EUROPE  AT THE  OPENING OF THE SESSION OF 1847.

THE  SPANISH MARRIAGES,

AND THE CONFISCATION OF CRACOW.

 

BY

DAVID URQUHART.

 

 

LETTER I. FRANCE ENTRAPPED INTO THE SPANISH MARRIAGES

LETTER II. THE SEPARATE PROTEST .

LETTER III. THE PROTEST

LETTER IV. CONFISCATION OF CRACOW IN THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT

LETTER V. LORD PALMERSTON AND FRANCE

LETTER VI. THE PART OF FRANCE

LETTER VII. CONSEQUENCES FOR POLAND AND THE EAST

LETTER VIII. THE OPENING OF THE SESSION

 

 

 

LETTER I.

FRANCE ENTRAPPED INTO THE SPANISH MARRIAGES.

 

 

 

Sir— France for the second time finds herself alone in the world. In the autumn of 1840 her isolation served to effectuate the first partition of Turkey, now it brings the final extinction of Poland. France was supposed then to menace the world, when she herself trembled; now, to have successfully carried into execution a deep design, when she has been surprised into the steps she has taken, and confounded with the consequences that have followed. That the Spanish marriages were no original design, either of France’s able Minister, or her dexterous King, is a proposition difficult perhaps of belief, but less difficult surely to admit than the alternative, which is, that the rulers of France are capable of acts which appear rather those of maniacs than of statesmen. The stakes were set, and the bait was placed for them, and they were both stalked and trapped into the snare. In bitterness and pique they made the match in the particular manner that was requisite to raise the outcry, and to cloak their soreness and shame they have pretended a design and claimed a triumph.

In judging of any particular act, we must take into account, in nations, as in individuals, previously ascertained character, and, by so much the more, capacity. Nations of diverse character and race constitute the European society; we are, therefore, to expect extreme inequality in their mental state, and by reason of the diversity of their constitutions, no less inequality in their faculties of concentrating their minds so as to apprehend clearly or to act consistently. Among such a society, it is not to be expected that there is a struggle going on as between equal antagonists; but, on the contrary, that some one preponderates, and not by avowed strength, but by concealed dexterity. Some act; others are only used or are acted upon. That France belongs to the latter class, a glance at past events will suffice to show.

France has been a party to all the great transactions, and some steps she has taken alone. She was a member of the Holy Alliance, but was the last to join it; it was planned by Russia. She sent an army to Madrid, to put down the constitution in Spain; her own Minister declared, even in the Chambers, that the step was not her own, and that she acted on compulsion. She attacked Algiers, and occupied the regency; it was directly and indirectly at the suggestion of Russia. She occupied Ancona; it was on the invitation of the Pope, (to save him from an Austrian occupation); she evacuated it to please Russia. She joined the triple alliance of the 6th of July, for the pacification of the East; it originated at St. Petersburg, was discussed with England; it was only communicated to France “to sign or not to sign”. She joined the quadruple treaty for the pacification of Spain; it was settled with Spain and Portugal, and only then communicated to her, and accepted only because made the absolute condition of the English alliance. In 1839 (July 17th), the Powers signed a protocol to act only in common in the affairs of the Levant; yet on the 15th of July, 1840, a treaty which came from St. Petersburg, and was discussed in London, from which she was excluded, was signed. She signed the treaty of the 13th July, 1841, by which she excluded herself from the Dardanelles at all times, having, in 1833, protested against a secret treaty between Russia and Turkey, to exclude her during wars! The treaty of 1841, like that of 1840, was sent from St. Petersburg. In no case had she an original conception or scheme; she has been always overreached; and Minister after Minister broken at home in consequence of failures abroad. In Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Africa, Poland, Germany, Spain, she has been incessantly at work, but never as the result of the use of her own reason. On her, never by her, was exerted influence; wherever France appears on the stage, it is Russia that has furnished her her rôle.

The results of a measure, or a series of measures, present another chain of evidence by which to judge of their source. The Spanish marriages have not benefited France. They have afforded the occasion of extinguishing Poland without risk, and they have placed France in the most painful and alarming position. The Power which is recognized to be the ablest in Europe profits, all the others are injured; for who can doubt that Austria and Prussia suffer not less than England and France? Here then, as in all previous transactions, the axiom of the Quarterly Review applies, namely, that since Russia has commenced to interfere in the affairs of Europe and Asia, “The tools with which she works are the cabinets and statesmen of Europe”

The Montpensier marriage has brought for France—not the glory of having overreached England—not the satisfaction of having avenged the Treaty of July—not the revival of the authority of Louis XIV—not addition of power from her preponderance in Spain—not additional importance in Europe from newly-acquired strength, and suddenly revealed dexterity. Yet, a few weeks ago, no less were the claims of the French Government and the assertions of its organs. But, instead, France is protested against by Eng­land for a violation of the public treaties of Europe; this blow is followed by a similar one from the northern Powers. To detach Austria from England she made concessions re­specting Switzerland, to the great disgust of a powerful party within; the sacrifice is without avail. She panders to Russia and shuts up Polish printing presses; equally in vain. Her alliance with the revolutionary dynasty in Spain is fol­lowed immediately by a matrimonial alliance of Austria with the Duc de Bordeaux—now pretender to the French throne; whilst the official organs of the British Government speak to her King of subverted dynasties! The northern Powers seize upon Cracow, and even this does not suffice to rally to her England. Her advances are scorned, and she, first protested against, has to excite by a cold and unmeaning remonstrance, at once the contempt of her people and the anger of her late allies. The obloquy of this disaster falls on the King, who by his desire to gain a dowry and a Princess for a younger son, has broken the alliance with England “on which rested the peace of the world”, and tempted the northern Powers to this act, from which springs a compact for spoliation of states and thralldom over principles affecting France in her institutions and her rights, and ultimately directed against her very existence. Spain, instead of a prop at her side, proves a millstone around her neck, and the matrimonial bond, a halter round that of her King.

