The Plenipotentiaries of the three Allied Courts being desirous moreover of giving to Greece a new proof of the benevolent anxiety of their Sovereigns respecting it, and of preserving that country from the calamities which the rivalry of the religions therein professed might excite, agreed that all the subjects of the new State, whatever may be their religion, shall be admissable to all public employments, functions, and honours, and be treated on the footing of a perfect equality, without regard to difference of creed in all their relations, religious, civil or political.
| Signé: | Metternich. |
| Aberdeen | |
| Montmoren Y-Laval. | |
| Lieven. |
(Holland: "The European Concert in the Eastern Question," pp. 32, 33.)
(e) THE CONGRESS OF PARIS (1856-1858).
The Jewish Question was more expressly discussed twenty-six years later, at the Congress of Paris, and the subsidiary conferences which had to settle the great political problems arising out of the Crimean War. Meanwhile, under the influence of Sir Moses Montefiore, and more especially of his jealousy of M. Crémieux, the Jewish Board of Deputies had plucked up a measure of courage, and had begun to take a more active interest in the larger political questions which involved the future of their foreign co-religionists. In the international discussions of the question of religious liberty which preceded the outbreak of war, the Powers only concerned themselves with the Christian communities. The French Jews at once took alarm, and the Central Consistory addressed the Emperor Napoleon III and applied to the Board of Deputies in London to make similar representations to the British Government. Both bodies had, however, been anticipated by the personal activity of the Rothschilds in Paris and London. Baron James, through his gifted friend and co-worker, Albert Cohn, had already entered into direct negotiations with the Turkish Government, and Baron Lionel and Sir Anthony de Rothschild had interviewed Lord Clarendon, who, at their instance, had given instructions to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe to take special note of the Jewish Question. Thus, when the letter of the French Consistory was read at the Meeting of the Board of Deputies on April 24, 1854, that body found that it had little to do. Nevertheless, it addressed a formal letter to Lord Clarendon on May 10, and, five days later, received an assurance from him that it might rely on a favourable consideration of the situation of the Jews of Turkey at the hands of His Majesty's Government.[22]
Nevertheless, the Treaty of Paris of 1856, which more or less settled all the questions arising out of the war, does not mention the Jews in any of its articles. This is not to say that it did not fulfil Lord Clarendon's pledges. As a matter of fact, it deals with both the situation of the Jews in Turkey and with that of the Jews in the liberated Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. Thus, Article IX, which takes note of the Turkish Hatti-Humayoun of February 18, 1856, is intended to refer to the Jews as well as to all other non-Mussulmans. The history of this aspect of the Article is a little curious. Shortly after the outbreak of the war in 1854, Turkey prepared a draft treaty of peace containing an article providing for the religious liberty of Christian communities. Through the inter-position of Baron James de Rothschild of Paris, this article was reconsidered, and another was inserted granting equal rights to all Ottoman subjects, without distinction of creed. This was the germ of the famous Hatti-Humayoun. That the latter was intended to deal equally with Jews and Christians is shown by its Article II, in which the same privileges are expressly granted to the Turkish Grand Rabbis as to the ecclesiastical heads of the Christian confessions.[23]
The absence of any direct reference to the Jews, or even to equal rights for all religious communities in the Principalities, is less satisfactory. The omission is in the first place due to the circumstance that the Treaty in itself is incomplete. Articles XXIII, XXIV, and XXV refer the question of the constitutional reorganisation of the Principalities to a Commission which was to meet at Bucharest and consult Divans of the two Principalities with a view to making the necessary recommendations to the Powers.[24] This Commission did not report until 1858, when its proposals were considered by a fresh Conference of the Powers, which based upon them the scheme embodied in the Convention of Paris of August 19 of that year. The question of religious liberty is dealt with in Article XLVI of that instrument.[25] Originally it was intended to assure complete emancipation and equality for all non-Christian communities in the Principalities, and articles to this effect were adopted by the preparatory Conference of Constantinople, in its Protocol of February 11, 1856, with the express design of relieving the Jews, whose sufferings had already become a matter of European notoriety.[26] The Rumanians, however, were already strongly hostile to Jewish emancipation, and the reigning Prince of Moldavia misled the Powers with specious promises of a type which has since become bitterly familiar to the Jews all over the world.[27] The Report of the Bucharest Commission of 1858 accepted these promises and excluded all references to Religious Liberty from its scheme.[28] The first draft of the Convention submitted to the Conference of the Powers did likewise,[29] but ultimately a compromise amendment was introduced by which the Powers agreed (Art. XLVI) to limit political rights to Christians, while providing for the extension of these rights to non-Christians by subsequent legislative arrangements.[30] This concession to the Rumanians was made on the express pledge that the original scheme of the Conference at Constantinople would be gradually realised.[31] Needless to say, the pledge was never fulfilled. In dealing, however, with the question, the Convention of Paris had one merit. It lent no support to the subsequent theory of the Rumanians, that the Jews were foreigners in a secular sense in their own country, but, on the contrary, assumed that their status was as much that of Moldavians and Wallachians as was the status of the native Christians.
DOCUMENTS.
Article IX of the Treaty of Paris. March 30, 1856.
Art. IX. His Imperial Majesty the Sultan, having, in his constant solicitude for the welfare of his subjects, issued a Firman[32] which, while ameliorating their condition without distinction of religion or of race, records his generous intentions towards the Christian populations of his Empire, and wishing to give a further proof of his sentiments in that respect, has resolved to communicate to the Contracting Parties the said Firman emanating spontaneously from his sovereign will.