HOSTILITY OF AUSTRIA.
The prevailing feeling against England which Flahault found at Paris has been proved on innumerable occasions. Clarendon is well aware of it, and does his best, but with very little success, to bring the foreign Ministers and others to reason. Madame de Lieven writes to me in this strain, and even liberal and intelligent foreigners like Alfred Potocki, who has been accused of being a rebel in Austria, writes that we ought to expel the refugees. At Vienna the people are persuaded that there is some indirect and undefinable participation on the part of the British Government in the insurrectionary and homicidal acts of Milan and Vienna, and they have got a story that the assassin Libeny had a letter of Palmerston's in his shoe. Unreasonable as all this is, we ought to make great allowance for their excited feelings, for they have a case against us of a cumulative character. It goes back a long way, and embraces many objects and details, and is principally attributable to Palmerston, partly to his doings, and perhaps more to his sayings. They cannot forget that he has long been the implacable enemy of Austria, that he advised her renunciation of her Italian dominions, and that he and his agents have always sympathised with, and sometimes aided and abetted most of the revolutionary movements that have taken place. Then there was the Haynau affair, and the lukewarmness and indifference which the Government of that day, and Palmerston particularly, exhibited about it; then the reception of Kossuth, the public meetings and his speeches, together with the speeches at them of Cobden and others of which no notice was ever taken, and finally the transaction about Palmerston's receiving Kossuth and his famous answer to the addresses presented to him from Finsbury and Islington. All these things satisfy the foreign Governments that we are not only politically but nationally their enemies, and that we harbour their rebellious subjects out of hatred to them, and that we regard with sympathy and a secret satisfaction the plots which they concoct in safety here and go forth to execute abroad. And when they are told that our laws afford these people an asylum, which no Government has the power to deny them, and that Parliament and public opinion will not consent to arm the Government with the powers of restraint or coercion they do not possess, they only explode the more loudly in denunciations against that free and constitutional system which is not only a perpetual reproach, but, as they think, a source of continual danger to their own. So much for foreign affairs.
At home, while the political sky is still serene enough, there are some rocks ahead, and I think the Government in peril from more than one cause. First and foremost there is the Indian question. There is something ominous in the conjunction between a Coalition Government and an India Bill, and if they don't take care, they will get into a scrape.[1] The Opposition is broken and disorganised, and at present there is no disposition on the part of the extreme Liberals to join in any strong measures against the Government; but this is a question on which all the scattered fractions might be made easily to combine, and there are already symptoms of a possible combination ad hoc in the Indian Committee of the House of Commons. Lowe is very much dissatisfied with Charles Wood, and with the intentions of Government, and even talks of resigning; and the 'Times' is going into furious opposition on the Indian question, and is already attacking the Government for their supposed intentions. This, therefore, is assuming a serious aspect. There is besides the Budget and the difficulty of the Income Tax, and these two questions are enough to put them in great perplexity.
[1] [The Charter of the East India Company being about to expire, Sir Charles Wood, the President of the Board of Control, introduced in an elaborate speech a Bill for the future government of India by the Company, which changed the constitution and limited the patronage of the Court of Directors. The Bill was finally passed on July 28.]
March 19th.—The question of Indian government and the renewal of the Charter is every day increasing in importance and attracting more and more of public attention. It is a matter of great difficulty for the Government to deal with. They are threatened by enemies, and pressed by friends and half friends, who want them to postpone any measure for another year or two years. They, on the contrary, stand pledged, and think they ought to propose something this year. It presents a field on which the various fractions of hostility and semi-hostility to the Government may meet and combine, and perhaps place them in great difficulty. The Committees are going on taking evidence with the knowledge that the Government will probably not wait for their several reports before proceeding to legislation. Granville has got the management of the Government measures in the House of Lords, and is working very hard at Indian affairs. Yesterday I met at dinner at Ellice's two able men just arrived from India for the purpose of giving evidence, a Mr. Halliday and a Mr. Marchmont. They are for maintaining the present system, but with many reforms and alterations; they spoke highly of Lord Dalhousie as a man of business.
CONVERSATION OF THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS.