I am here giving no ex post facto explanation. On the very day on which the intelligence reached this country of the sequestration of Cracow (Nov. 16), it was stated by the Times that France was so humiliated in conse­quence of the Spanish marriage (the feelings thereby produced in England), that there was no indignity that she would not have to undergo; that abjectly bartering sacrifices for some apparent signs of good will from the northern Powers, which should cover “the disaster of her quarrel with England—she was ready to surrender every thing from Cracow to Constantinople.” She is then threatened with war from England, and that threat is put forth as occasioning her humiliation before the northern Powers. War is not to be made because of the Montpensier marriage, but it is to flow indirectly from it! The writer in the Times does not say this is a case for war; he does admit that the people of England care little on the subject; but yet the actual rupture, the foreshadowed and now accom­plished humiliation, and the prospective war, are all clear and evitable consequences of the “despicable deception” practised by the King of France and his Minister upon England.

The article is so very extraordinary, as a statement of the case, as an anticipation of events, and a specimen of reasoning, that I subjoin some extracts. I do so for another reason; this journal in opposition to the Government, in its most startling propositions reiterates the Minister’s conversation in private. The Times proclaims to the world the novel doctrine of an indirect war, and announces it with certainty. Lord Palmerston informs, in secret, the representatives of Foreign Powers, that war with France will be a prospective result of the proceedings in Spain.

The connection, then, of the Montpensier marriage, and the sequestration of Cracow is established. It has brought the humiliation of France before the northern Powers, and her readiness to surrender, as announced beforehand. But this humiliation is the result of change common to England and to France. The quarrel between them has humiliated the one—it has then also humiliated the other. England, by her quarrel with France, is reduced to the same necessity as France by her quarrel with England. Both conjointly have surrendered Cracow, and will surrender Constantinople.

But did the Montpensier marriage entail this rupture rude? Did the French Government practise on England a “despicable deception?” This is denied on the one side, and asserted on the other. After a careful examination of the subject, I have come to the conclusion, that no such deception was practised, but, on the contrary, that the French Government was the victim, as on every former occasion, of a conspiracy, and that the purpose for which she was practised upon speaks for itself in the humiliation of both countries, and their common surrender to the aggression of the north. This conclusion is to be tested by the truth or falsehood of the allegations against France, by which were engendered the mutual exasperation. The examination of this point is of vital importance, not to this country only, but to the human race; for Russia’s ambition can only be checked by laying bare her process and exposing her instruments.

When the intelligence reached this country that Louis Philippe had disposed of the hand of the Queen of Spain to facilitate the marriage of his son with her sister, there was a case presented sufficient to have excited the disgust and awakened the animosity of the people the least susceptible to the dignity of Crowns or the honour of females, and the least jealous of the pretensions of a compeer or the encroachments of a rival. There was also that which might have been calculated to excite the gravest indignation against the British Government which had suffered this indignity to be put by one of our allies upon another. Moreover there seemed no occasion for the act, for England had already assented to the marriage of the French Prince and the Spanish Princess, and it was in consequence of some minor squabble that the French Government had taken those most unwarrantable means of hurrying the match alone and in defiance of the British Minister. The event, however, did excite 110 interest. The marriage of the Queen was scarcely noticed; what was said was about the marriage of the Princess. The provincial press spoke of it, without exception, as a matter to which England was wholly a stranger—and the metropolitan press characterised it as a transaction which must involve France in great embarrassments in Spain, and the King of the French in great em­barrassments at home. Neither did the Whigs reproach their opponents with having suffered this intrigue against Spain to have progressed while they were in office, nor did the Conservative journals reproach their antagonists with having suffered it to be accomplished, on their return to power.

There was one exception. Lord Palmerston unites, as no other Minister has done before him, the power of acting secretly for the nation, with that of misrepresenting through the press his acts. We are under the necessity of tracking his footsteps no less by the columns of the daily press, than in public acts and official documents. The case is, indeed, rendered more complex and difficult, but the field of evidence is also enlarged. Wherever the King of the French was vehemently denounced, and the English Government asserted to have been outwitted and overreached, Lord Paimerston’s hand may be traced; the tone and language of his organs have been that of a virulent opposition, exaggerating the case it had to make out against an obnoxious Government. He alone, then, got up the agitation in England against France, and for that purpose he put forth two accusations, and by them he obtained the result—the first, that the French Government had dealt treacherously with England; the second, that it had violated the Treaty of Utrecht.

An agreement had been entered into between the French Government and the Tory Administration, the chief stipulations of which were, that a Bourbon Prince of Spain was to marry the Queen, and the Due de Montpensier the Infanta, England renouncing a previously suggested project of putting forth Prince Leopold of Coburg as candidate for the Queen’s hand, and France consenting to postpone for a year the marriage with the Princess, or until there had been issue from the Queen. The English Government was thus a party to the marriage of the Princess Louise with the Duc de Montpensier, and delay was the condition which was placed against the renunciation by England of the Coburg Prince. When Lord, Palmerston came into office, the French Government applied to him to know if he was content with the arrangements entered into with his predecessors. To this communication he made no reply. After waiting for a full month, the French Embassy in London pressing him, he assigned as reason for his silence the intrigues of France in Spain. If this was true, it was for him to have charged the French Government then with the fraud, to have demanded explanations, to have had the matter cleared up; but how could there be any frauds on the part of the French Government until (it being put to him), he had sanctioned or disavowed the compact? His silence was a slight which must have tended to incite France to act alone, and his subsequent reply was an outrage; and both coincided to provoke France into doing what she did do—act as if there had been no compact. He himself put forward at Madrid Prince Leopold of Coburg, and the public journals of Loudon re-echo in their columns the calumnies and insults privately addressed to Paris. Upon this the French Government proceeds, as is usual with modern French Governments, not to clear themselves by a simple statement of the facts, not to bring home his perfidy to the British Minister, but to take a pettish silly revenge. They fall into the trap laid for them. Such is the story of the marriage.

The facts are not doubtful. It is not denied by Lord Palmerston’s organ that the French Government applied to him first—that they put it to him to continue or not to continue the agreement entered into with his predecessor. It is not asserted that he replied in the affirmative. It is not denied that he returned no answer; and therefore, without referring to the putting forward of the Prince of Coburg at Madrid, or the insults in the Times, the Chronicle, and the despatches to Paris, the French Government was clearly discharged from the compact with England, and free, as regarded her, to pursue its own course.

The charge of duplicity was therefore groundless, and could not have been made in error. It was a fabrication founded on a dilemma in which he had placed the French Minister, and of this the proof is inevitable in his having himself in his own organs represented as having been over­reached.

Now as to the violation of the Treaty of Utrecht.

