The Turks rejected the Russian note, and the Russians crossed the Pruth, occupying the Principalities as a 'material guarantee.' I do not defend this act of Russia: it has always appeared to me impolitic and immoral; but I think it likely it could be well defended out of Vattel, and it is at least as justifiable as the conduct of Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston in 1850, when they sent ten or twelve ships of war to the Piraeus, menacing the town with a bombardment if the dishonest pecuniary claims made by Don Pacifico were not at once satisfied. [Footnote: Count Nesselrode to Baron Brunnow, February, 1850.]
But the passage of the Pruth was declared by England and France and Turkey not to be a casus belli. Negotiations were commenced at Vienna, and the celebrated Vienna note was drawn up. This note had its origin in Paris [Footnote: Earl of Westmorland to Lord Clarendon, July 25, 1853—Blue Book, part ii. p. 19.], was agreed to by the Conference at Vienna, ratified and approved by the Cabinets of Paris and London [Footnote: Earl of Clarendon to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, August 2, 1853—Blue Book, part ii. p. 27. Lord Cowley to Lord Clarendon, August 4, 1853—Ibid, part ii. p. 37.], and pronounced by all these authorities to be such as would satisfy the honour of Russia, and at the same time be compatible with the 'independence and integrity' of Turkey and the honour of the Sultan. Russia accepted this note at once [Footnote: Sir G. H. Seymour to the Earl of Clarendon, August 5, 1853—Blue Book, part ii. p. 43. Count Nesselrode, August 6, 1853—Ibid, part ii. p. 46.],— accepted it, I believe, by telegraph, even before the precise words of it had been received in St. Petersburgh [Footnote: Sir G. H. Seymour to Lord Clarendon, August 12, 1853—Blue Book, part ii. p. 50. Count Nesselrode to Baron Meyendorff, September 7, 1853—Ibid, part ii. p. 101.]. Everybody thought the question now settled; a Cabinet Minister assured me we should never hear another word about it; 'the whole thing is at an end,' he said, and so it appeared for a moment. But the Turk refused the note which had been drawn up by his own arbitrators, and which Russia had accepted [Footnote: Lord Stratford de Redcliffe to the Earl of Clarendon, August 13, 1853—Blue Book, part iv. p. 69. Lord Stratford to the Earl of Clarendon, August 14, 1853—Ibid, part ii. p. 71.]. And what did the Ministers say then, and what did their organ, the Times, say? They said it was merely a difference about words; it was a pity the Turk made any difficulty, but it would soon be settled [Footnote: Lord Cowley to Lord Clarendon, from Paris, September 2, 1853— Blue Book, part iv. p. 87. Lord Clarendon to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, September 10, 1853—Ibid, part iv. p. 95. The Times, September 17, 1853.]. But it was not settled, and why not? It is said that the Russian Government put an improper construction on the Vienna note. But it is unfortunate for those who say this, that the Turk placed precisely the same construction upon it; and further, it is upon record that the French Government advised the Russian Government to accept it, on the ground that 'its general sense differed in nothing from the sense of the proposition of Prince Menchikoff.' [Footnote: Earl of Clarendon to the Earl of Westmoreland, July 25, 1853—Blue Book, part ii. p. 1. Count Nesselrode's Memorandum of March 2, 1854, in the Journal des Debats.] It is, however, easy to see why the Russian Government should, when the Turks refused the award of their own arbitrators, re- state its original claim, that it might not be damaged by whatever concession it had made in accepting the award; and this is evidently the explanation of the document issued by Count Nesselrode, and about which so much has been said. But, after this, the Emperor of Russia spoke to Lord Westmoreland on the subject at Olmutz, and expressed his readiness to accept the Vienna note, with any clause which the Conference might add to it, explaining and restricting its meaning; [Footnote: Lord Westmoreland to Lord Clarendon, September 28, 1853—Blue Book, part ii. p. 129. Lord Cowley to Lord Clarendon, October 4, 1853—Ibid, part ii. p. 131. Lord Clarendon to Lord Cowley, October 7, 1853—Ibid, part ii. p. 140. Lord Clarendon to Lord A. Loftus—Ibid, part ii. p. 132.] and he urged that this should be done at once, as he was anxious that his troops should re-cross the Pruth before winter. [Footnote: Earl of Westmoreland, September 14, 1853—Blue Book, part ii. p. 106.] It was in this very week that the Turks summoned a grand council, and, contrary to the advice of England and France, determined on a declaration of war. [Footnote: Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, September 26, 1853—Blue Book, part ii. p. 130. M. Drouyn de Lhuys to Count Walewski, October 4, 1853— Ibid, part ii. p. 136.]
