[292] The French Emperor was pledged to support Russia against us. But after his return from Biarritz, he found political parties were using his disagreement with England to weaken the Anglo-French alliance, and discredit his foreign policy. The secret history of the transaction, however, was not creditable to Palmerstonian diplomacy. Lord Malmesbury writes on the 21st of November, “Persigny told me Walewski is in disgrace. The difficulty about Bolgrad and the Isle of Serpents arises from the Emperor having been entrapped into a promise by the Russians; but Persigny has suggested a solution, which has been accepted by the Emperor and our Government, namely, a Congress, which is to assemble, into which Sardinia is to be admitted, on condition of voting against Russia. Austria goes with England, and Prussia is of course excluded. This gives England a majority, and the Emperor an excuse for giving way.”—Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II, p. 53. Lord Clarendon, had, up till the beginning of December, refused to submit the dispute to a Congress, for the point which Russia raised about Bolgrad was simply a point of obvious chicanery which it was beneath the dignity of England to debate. Lord Palmerston and he yielded, however, and, as Mr. Greville says scornfully, by “this dodge saved us.”—Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 68.
[293] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 55.
[294] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 58. See also Greville Memoirs, Third Part, Vol. II., p. 69.
[295] The Duke of Beaufort and eighty Members of the Lower House, however, threatened to leave the Party if places in a Tory Government were given to the Peelites.—Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 57.
[296] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXXV.
[297] On the estimate of expenditure and revenue for 1856-1857 there was a deficit of £10,000,000. To meet this Sir George Lewis had borrowed £7,499,000, and he had raised £1,000,000 in Exchequer Bills. The total receipts from all sources, said Sir George Lewis in his Statement (Annual Register, Vol. XCIX., p. 29), would, when the financial year closed, be £79,384,000, and the expenditure £78,000,000, leaving a surplus of £1,384,000. This was a wrong calculation. The net income of the year was £75,569,575, or, after deductions, £72,963,151, showing a deficit on the expenditure of the year of £3,254,604. For the coming year, 1857-1858, Sir George estimated his expenditure at £63,224,000, to which £2,000,000 had to be added for the service of war loans. The revenue he estimated at £66,365,000; so that he expected a surplus of £891,000.
[298] Quite apart from the cost of the Crimean War, Mr. Gladstone showed that £6,000,000 had been added to the ordinary expenditure of the country during the four years ending 1856-1857.
[299] Of course, Lord Beaconsfield before he died educated the Foreign Office up to the truth, which is, that “the key of India” is held in London—and that the defensible gates of India are those on our frontier which we can protect by our arms. But the amazing thing is that when the Foreign Office did believe that Herat was the “key of India,” they never would let it be held by a Power which, like Persia, was strong enough to keep it safe with British help. Persia was the natural ally of England against Russia. But every effort of the Indian Government to conciliate Persia has been thwarted by the Foreign Office. Since we abandoned her for the sake of the Russian alliance against Napoleon I., the English Foreign Office has exhausted the resources of its diplomacy in betraying, browbeating, and irritating her. And yet it is a fact, that without the goodwill of Persia, which enabled Russia to draw supplies from “the golden province of Khorassan,” Russia could never have marched from the Caspian to the gates of Merv.
[300] Correspondence respecting relations with Persia, Parliamentary Papers, 1857, pp. 21-39.
[301] This story of diplomatic blundering is told in the speeches of Mr. Layard and Lord Palmerston. Hansard, Vol. CXL., pp. 1717-1722.