If Lord Palmerston held the marriage to be a violation of that Treaty, it became his part on his return to office to liberate his country from the understanding with France which sanctioned it: but in breaking that understanding so as to release the French Government from its conditions, he left it a tie over England, since he made the violation of it a charge against France; the charge, then, is made, like the former one, in fraud.

The Treaty of Utrecht deals not with marriages but with successions, and the consequences of this marriage are among the cases for which the Treaty of Utrecht was framed to provide. If the Treaty of Utrecht were a bar to such a marriage, that Treaty could itself be no longer in force, since similar marriages have already taken place.

A dauphin of France married, in 1745, a heiress to the Crown of Spain; so much nearer the Treaty of Utrecht, when the danger did exist of the junction of those Crowns which it had been the purpose of that Treaty to prevent, and in the case of a direct heir to the one Crown and an immediate heiress to the other, England made no discovery of the disturbance of the balance of power, or of injury to Spain, of preponderance of France, or of violation of the Treaty of Utrecht. If it be violated now, so must it have been on the 23rd of January, 1745; so on the 21st of January, 1721; so on the 25th of August, 1739, when similar marriages were contracted; and a treaty (the base morality and vague phraseology of the times forces one to repeat) once violated is thereafter worthless, except for those who, by protest, save their rights—otherwise the infraction becomes precedent. A treaty broken in one point is null in all, and infringed with Impunity by one of the parties, is binding on none. What dexterity, therefore, was requisite to make, out of a similar marriage, a quarrel be­tween two nations of grown-up men?

But the Treaty of Utrecht was not between England and France. It was a public European act. It was not for one power alone to decide upon its infraction. Lord Palmerston had to refer an alleged violation, first to the legal authorities at home, then to take counsel with the other parties; and then the steps, whatever they might be, had to be taken in common.

Was there any course but this—and who could imagine if Lord Palmerston had taken it, or so much as announced his dissatisfaction with the compact, or his opposition to the marriage, that France would not have desisted? The dotation of the younger son would not have stood against a quarrel with England, not to say a quarrel with the rest of Europe. The case would then have stood over, at least until a decision.

As in July, 1840, M. Thiers would have been too happy to have joined the treaty had it been allowed him—so now would they have been too glad to have given up the marriage, had the consequences been hinted at. In the one and the other case it never entered into their minds to anticipate what was coming. Lord Palmerston carefully concealed his game; the batteries were all masked until the fitting moment; as the Moors at the battle of Isly, the French Government sees only a little manoeuvering among their friends, and it is not until the muzzles are at their breasts that the volley is poured. Lord Palmerston had supposed and admitted the compact to be violated, when it was not, and had not cared about it. Of Utrecht he had not spoken a word; the marriage is hurried on, and as soon as settled, then he breaks silence, and France discovers that she has practised a base deception on England, and violated the public law of Europe.

But, after all, the Treaty of Utrecht has ceased to have any binding power or legal existence since the year 1793! How perfect must be the knowledge of Lord Palmerston of the European intelligence with which he has to deal! Amid all this fierce contention no one lays his finger on this point: yet the Treaty of Utrecht has no more to do with the case than a treaty between Rome and Carthage. Treaties cease and determine on the occurrence of war, unless revived at the peace. The Treaty of Utrecht was not revived in 1815, and has therefore passed away from the body of European law.

Lord Palmerston has succeeded in this extraordinary enterprise, by his double position as editor and Minister. Labouring in the press, he got up the rancour, for which, as Minister, he had furnished the occasion.

The use of a press, formerly, by a Government, was defensive; and an organ connected with the Government was particularly restrained and hampered by the connection. The present Minister makes use of his antagonists, and the journals immediately connected with himself are especially useful to taunt and exasperate foreign Powers. He sends an insulting note, and accompanies it by an insulting leader, or a letter reaches the papers in Paris simultaneously with a note sent to the French Embassy in London, promulgating its contents, and his organ in London then charges the French Government with the indecent act. At home he can, day by day, assert, deny, contradict, give intelligence true or false, blow hot and cold in the same or in different papers, and who can trace in all this his hand or purpose? Morning and evening the shuttle plies backwards and forwards, and each thread of deception covers the last. Is there not here enough to stultify any home public, or to drive wild any foreign Government?

Like the Parliament, the press formerly exposed and resisted, now it screens, the governing power. Parliament has only screened corruption; the press spreads delusion. His friends (that is to say, the partizans of the faction he affects) as well as foes, hold Lord Palmerston to be “a dangerous man”—this can only mean that his purposes are inscrutable; for no avowed purpose of one man can be dangerous. The press, then, serves him at once to cover and advance his ends. Walpole invented and added to the science of government the mysteries of exchange and finance; Lord Palmerston has added his branch to the arts of government, characterised by Lord Lyttelton as practices which Government was originally instituted to put down. The mysteries of finance, however, served only to attain mean ends, which appeared on the very surface—to secure a Minister in office—to serve the interests of a party—to put money in the pocket of a man. The purposes for which the fourth estate is now absorbed into the Cabinet are of a higher order. It reveals no less than an attempt to grasp and pervert the intellectual powers of man; and practical, no less than abstract, it brings events from thoughts, it establishes, upsets, changes, readjusts,—it commands the relations of community and community, and embracing the universe its design, moves the whole human race by its action. Peace or war may now depend on the issue of a negotiation, not with an empire, but with a newspaper.

Such are the results of secrecy. No one knows who in a Cabinet acts or advises—no one knows who writes in a newspaper. The nation knows not what is done with it by its Government, nor the parties what is done with them by their leaders.

