, having no interest in the religious question, proposed various arrangements, which proved agreeable to neither party. When something like the basis of an agreement had been arranged, a strong letter from the Emperor Nicholas to the Sultan forced the Porte to retract it. Learning this, M. de Lavalette said that his Government, having embarked in the question, could not stop short under the dictation of Russia. The Russian Emperor would not desist from opposition at the dictation of France. Each presented himself to the Sultan, one with the treaty of 1740, the Charter of the Latins; the other with documents, antecedent and subsequent to that date, embodying concessions made to the Greeks. The Porte, desirous of satisfying both the powerful complainants, exhausted its ingenuity in devices, yielding now to Russian, now to French menaces, and looking keenly for assurances of support in the event of danger. The Turks consulted Lord Stratford de Redcliffe; but he was powerless to aid them, for his Government had determined to take no part. Nevertheless, he did his utmost to prevent precipitate action on all sides, on a question "involving little more than a religious sentiment, and the application of a treaty permitted to be more or less in abeyance for a century." He was only partially successful, for M. de Lavalette continued to talk of breaking off negotiations unless his demands were complied with, and M. de Titoff stood out against any alteration of the status quo. At length, at the beginning of 1852, by the exertions of M. de Lavalette, the questions at issue seemed to be settled, and the Porte embodied the whole of the arrangements respecting the Holy Places in an "imperial firman invested with a hatti-scherif." The Turkish Ministers hoped that both parties would be satisfied by concessions. This was a delusion, for the Porte in its trepidation gave conflicting pledges to the fighting embassies. In giving the assurance by letter which calmed for a time the abounding zeal of M. de Lavalette, the Porte promised that the firman should not be publicly read, but simply registered. The Russian chargé d'affaires got wind of this, and insisted, with effect, that the firman should be read. M. de Lavalette, hearing probably that the Porte had promised M. de Titoff, months before, that the key of the "great door" of the church at Bethlehem should not be given to the Latins, grew very keen in his instructions to the French Consul to see that it was given up. M. de Lavalette became extremely violent. "He more than once," wrote Colonel Rose, the chargé d'affaires, in November, "talked of the appearance of a French fleet off Jaffa (in case the stipulations were not fulfilled), and once he alluded to a French occupation of Jerusalem, 'when,' he said, 'we shall have all the sanctuaries.'"
Nevertheless, the Turkish Government tried to appease France without offending Russia. In the autumn of 1852 there was a striking spectacle at Jerusalem. Afif Bey had been sent on a special mission to inform the contending Churches of the decisions arrived at in Constantinople. But Afif Bey did nothing except declare how desirous the Sultan was to gratify all classes of his subjects. The Russian Consul-General demanded the public reading of the firman, which was understood to declare the Latin claims to the shrines null and void. Afif Bey pretended not to know what firman was meant, then said he had no copy of it, then no directions to read it. Thus both parties were angered: the Latins because the key was withheld, and they were only allowed to celebrate mass once a year before "a schismatic altar"; the Greeks because the firman was not read. It was these proceedings, arising out of the irreconcilable hostility of Russia and France, which led to fresh threats from their respective envoys at the Porte. The Grand Vizier, driven hither and thither by the violence of the disputants, resolved, come what might, to make an end of the business. He gave up the keys to the Latins, and caused the firman to be read. Had there been sincerity on the part of the French or Russian Governments, here the matter should have ended; but neither had triumphed sufficiently over the other, and the quarrel did not come to a close.
THE WRECK OF H.M.S. "BIRKENHEAD."