Now, observe the course taken by our Government. They agreed to the Vienna note; not fewer than five Members of this Cabinet have filled the office of Foreign Secretary, and therefore may be supposed capable of comprehending its meaning: it was a note drawn up by the friends of Turkey, and by arbitrators self-constituted on behalf of Turkey; they urged its acceptance on the Russian Government, and the Russian Government accepted it; there was then a dispute about its precise meaning, and Russia agreed, and even proposed that the arbitrators at Vienna should amend it, by explaining it, and limiting its meaning, so that no question of its intention should henceforth exist. But, the Turks having rejected it, our Government turned round, and declared the Vienna note, their own note, entirely inadmissible, and defended the conduct of the Turks in having rejected it. The Turks declared war, against the advice of the English and French Governments [Footnote: Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, September 20, 1853—Blue Book, part ii. pp. 149, 151. Lord Clarendon, October 24, 1853—Ibid, part ii. p. 131. Lord Stratford, November 17, 1853—Ibid, part ii. pp. 271, 281. Lord Stratford—Ibid, part ii. p. 288. Lord Clarendon to Lord Stratford, November 8, 1853—Ibid, part ii. p. 219.]—so, at least, it appears from the Blue Books; but the moment war was declared by Turkey, our Government openly applauded it. England, then, was committed to the war. She had promised armed assistance to Turkey—a country without government [Footnote: Lord Clarendon to Lord Stratford—Blue Book, part i. pp. 81, 82. Lord Stratford to M. E. Pisani, June 22, 1853—Ibid, part i. p. 383. The same to the same, July 4—Ibid, part i. pp. 383, 384.], and whose administration was at the mercy of contending factions; and incapable of fixing a policy for herself, she allowed herself to be dragged on by the current of events at Constantinople. She 'drifted,' as Lord Clarendon said, exactly describing his own position, into the war, apparently without rudder and without compass.
The whole policy of our Government in this matter is marked with an imbecility perhaps without example. I will not say they intended a war from the first, though there are not wanting many evidences that war was the object of at least a section of the Cabinet. A distinguished Member of the House of Commons said to a friend of mine, immediately after the accession of the present Government to office, 'You have a war Ministry, and you will have a war.' But I leave this question to point out the disgraceful feebleness of the Cabinet, if I am to absolve them from the guilt of having sought occasion for war. They promised the Turk armed assistance on conditions, or without conditions. They, in concert with France, Austria, and Prussia, took the original dispute out of the hands of Russia and Turkey, and formed themselves into a court of arbitration in the interests of Turkey; they made an award, which they declared to be safe and honourable for both parties; this award was accepted by Russia and rejected by Turkey; and they then turned round upon their own award, declared it to be 'totally inadmissible,' and made war upon the very country whose Government, at their suggestion and urgent recommendation, had frankly accepted it. At this moment England is engaged in a murderous warfare with Russia, although the Russian Government accepted her own terms of peace, and has been willing to accept them in the sense of England's own interpretation of them ever since they were offered; and at the same time England is allied with Turkey, whose Government rejected the award of England, and who entered into the war in opposition to the advice of England. Surely, when the Vienna note was accepted by Russia, the Turks should have been prevented from going to war, or should have been allowed to go to war at their own risk.