The action of Lord Palmerston does not date from his return to office. He had prepared beforehand the whole measures in Spain while formerly Minister, and had continued to direct them while out of office. There the Ambassador whom he had appointed, and whom he had raised to that station in a manner out of ordinary course, and because an instrument peculiarly fitted for his purpose, was retained by the Conservative Government. All other Ambassadors, though men of high standing, and not political partizans, were displaced—but in Spain, where his policy had been the subject of the vehement assaults and unbounded reprobation of his antagonists, his agent is kept. The Tory Administration was not in the secret of the agents of England in Spain. While Lord Aberdeen, at the Chateau d'Eu, was declaring that England would not consent to putting forward a Prince of Coburg—in Spain it was received as a truth, sanctioned by all the authority which in that country diplomatic innuendoes can convey, that a concert existed between France and England to divide between them the two sisters. It was by a year of menace of this degradation, that the proposal of France, when finally made, was rendered endurable, for they conceived it a relief to have only one foreigner, and a gain to have one Spanish prince. The English Ambassador at Madrid, on the announcement of the decision of the Spanish Government, immediately manifests ill-humour, and writing a letter to the Opposition to be published in the press, in which he insults the future Prince Consort, gives to the marriage of the Duke de Montpensier that share of popularity which every measure must have in Spain, which is known to be distasteful to either France or England, yet he takes care to paralyse opposition to the marriages in the Cortes, by refusing that whispered assent without which a Spanish opposition has been long unac­customed to move. The official organ in London thunders forth denunciations and appeals to arms: dropping the editorial mask, it tells Spain that “the means of negotiation are exhausted”, points to the arms and money, marines and Legion lent to Christino, and as now possibly available against her, and invites Narvaez, to become a second Bolivar. That this appeal may appear the public voice of England, the leading journal re-echoes the note, and inquires whether the “Maria Theresa of her age is to find no Hungary in her dominions?” France insulted before, is now alarmed, and turns to Russia. A commercial treaty with the Czar is hurried on, and to show her devotion, it is carried into execution before ratification.

This marriage, crowns and sums up a whole era of intrigue in Spain, fixes the fate of that devoted country, and converts it into an arena of strife for years : yet after all, it is but the stepping-stone to something else. It is no sooner accomplished than it is forgotten by us, in the consequences that it brings. This long-laboured for and fatal consummation is but the germ of mightier troubles 0n another field—which I shall crave your 1ndulgence to enter on tomorrow.

I remain, Sir, &c.

December 7th, 184fi.

 

January 18. 1847.

P.S.—The documents now published confirm in every point my statements and conclusions made public in this letter more than a month before. It will suffice, to extract the following passage to show the position of France at the origin:—

“The marriage of the Queen of Spain is the only question between England and France, which is at present important, and may become perplexing. Let us cut short this perplexity. You were perfectly right in affirming, that the sons of D. Francisco de Paulo suited us. * * * * * * If the English cabinet approves and adopts this policy, we are ready to act in concert with England, in order to put it efficaciously into practice”.—M. Guizot to Comte Jarnac, July 20, 1846.

 

 

 

LETTER II.

THE SEPARATE PROTEST.

 

 

Sir,—When the intelligence reached France and Eng­land that Cracow had been confiscated, it was disbelieved. An hour of suspense was followed by a burst of indignation. The French Minister, in announcing to the British Ambassador at Paris the common disaster, has lost sight of the Montpensier marriage. As great must have been his astonishment, in being told by the British Ambassador that this was the very case of which he had warned him, and that this was the very fruit of the Montpensier mar­riage, as when he found that in effectuating that marriage, he had broken the compact with England, and violated the treaty of Utrecht!

Lord Normanby’s reply to M. Guizot is thus given in the Chronicle:—

“When France concluded the Montpensier marriage, in violation of the treaty of Utrecht, and in the face of a formal protest of England, he (Lord Normanby) had intimated to the French Minister, that should any event here­after arise which called for the intervention of France and England, it could not be expected that England would concur in any joint action, but would reserve to herself the liberty of acting separately”

The English Ambassador is not overwhelmed with the intelligence, but is ready for it. It is instantly seized upon, not to re-unite the two countries, but to re-allege a charge that was false, and to exhibit a recklessness in the pursuit of a purpose of insult, which no consideration of duty or danger could restrain. No Ambassador could have spoken thus, unless instructed; therefore the English Minister had provided for an event of which he represents himself as being in ignorance, and his act is but the appli­cation of a previously uttered, but ambiguously worded threat.

A remarkable passage in the Presse has appeared in the London journals of this morning, which affords me the opportunity at once of exposing the latest fallacy, and confirming from their own mouth, the conclusion in my letter, published by you this day. The Presse, in commenting on a statement made by the Augsburgh Gazette to the effect, “That the Governments of France and England could not have been surprised at a measure which has been an accomplished fact for several months past”, says, “One fact, however, appears from this state­ment, which we ought carefully to remember, and which is, that the Spanish marriages and the rupture of the cordial understanding, had no reference to the resolution of the three Courts, since that resolve preceded these events”.

How could the anterior date of the resolution respecting Cracow disprove the connection; it is on the priority of that date that the connection stands. If the Northern Powers had acted, as Lord Palmerston says, “with alacrity” on the occurrence of a rupture between England and France, there would have been no connection except that of propter quia postea. It might then have been a charge which in other times would have endangered the head of a British Minister, if, out of a groundless quarrel of his own making, he had entailed upon his country such conse­quences; but the connection that is asserted, and which the article in the Presse is penned to meet, is this—that the Northern Powers, having planned the confiscation of Cracow, the quarrel was, with guilty purpose and design, brought about by Lord Palmerston to facilitate it; and this charge the sentence in the Presse does substantiate; for the only point in which the evidence was hitherto incomplete was the priority of the decision with respect to Cracow. That decision could not have been carried into effect until they were assured that they should be able to paralyse England and France, and prevent their acting in common. That decision, it now appears, was taken several months ago, while another Ministry existed in England. Why was it not then carried into effect? The troops were already in Cracow. Why did they wait to proclaim their intention? They waited for a rupture between England and France. Has this come to them as a piece of good fortune? They waited until they were enabled through Louis Philippe himself, to bring into office in England the friend of Poland. He finds England and France; again in amicable relations, and a compact concluded between them in respect to the only matter of present moment which might have endangered their unanimity. What prospect, then, was there for the Northern Powers, of that rupture which should enable them to confiscate Cracow? None whatever, unless he had come into office. He traps the French Government into a false position, breaks the compact, charges them with having broken it, and working the press, the two countries are instantaneously driven into exasperation— the one by the falsehood he has made it believe against the other, the other by the perfidious calumny of which it finds itself the object. Here is the quarrel. Now, the confiscation of Cracow can be proclaimed; but the French Government and nation, stunned by the blow at Cracow, immediately offer him co-operation, and seek his aid. It was for this that the confiscation of Cracow was not pressed until he came into office. He has done for Russia, by a few lines 0n a page of paper, what all her Baskirs and all her Calmucks never could have accomplished.