March 24th.—As I never see Clarendon now, who is entirely absorbed in the duties of his office, he engaged me to go and dine with him alone yesterday, that we might have a talk about all that is going on, and he told me a great deal of one sort or another. I learnt the state of our relations with France and Russia in reference to the Turkish business, and he gave me to read a very curious and interesting despatch (addressed to John Russell) from Seymour, giving an account of a long conversation he had had with the Emperor Nicholas about Turkey and her prospects and condition, and his own intentions and opinions, which were amicable towards us, and very wise and moderate in themselves, contemplating the dissolution of the Turkish Empire, disclaiming in the strongest terms any design of occupying Constantinople—more than that, declaring that he would not do it—but supposing the event to happen, not thinking the solution of the problem so difficult as it is generally regarded. He threw out that he should have no objection, if a partition was ever to take place, that we should appropriate Egypt and Candia to ourselves. He seems to have talked very frankly, and he said one curious thing, which was that Russia was not without a revolutionary substratum, which was only less apparent and less menacing than in other parts because he possessed greater means of repression, but nevertheless that the seeds were there. It is lucky Dundas is a prudent man, and refused to carry his fleet up to the vicinity of the Dardanelles at Rose's invitation, or mischief might have ensued. As it is, we disapprove of Rose's proceedings and have approved Dundas's, at the same time ordering him not to move without express orders from home, and moreover Clarendon refused to give Stratford Canning any discretionary authority to send for the fleet (though it was afterwards given), which he had asked to be entrusted with. Clarendon is much dissatisfied with the conduct of the French Government, who were in a great hurry to send off their fleet, and they sent orders to sail on the mere report of what Rose had done, and without waiting to learn the result of his application to the Admiral; and they did this, although they knew the despatches were on the road, and that a very few hours would put them in possession of the actual state of the case. Moreover, Cowley moved heaven and earth to induce Drouyn de Lhuys to withdraw the order to sail, but without effect. They persisted in it, after they knew we were not going to stir, and Cowley could not see the Emperor, who he says was evidently avoiding any communication with him. Still very friendly language continues to pass between us, and our Government are inclined to attribute this unwise proceeding to the vanity of the French, their passion for doing something, and above all the inexperience and want of savoir faire in high matters of diplomacy of the Emperor and his ministers. There is not one amongst them who is fit to handle such delicate and important questions, the Emperor, who governs everything by his own will, less than any; and Drouyn de Lhuys, who has been for many years engaged more or less in the Foreign Office, is a very poor and inefficient minister.
THE EASTERN QUESTION.
Clarendon told me he had seen Brunnow, and after recapitulating to him all the various causes for alarm, resting on facts or on rumours, especially with regard to Russia and her intentions, he said that our Government had received the word of honour of the Emperor that he had no sinister or hostile intentions, and disclaimed those that had been imputed to him, and that on his word they relied with such implicit confidence that he had not the slightest fear of disquietude. Brunnow was exceedingly pleased, and said that was the way to treat the Emperor, who would be excessively gratified, nothing being dearer to him than the confidence and good opinion of this country, and he said he would send off a courier the next day, and Clarendon should dictate his despatch. The instructions given to Menschikoff have been enormously exaggerated, the most serious and offensive parts that have been stated (the nomination of the Greek Patriarch, &c.) being totally false.[1] I asked what they were, and he said nothing but a string of conditions about shrines and other ecclesiastical trifles. Walewski seems to have done well here, condemning the conduct of his own Government, and not concealing from them his own opinion, and entirely going along with us. It was on Saturday night that the courier arrived with Rose's and Dundas's despatches, and a few of the Cabinet met on Sunday at the Admiralty to talk the matter over. Clarendon sent for John Russell from Richmond, and he thought it advisable to summon Palmerston to this conciliabule, to keep him in good humour, which it had the effect of doing. There were himself, Palmerston, John Russell, Aberdeen, and Graham. He had written to Lord John on Saturday night, and sent him the despatches; he got an answer from him, full of very wild talk of strong measures to be taken, and a fleet sent to the Baltic to make peremptory demands on the Emperor of Russia. This, however, he took no notice of, and did not say one word to Aberdeen about it, quietly letting it drop, and accordingly he heard no more about it, nobody, he said, but me, knowing what Lord John had proposed. I asked him what were Palmerston's views. He replied that he did not say much, and acquiesced in his and Aberdeen's prudent and reserved intentions, but he could see, from a few words that casually escaped him, that he would have been ready to join in more stringent and violent measures if they had been proposed. His hatred of Russia is not extinguished, but as it was, there was no expressed difference of opinion, and a general agreement. He said he had had a prejudice against Gladstone, but he now liked him very much, and Granville had already told me the same thing.