The project of the Conference on the Sleswig-Holstein Question, now that France accepted it, was fairly started, and it gave Palmerston a chance of extricating his Ministry without much ignominy from the complication in which they had become enmeshed. The Queen favoured it, as she favoured any arrangement that seemed likely to make for peace; but, as the Conference was to meet without a basis and without an armistice—indeed, as the capture of Düppel had made Prussia and Austria masters of the situation, an armistice was of little consequence—her Majesty’s view of the issue was not so sanguine as that of her Prime Minister. “Austria and Prussia,” says Count Vitzthum, “were not sorry to take advantage of it (the Conference) in order to escape from a false position, in which they had placed themselves as belligerent Powers and cosignatories of the London Treaty. Both of them declared their readiness to attend the Conference, on condition that the German Bund received, as such, an invitation also. It was the first time since its existence that the Diet had been invited to attend and vote at a European Conference. The choice of its representation fell on the Saxon Minister of State, the most active advocate of the Federal standpoint. He accepted the choice, but was unable, from the haste with which the matter was arranged, to reach London on the 20th of April, the day fixed by the impatient Lord Russell for the opening of the Conference.”[200]
As might be expected, this led to a hitch in the proceedings. Austria and Prussia alleged that they could not take part in the Conference until Count Beust appeared on the scene, so that the first meeting of the diplomatists was ominously abortive. It was not till the 25th of April that the Conference met for work, and the story of its transactions is somewhat painful for Englishmen to recall. It soon became apparent that the real object of the German representatives was to thwart the policy of the English Government, and tear up the Treaty of London under the very eyes of their English colleagues. Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell speedily discovered why the Diet had been invited for the first time to take part in a European Conference. Austria and Prussia, being cosignatories of the Treaty of London, found it a little embarrassing to take the initiative in “denouncing” that futile instrument; but they put forward Count Beust, as the representative of the Diet, to repudiate it, and he, on behalf of corporate Germany, declared that no solution of the problem could be accepted which did not provide for the complete separation of the Duchies from Denmark. In vain did Palmerston and Russell resist a demand that was utterly irreconcilable with the policy of maintaining the integrity of Denmark which was formulated in the Treaty of London. Russia and France abandoned them, and it became evident that continued victory would render the Germans, not more moderate, but more exacting in their demands. “Lord Clarendon,” writes Count Vitzthum, in his bright but brief account of the secret history of the Conference, “who, though nominally second, was in reality the first British plenipotentiary, induced Lord Russell, with a view of checking the bloodshed, to propose the separation of Holstein, Lauenburg, and South Sleswig. The neutrals—Russia and France—agreed to this, but the Danish representatives declared that their instructions were exhausted, and thus the matter remained to be settled by the sword.”[201]
Count Vitzthum’s narrative does not seem quite fair to Denmark. The Danes, it must be noted, have always alleged that they agreed to a frontier proposed by Lord Clarendon, and accordingly they assumed that after such a surrender of their position England would defend them and stand by her own proposition. Lord Russell, however, in his statement of the 27th June, denied that England had, through Lord Clarendon, committed herself to maintain this frontier. The fact is that Austria and Prussia, at a meeting of the Conference on the 17th of May, brought the proceedings to a deadlock by declaring that they would no longer recognise the King of Denmark as Sovereign of the Duchies. The neutral Plenipotentiaries then met privately at Lord Russell’s house and concocted a compromise by which Denmark should cede Holstein and Sleswig as far as the Schlei, and that the European Powers should then guarantee the rest of the Danish Dominions. Denmark accepted this proposal, but the German Powers, whilst eagerly accepting the principle of separating the Duchies from Denmark, objected to the frontier. According to a statement made by Bishop Monrad in the Danish Rigsraad, it is clear the compromise was not distinctively an English project, though it originated in Clarendon’s suggestions. But, according to Bishop Monrad, “Earl Russell promised that neither would he make a proposal himself nor support the proposal of any other Plenipotentiary which would be less favourable for Denmark, unless Denmark herself should consent to such new proposals.” Yet after the boundary of the Schlei had been suggested, Earl Russell, at a meeting of the Conference, proposed that the question of the frontier should be submitted to arbitration—the King of the Belgians being mentioned as arbiter—although Denmark did not consent to such a proposal. This proposition, partially accepted by Austria and Prussia, was rejected by Count Beust on behalf of the Diet. France then proposed that, while Germany should take German and Denmark should keep Danish Sleswig, the intervening part, with a mixed population, should by a plébiscite determine its own destiny. This was also rejected by Denmark, and so the Conference, which met at the request of England without a basis, separated without a result.