Lord Palmerston had flatly contradicted the Presse. On first announcing his determination, through the columns of the Chronicle, not to act with France, he declared that the Northern Powers had only followed, her example:—“The disregard of treaties commenced by France in the Montpensier marriage, and now followed up by the Northern Powers in the annexation of Cracow, is sufficient to startle all thinking men, and almost to destroy the faith which has hitherto been placed in the treaties upon which the present position of Europe rests. The French Government show that the alacrity shown by the Northern Powers in following its own bad example has given it great concern”.

Had it been known at the time that the confiscation of Cracow had been determined on, every one would have seen the purpose of quarrelling with France If they do not now see it, it is not from want of evidence, but from a certain evil practice, that of forming opinion? day by day upon events as they occur.

An essential distinction has hitherto manifested itself between transactions when England and France were conjointly concerned in the East and in the West. They have never acted in common in the one region or in the other, without falling into rivalries and jealousies. In the East, however, their mistakes have been hitherto accompanied with one favourable chance—the presence and successes of a third power have served, from time to time, to reunite them. In the West, their jealousies were undiverted from each other, and their faults without redemption. At present the storm produced by a flimsy lie in Spain, is instantly hushed before a Northern move made to the Eastward. The disposition indeed of two nations that can be disposed of in the dark, matters little: be it, however, recorded, that, as yet, the feelings of the two nations remain unchanged, and they have on this occasion turned to each other, if not with the sympathies of freemen, at least with the instincts of men.

The rancour of France against England was a bona fide rancour in presence of the awful final disappearance of a nation, and the relapse of the European nations into a societas leonum. That rancour is distantly hushed. In England the animosity being fictitious, remains unchanged. The two countries have become the two presses, and while the press in France does represent the feelings of the nation, the press of London represents only the purposes of the Foreign Minister, and it has the same cue as Lord Normanby in his dialogue with M. Guizot.

What must have been the calculated effect of spurring her sympathies and rejecting her aid? The Montpensier marriage was a passing incident. Cracow, and in Cracow Poland, and in Poland the public law of Europe, an in that public law the existence of every state, and the sense of right in each human being, are not passing incidents, and every step taken by England in reference to them, remains indelible; and instead of being effaced by subsequent events, stands the pivot on which all future things will hinge.

An event, above all others calculated to unite the two Governments, had real differences existed, has no such effect; unanimity within each of those countries, and between them both, produces no results, and an act of aggression of the three Northern Powers against the two great constitutional States, throws then into no embarrassment as to how they were to deal with the three Powers, but into the greatest embarrassment between themselves. It is one of those cases in which men seek a solution in the stars, because to trace their sequence upon earth is above the grasp of their intelligence, or below the level of their morality. There is no difference between England and France on the subject matter. They are agreed as to what they are to do; to what they do they attach no importance, and they know that no importance will be attached to it by the opposite party. Their protest is no more than a “Leader”, with the loss of the editorial “we”, and with the disadvantage of what is only, after all, an editorial signature. How, then, should the case present any embarrassment? If the question had been asked beforehand, who could have answered? Their embarrassment lies on this needle’s point—shall they protest conjointly or separately.

But this was a case which admitted of no ambiguity, a line of conduct is fixed by the forms of office and by the laws. The Treaty of Vienna is a general compact of all the Powers of Europe; not merely the eight Powers who signed the general treaty, but all and every separate State constituted according to the separate treaties which are included in it, are parties to the general treaty. A violation of such a compact must be decided to be so by the parties in common. Their separate opinion is of no value. England and France had to take measures in common with the other parties to that treaty. It is not in the province of the Secretary of State for the Foreign Department to decide upon the violation of a treaty. Is Europe to depend on one country’s act, or England on one man’s caprice, will, error, or perfidy, in such a contingency as this? If so, indeed, must our ancestors have been mad, who laid down tor such cases, forms so stringent, and laws so provident. That duty belongs to the law officers of the Crown. It is for him, the Secretary of (the Council of) State, to submit the case. To neglect to do so—or to act upon their de­cision is an impeachable offence. The British Minister had to submit the case to a judicial decision, and to put it in the course of legal procedure. Until this was done nothing could be done, and this could neither be evaded nor delayed, except in defiance of the law. This neglect was a crime surpassing in guilt and consequences the accumulation of those for which the penalty of human life is paid in the course of a century.

The only doubt, which in a bona fide transaction could have presented itself to the Cabinet of England, was the disposition of France. Without her aid it might be a question whether England could break up the coalition of the Northern Powers, and enforce reparation, without having recourse to war. If France, through irritation, or desiring to get rid of a treaty that had been framed to strip her of her conquests, had turned against England, there would have been a difficulty presented to the British Ministry. France lost to us, the secondary Powers could scarcely be expected to venture to take their stand with England so that she might be left alone to act. A glorious occasion, indeed; but still one of that hazardous kind which it requires genius and a will to lead to a favourable issue.

No such doubt or difficulty was here. France besought England for aid and co-operation. Put then the case of any ordinary person, Minister of England—say a farmer, or a shopkeeper—say, if you will. Lord Aberdeen—what could have happened, if not an instantaneous concurrence with France, which must have carried with it at once the whole of Europe. And, therefore, Russia waited till the proper man was Minister in England. The circumstances of the last Polish war were reproduced, as the result will be. Then the general movement of Europe and of Asia was paralysed by one man who now again holds in his hands the fate of the world.

When I said that unanimity prevailed in the journals and in opinion in France, I did not overlook “an avowed Russian organ”,—called so by the Times (and, of course, by the same authority denied to be so). This paper deplores the infatuation of France, and hails the rupture of these treaties, so deal to England and so noxious to France, and specially argues against the importance which France attaches to a joint protest. Alone across the Channel it concurs with Lord Palmerston. It argued for a separate protest; at one time, on the plea that it would be more efficacious in support of the treaties, at another on that of its being more efficacious in getting rid of them. The same course is likewise pursued by those different journals in England that ostensibly represent or really support the policy of the Foreign Minister.

To protest separately is, of course, no matter of Whig or of Tory opinion; the suggestion of a separate protest, though appearing in deferent organs, could only have come from the Foreign Minister. In fact, they announced the decision taken before they began to argue upon the point. Consequently, the Russian organ in Paris, and the organs of Lord Palmerston in London, coincide with each other, and are severally distinct from the remainder of their respective countries.