I have said nothing here of the fact that all these troubles have sprung out of the demands made by France upon the Turkish Government, and urged in language more insulting than any which has been shown to have been used by Prince Menchikoff [Footnote: Col. Rose to the Earl of Malmesbury, November 20, 1852—Blue Book, part i. p. 49. Lord J. Russell to Lord Cowley, January 28, 1853—Ibid, part i. p. 67.]. I have said nothing of the diplomatic war which has been raging for many years past in Constantinople, and in which England has been behind no other Power in attempting to subject the Porte to foreign influences [Footnote: Blue Book—Correspondence respecting the Condition of Protestants in Turkey, 1841-51, pp. 5-8.] I have said nothing of the abundant evidence there is that we are not only at war with Russia, but with all the Christian population of the Turkish Empire, and that we are building up our Eastern policy on a false foundation—namely, on the perpetual maintenance of the most immoral and filthy of all despotisms over one of the fairest portions of the earth which it has desolated, and over a population it has degraded but has not been able to destroy. I have said nothing of the wretched delusion that we are fighting for civilization in supporting the Turk against the Russian and against the subject Christian population of Turkey. I have said nothing about our pretended sacrifices for freedom in this war, in which our great and now dominant ally is a monarch who, last in Europe, struck down a free constitution, and dispersed by military violence a national Representative Assembly.
My doctrine would have been non-intervention in this case. The danger of the Russian power was a phantom [Footnote: 'There never has been a great State whose power for external aggression has been more overrated than Russia. She may be impregnable within her own boundaries, BUT SHE IS NEARLY POWERLESS FOR ANY PURPOSE OF OFFENCE.'—Lord Palmerston, in the House of Commons, 1853.]; the necessity of permanently upholding the Mahometan rule in Europe is an absurdity. Our love for civilization, when we subject the Greeks and Christians to the Turks, is a sham; and our sacrifices for freedom, when working out the behests of the Emperor of the French and coaxing Austria to help us, is a pitiful imposture. The evils of non-intervention were remote and vague, and could neither be weighed nor described in any accurate terms. The good we can judge something of already, by estimating the cost of a contrary policy. And what is that cost? War in the north and south of Europe, threatening to involve every country of Europe. Many, perhaps fifty millions sterling, in the course of expenditure by this country alone, to be raised from the taxes of a people whose extrication from ignorance and poverty can only be hoped for from the continuance of peace. The disturbance of trade throughout the world, the derangement of monetary affairs, and difficulties and ruin to thousands of families. Another year of high prices of food, notwithstanding a full harvest in England, chiefly because war interferes with imports, and we have declared our principal foreign food-growers to be our enemies. The loss of human life to an enormous extent. Many thousands of our own countrymen have already perished of pestilence and in the field; and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of English families will be plunged into sorrow, as a part of the penalty to be paid for the folly of the nation and its rulers.
When the time comes for the 'inquisition for blood,' who shall answer for these things? You have read the tidings from the Crimea; you have, perhaps, shuddered at the slaughter; you remember the terrific picture,— I speak not of the battle, and the charge, and the tumultuous excitement of the conflict, but of the field after the battle—Russians, in their frenzy or their terror, shooting Englishmen who would have offered them water to quench their agony of thirst; Englishmen, in crowds, rifling the pockets of the men they had slain or wounded, taking their few shillings or roubles, and discovering among the plunder of the stiffening corpses images of the 'Virgin and the Child.' You have read this, and your imagination has followed the fearful details. This is war,—every crime which human nature can commit or imagine, every horror it can perpetrate or suffer; and this it is which our Christian Government recklessly plunges into, and which so many of our countrymen at this moment think it patriotic to applaud! You must excuse me if I cannot go with you. I will have no part in this terrible crime. My hands shall be unstained with the blood which is being shed. The necessity of maintaining themselves in office may influence an administration; delusions may mislead a people; Vattel may afford you a law and a defence; but no respect for men who form a Government, no regard I have for 'going with the stream,' and no fear of being deemed wanting in patriotism, shall influence me in favour of a policy which, in my conscience, I believe to be as criminal before God as it is destructive of the true interest of my country.
I have only to ask you to forgive me for writing so long a letter. You have forced it from me, and I would not have written it did I not so much appreciate your sincerity and your good intentions towards me.
Believe me to be, very sincerely yours,