The obstinacy of the Danes, who seem to have built their hopes of English succour on Lord Palmerston’s marvellous power over a servile House of Commons, secured the triumph of Austria and Prussia—who up to this point were encumbered by their signatures to the Treaty of London. Lord Clarendon’s
COUNT BEUST.
proposal marked the abandonment of that instrument by the only Power desirous of abiding by it. The Conference, by its abortive attempts at solving the Danish problem, therefore, extricated Austria and Prussia from their false position, for when it broke up the ill-starred Treaty of London was there and then consigned to what Carlyle calls “the limbo of dead dogs.” And the curious thing is that Palmerston and Russell seem to have almost courted a defeat, which shattered the diplomatic prestige of England for more than a decade. “The Treaty of London,” writes Count Vitzthum, “might, perhaps, have been saved, had the British Minister acknowledged from the first that the value of a Treaty, intended to settle a quæstio de futuro, an eventuality of the future, depended on the circumstances under which that eventuality occurred. A very different importance attaches to treaties which, like those of 1815, deal with faits accomplis and establish the final results of a war lasting over many years. Palmerston and Russell committed in their zeal a political blunder when they declared that to cancel the Treaty of London was tantamount to unsettling everything else. Had not Napoleon been then so seriously occupied in Mexico he would have taken the British Ministers at their word.[202] But be that as it may, the Treaty was now dead. The Conference had not only united Germany, but also served as a safety-valve against an explosion in Parliament. The saying that no change of Ministry is to be thought of after the Ascot Races was verified anew. The Ascot meeting was now over. Nevertheless, before the Session came to an end, the Ministers were doomed to suffer a humiliation without a parallel.”[203] What made this humiliation all the more mortifying to Palmerston, was that the punishment was to come from the hateful hand of Cobden.
At the end of June, says Mr. Cobden, “the Prime Minister announced that he was going to produce the Protocols,[204] and to state the decision of the Government upon the question. He gave a week’s notice of this intention, and then I witnessed what has convinced me that we have effected a revolution in our Foreign policy. The whippers-in—you know what I mean—those on each side of the House who undertake to take stock of the number and the opinion of their followers—the whippers-in during the week were taking soundings of the inclination of members of the House of Commons. And then came up from the country such a manifestation of opinion against war, that day after day during that eventful week member after member from the largest constituencies went to those who acted for the Government in Parliament, and told them distinctly that they would not allow war on any such matters as Sleswig and Holstein. Then came surging up from all the great seats and centres of manufacturing and commercial activity one unanimous veto upon war for this matter of Sleswig and Holstein.”[205]
The old device which had served Palmerston so often in his contests with the Court—that of pitting the infatuation of a bellicose people against the calm sagacity of a pacific sovereign—could not be employed, and the Minister was forced to admit that the game on which he had staked his reputation had gone against him. Hence, writes Mr. Morley, “when Lord Palmerston came down to the House on that memorable afternoon of the 27th of June, it was to make the profoundly satisfactory but profoundly humiliating announcement that there was to be no war.” He admitted that the Government “felt great sympathy for Denmark,” although “she had in the beginning been in the wrong.” But under a new sovereign she had shown some desire to act properly, and so, said the Prime Minister, “we felt that from the beginning to the end of these events she [Denmark] had been ill-used, and that might had overridden right.” With jaunty audacity he added that Ministers also knew that the sympathies of the British nation were in favour of Denmark—for he made no allusion to the confidential reports of the Ministerial “whips”—and he frankly said “we should therefore have been glad to have found it possible to recommend to our Sovereign to take part with Denmark in the approaching struggle.” But then Denmark had rejected a compromise in the Conference—a compromise which, however, he did not state, had been almost thrust on her by Lord Russell, in violation of his own pledges to her—though he did admit that in rejecting this proposal, her fault was “equally shared by her antagonists.” Yet other considerations must be looked to—an admission which illustrated the revolution that had been effected in English diplomacy since the Crimean War. It did not appear, observed Lord Palmerston blandly, that the matter in dispute “was one of very great importance,” (an amazing statement from the author of the Treaty of London) for “it did not affect the independence of Denmark, and it went very little beyond what she herself had agreed to.” Now, Lord Russell had pledged himself not to support any arrangement that went “beyond what she [Denmark] had agreed to” when she accepted the compromise arrived at in his house by the plenipotentiaries of the neutral Powers, and Lord Palmerston’s additional explanation that it turned “simply on the question to whom a portion of territory should belong,” provoked a contemptuous titter in the House. But the real truth had to be confessed at last. Ministers, said Lord Palmerston—who had led the War Party in Lord Aberdeen’s Cabinet—in advising their sovereign to levy war, “could not possibly lose sight of the magnitude of the object—the magnitude of the resistance which would have to be overcome, and the comparative means which England and its supposed antagonist would have to bring to bear upon the contest.” They had discovered that neither France nor Russia would help England in supporting Denmark. “The whole brunt, therefore,” said Lord Palmerston, “of the effort to dislodge the German troops, and those who might come to their assistance, from Sleswig and Holstein, would fall upon this country alone.” Hence, he continued, “we have not thought it consistent with our duty to give our Sovereign advice to undertake such an enterprise.”