The measure thus recommended by the Russian organ in Paris, and the organs of Lord Palmerston in London, is that which has converted the act of the three Powers into a source of embarrassment between the two. On the one side were, first:—The forms of office and of law; secondly:—The opportunity of restoring the union of England and France; thirdly:—The coalition of all the other Powers of Europe against those who had violated the Treaty of Vienna. On the other hand there is, first: —The infraction of the duties of his office and the forms of business; secondly :—The conversion of the act of the three Powers into a new source of quarrel between France and England; thirdly:—The prostrating of the second-rate Powers, and constraining them into a silent acknowledgment of this aggression. It could not be blindly that the option was made.

The Protest being separate, has of course no effect. The disunion of France and England, revealed by the mere fact, bears at once its fruit. The indignation throughout Germany, Prussia, Austria, is subjugated by the knowledge that the nations they must have looked to as the protectors of Poland and as the avengers of this deed, are themselves divided. Till, indignation is thus prevented from coming to bear upon their own Governments, so as to detach them from the alliance as must otherwise have happened. The secondary Powers, who are the first to feel, as they are now directly menaced, lose at once all heart and courage, and as it is a case in which no man can remain neutral, by the fact of their not joining in the protest they are made partakers in and partisans of the wrong. This position Lord Palmerston has confirmed by sending to each of them a copy of his Protest—that unparalleled document so called, which, as we shall presently see, is a subterfuge and not a Protest. The humiliation is not made out of the occasion, it has been prepared before­hand. In the course of last session the British Minister took occasion to make a speech upon Cracow, in which, while these events were foreshadowed, and the future conduct of France predetermined, he left no man in ignorance that such a step as that which has been taken, was the last of outrages that could be perpetrated against England and France; so that this was the end, the last limit of possible endurance, and this passed, nothing could be henceforward done by them or expected from them. I again repeat that on the very day on which the intelligence arrived in London, these words were printed :—“Surrender everything from Cracow to Constantinople”. These words were set down, not as a charge brought against Lord Palmerston, but in defending his policy, which had brought this result. This was published, too, upon the very day that France had offered to England the effacing of the cause of this humiliation—by a cordial alliance to defend both Cracow and Constantinople.

What signifies the protest of France after she has been protested against by England? What signifies the protest of England, after she has protested against France in vain, and then accepted what she protested against? Besides, what are England and France that they should presume to speak in such a cause? It is long since they have been put out of court. Before they can recover themselves here or in any case, justice must be done at home on their faithless servants. Is it after Chusan and Istalifi and Cabool and Passages and St. Sebastian and Dahara and Constantine and Tangier, that the Governments of these two buccaneering States can address themselves to deal with a question of law or of humanity? England and France, may copy Russia, but it will only be in morality; they have not yet discovered the art of profiting by their crimes, far less of turning the crimes of others to account.

Lord Palmerston being Minister, a joint protest could have been of no practical avail as against Russia. But a separate protest, besides all those effects abroad, carries other consequences at home. It is now a conclusion in the mind of every man in England, that henceforward, no occasion however great, no duty however solemn, no insult however gross, no perfidy however base, no danger however menacing, no union of interests however intimate—no community of policy, no necessity of self-defense, can ever bring these two nations together, or outweigh the secret, inscrutable, mysterious animosity or fate that keeps them apart.

I conclude by entreating special attention to the point that the knot of the difficulty, the separate protest, was prepared beforehand. The instantaneous act of Lord Palmerston in London—it had already been announced by his ambassador in Paris, and then only recalled as giving an interpreter to ominous and mysterious words used on a prior occasion. Not only was the sequestration of Cracow prosecuted concurrently with the marriages in Spain, but the detailed process of the conduct of the poste­rior event was completely settled and provided for in the inception of the prior one.

If it be objected, that to connect the designs of Russia with the events in the Peninsula is too far-fetched; I answer, that that connection Lord Palmerston has established. Eleven years ago he assumed the discovery in the Peninsula of the means of counteracting the pre­ponderance of Russia in the East—as then his greatest claim to public applause. A few years later his organs announced that at Irun and St. Sebastian, and by the expulsion of Don Carlos, he had avenged England on Russia for Cabool and Ghuznee : meaning that by sacrificing sixty millions sterling of Spanish money and fifty thousand Spanish lives, to say nothing of English treasure and lives—he had counteracted the sending by Russia of a second lieutenant of Artillery into Central Asia—the alleged cause of sacrificing there fifteen thousand British subjects and twenty millions of British treasure! 

And how should Russia neglect the affairs of Spain, she, for whose intelligence no detail is too minute, as no conception is too vast and no end too remote! England and France have long been compared to Carthage and Rome. Was it not Spain that brought their mutual destruction? How, therefore, should Russia neglect Spain? And if, as we have seen, Cracow has been sacrificed in a quarrel between England and France in respect to Spain, how dull must she be not to have anticipated such a thing; how ingenuous not to have aided in bringing it about. Russia has no cabals of Ministers, no changes of Administration, no play of party, no strife of opinion, no elections of Parliament, no speeches from the Throne, no Corn Law, no Malt Tax, no Short Time, or Pauperism for her chiefs and nobles to be busy about; there are no commercial panics, no changing moods of animosity, now for this nation now for that, to absorb her genius, or to parade as evidences of her civilization. She has the spectacle of those things in Europe to amuse her leisure, and the contrasts and chances which these afford, to please her vanity, to mature her judgment, attract her activity, point her ambition, or tire her lust. How then should she neglect Spain?

The factions in Spain have been changed in title from designations of opinion to those of foreign states; and this is the last pitch of degradation to which we can conceive a people approaching. Are there not avowed Russian partisans and organs in Germany, in France, in England? Are there not statesmen in every country in Europe known to be her creatures and her pensioners? Of the great transactions that have occurred, are the principal ones not allowed to have been schemes and projects of hers, and whatever may be said of each diplomatic revolution at the time of its occurrence, no one will deny that in respect to prior transactions every Government of Europe has been her dupe, and each separate country has been in turn the field of her triumph, and of the failure of her baffled antagonists or duped allies.

Has there ever been heard or a French or an English organ, a French or an English party iu Russia? Has there ever been a Minister in Russia known as a French or English creature or pensioner? In what transaction has she ever been overreached by an ally, or thwarted by an antagonist? On what field of Europe, Asia, or Africa, has she been baffled by the one or duped by the other? What parity then exists? And how can the nations of the Goths tell what she is about in any matter or on any field? And if, as in Spain, she does not show herself—what legitimate inference to be drawn, save this, that she has there her work more effectually done by others than she could do it herself? It is, besides, requisite that she should not appear. If she did, England and France would find, as in the East, another object for their mutual hatred besides themselves.

Nor is the estrangement of France and England the only fruit. The same blow has still more effectually prostrated Prussia and Austria. The first of these States has been, ever since she was cast down by the purposely lost battle of Fritdland, to be reconstructed by Russia in 1815, a mere tool of the Czar. But to be a useful tool she had to be made to assume a different physiognomy, and was exhibited with a bearing of independence, a gloze of learning, a tincture of religion, and a parade of enlightenment. It was thus that she was used to win her way in Germany, in order to be made an antagonist of Austria, who was exhibited as an oppressive, an umbrageous, a darkening, fanatic, and stationary power. Now placed by the side of Austria, and under the knout of Russia, the prestige of her internal power, and the means of her German progress, vanish. She falls now and henceforward into a struggle of exist­ence, and in her weakness she must rely on the support of that hand which, by revealing its power over her, has created it. Is there here no change in the affairs of the world, and would it be a small part, were this the sole result, that Spain has been made to play in the destinies of Europe?

Austria, at the first treaty of Vienna, entered into a se­cret compact with England, France, and Sweden, to defend Europe and themselves against the encroachments of Russia. By that act they recognised at the close of the war with France that they found themselves in presence of a new danger, and this they took as the basis of an alliance. There were thus three of the great Powers of Europe on the one side and two on the other Although they were three to two, and the three powerful against the two weak, and had all the rest of Europe with them, and of course the Ottoman empire and what remained of Poland, and commanding the Sound and the Dardanelles, and having the military power of the Continent and the whole naval power of the Ocean, with Napoleon too, in their hands, and directed by such heads and leaders as Talleyrand and Metternich, Wellington and Soult—they yet so dreaded that species of power of which Russia was alone possessed, namely, the intellectual, that their alliance was kept a profound secret. Of course it was no secret to Russia. Napoleon was brought back from Elba. The treaty found in the archives of Paris was formally communicated to the Czar by Napoleon, and subsequently published to the world. A few months later Europe was ready again to assemble at Vienna, sufficiently tamed down to think no more of a coalition against Russia.

Austria even then sought to renounce her share of Po­land. Ten years later she refused to join the fatal triple alliance for the pacification of the East. In 1829 she made every effort to induce England and France to support Turkey. In 1831, she sent an Envoy to recognize Poland, before whose face Warsaw fell. In 1833 and 1835, she resisted the attempted assumption by Russia of protectorate over Turkey. In 1838 she endeavoured to induce England to join Turkey and herself in a continental treaty, which should constitute a political barrier to Russia on the Danube, and it was only then, after a last insult and a crowning betrayal by the English Foreign Minister, and ineffectually endeavouring to awaken the English Premier to the motives by which he might be swayed, that she, for the first time, compacted with Russia in the affairs of the East. Then followed the Treaty of the 15th of July, 1840, when she, after long tampering, gave a promise to adhere if England did so, having been entrapped into that promise by the previous declaration of the English Minister that he would not adhere to it. Another downward step was made in 1841, when she was a party to that most infamous of compacts of the 13th July, when all Europe accepted and revived for Russia the expired treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, against which England and France had protested, and against which they had paraded a naval demonstration. Then Lord Palmerston leaves office, and she is left fallow for a time. He returns to power, and she accepts Cracow, under a menace from Russia. Hitherto, whatever she had done against the interests of Europe or the established laws, was in concurrence with England and following merely in her wake. The harmony between the two was not broken, and neither special grounds of quarrel established, nor concert and alliance with Russia. Now the chain is entirely severed. It is by her act that the Treaty of Vienna is broken down. It is against her that every attempt at restoration in England must first be directed. What has produced this change? One man in a certain room, in a certain house, in a certain street in London, whose word no man trusts, whose purposes no man comprehends, whose acts no man knows!

And what, then, is the position of England? Bound in a treaty with France to maintain the independence of Spain, and Spain, as declared by the Minister of England, prostrated by France. France, the great ally of the Liberal party in England, severed from us by a Whig Minister, and driven to an exasperation that forebodes the events of 1793, and driven so by her indignation at the rupture of the public laws of Europe which she in 1793 had violated. For what were the confiscations in Alsace to the confiscation of Cracow? Austria, the immemorial ally of England repeating in 1846 the act of France of 1793, and that not as a solitary frenzied revolutionist, but as a subordinate agent of an alliance of military Powers, of whom Russia stands the patron and the chief. This, after you have signed a bond to exclude yourselves from the Dardanelles. The despotic alliance consolidated, the constitutional alliance dissolved, England at enmity with all! And the whole is brought out of a false allegation of the violation of a treaty which has no existence—by her own Minister.

Lord Palmerston can succeed, however, in acting for England only in as far (in the case of a decision known at the time) as he convinces the gentlemen and ladies whom he meets and with whom he converses. At present he has, of course, to talk over each person, and to show them that England can do nothing. His arguments are two—“I cannot join with France after her abominable conduct. I cannot reach Cracow. Can I come down to the House and ask supplies for a war?” Each listener is, of course, convinced that England and France can unite for no purpose—that war is out of the question for any purpose; and they go away satisfied that Lord Palmerston is “attached to the French people, but has always been thwarted by her King—that he therefore thoroughly detests Louis Philippe, and he alone is the cause, if there has been no fruit from all the sacrifices he (Lord Palmerston) has made to preserve the French alliance”.

I can add nothing to what I have said regarding the first of these pretexts, but I must suggest something further to show equally the hollowness of the second.

Suppose that France had not offered her co-operation to England, and that Europe, all Europe, was not, and is not ready to hail and confirm any act of vigour of the British Government, are there not a whole catalogue of things which an English Minister could do to make it worth Russia’s while to incur a larger sacrifice than the restoration of Cracow to prevent their being done? Is there not first the public and legal establishment of the violation of the treaty of Vienna? Would it not then follow that the Russia-Dutch loan is no longer to be paid? that the treaties of July 6, July 15, and above all of July 13 (1841), for closing the Dardanelles, are no longer binding? that whatever commercial stipulations exist fall to the ground, and that England may transfer to Turkey, Naples, South America, &c., her demand for the raw materials, the sale of which furnishes, directly and indirectly, three-fourths of the revenues of Russia? Let any­one weigh any of these separate, secure, peaceful means of action, and see if not only the ambitious projects, but the very life of Russia be not in the hands of aft honest British Minister? There is, besides, a Russian Minister in London who might be required to withdraw, and a British representative at St. Petersburg who might be recalled. There is an Ottoman Empire that might be encouraged and strengthened, instead of being deceived, betrayed, and insulted. There is also a Persia—there is, above all, a Circassia. There are soundings in the Dardanelles for British ships of the line; there is also a Prussia and an Austria to be detached, they who are only, and who have been enthralled by British treason. Rus­sian ambition might be arrested in the provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia alone, and we have the wide world to operate upon; wherever her designs and machinations extend—there are hearts to feel for Poland, and hands to work the fall of Russia. A head only is wanted. Within, the elements of discord, the moment she is met and assailed—around, a host of hating neighbours, and then the great states beyond are Austria, France, and England, and in the case we suppose, England herself is busy—we have regained France, and emancipated Austria. All this without war, without the remotest chance of it; and a war with Russia, what does it mean (at least until the Dardanelles are hers)? Nothing more than the bombardment of Sevastopol. That bombardment, to say nothing of the effect on Western Europe, or the echoes from Elsineur, raises Poland, the Cossacks, and the Tartars.

But there can be no war between England and Russia. Until the Dardanelles are occupied, Russia must accept any terms England may propose as the conditions of peace; after they are occupied, England will have to submit to every humiliation or spoliation that it may please Russia to inflict. It is, therefore, not true that Cracow cannot be reached. It is not true that war is required to bring reparation for this wrong. It is not true that Parliament would refuse supplies if called on for such a purpose. It is not true that the Foreign Minis­ter cares for what Parliament thinks or does not think, he does not go to Parliament when he wants to violate a treaty to make a war, that is, to send forth a piratical expedition, or to plunge this country into the expenditure of tens of billions; but it is true that he has concerted with Russia to bring this calamity—it is true that he has broken the alliance with France to assist her therein; and now he misrepresents her weakness and your strength, and makes you believe yourself as powerless as you are base, that you may not counteract her work or suspect his villany.

The point to be looked to now was the Dardanelles. There was the question at once of the independence of Turkey and the access to Russia in the event of a war. Has he neglected it? No! No sooner within the doors of the Foreign Office than he picks a quarrel with Turkey. No question was open—no boy had been shot—no Frank bastinadoed. How then make a quarrel? He attacks a law of Turkey. He calls on the Turkish Government to abolish a fundamental part of the constitution of the State and the faith—he requires them to abolish slavery. But this is a great and a philanthropic question—it is a doctrine that England has everywhere and by every means endeavoured to establish. England has virtually abandoned her own doctrine. France has withdrawn from her engagements respecting it—the Brazils refuse to renew their treaty—the whole anti-slavery system has fallen smitten with contempt.

But then it may be that in Turkey slavery has characters particularly odious—In Turkey, slavery is the slavery of the Old Testament and the New. The slave has rights, he has privileges, he is adopted into the family, he ascends to the highest offices of the State, he commands armies, pro­vinces; the name is an honour, and not a reproach, and the condition one of dignity, not of servitude.

But, perhaps, Lord Palmerston did not know this. Several years ago he made a similar attempt. He transmitted a despatch of the same nature to his Ambassador, who declined communicating it to the Turkish Government. That Ambassaelor answered in a document which has been published to the world, stating the case as I have stated it, and demonstrating the absurdity of transmitting an appeal in favour of the abolition of slavery because of the degradation and misery of that condition, to a Minister who himself belonged to that very class. The reasons were admitted as valid, for the despatch of Lord Palmerston fell stillborn. They have not since been refuted.

But perhaps Lord Palmerston did not foresee that this document would irritate and alarm the Turkish Government, and did not recollect at the moment that it could serve the purposes of Russia—In the very despatch he points to Russia, and uses the threat of his power, that is, the abandoning of the Ottoman empire to her mercies, as his sole argument; he drives them to look to Russia for protection against the Propagandism of England. If you doubt the purposes and connection, look at the simultaneous proceedings of Russia; she puts forward a scheme of dismemberment, and assembles an army (as rumour, her ally, states) of 240,000 men on the Pruth.

This is the Minister who was recently re-admitted into office on promise of better behaviour—he was to be a fire­brand no longer, and to give up his hates for the Emperor, or Louis Phliippe, or the King of Naples, or Don Carlos, or Mehemet Ali, as the case might be.

The slave trade was, therefore, used for Constantinople, as the Treaty of Utrecht for Cracow.

A religious agitation is again commencing against France on the subject of Tahiti. It manifests itself first at Tiverton!

Another effect of this agitation is that attention is carried away from the western hemisphere, and that the President of the United States is left free to push his country as far on as possible in the war or quarrel with Mexico, forming them to the habits and spirit of aggression which has to be specially cultured before it can be brought successfully to bear on Canada.

I have in this letter dealt with the manner of the Protest alone, and must again request that you will afford me space tomorrow to deal with the Protest itself.

I remain, Sir, &c.

December 10.

 

 

 

LETTER III.

THE PROTEST.

 

Sir,—What is a Protest?

It was the complaint of the Roman censor, that, in his age, the true names of things had been lost: it is our misfortune to preserve the name when the thing is changed. A few years ago, What is a Protest? would have been an idle question. Today it is a vital one. Then it would have been a question easily answered; today it is one to which the whole intelligence of Europe is unable to give a reply, for a riddle is read to them under that name. On the sequestration of Cracow they were all agreed: a certain thing was to be done: it was to be met with a Protest; but no one suspected that they did not exactly know what that was. There was indeed a hot debate, but it was as to the envelope, not the contents.

A Protest is a legal instrument used to establish the fact of violation or obstruction of a right, or non-per­formance of a duty. This is done before witnesses, either in the presence of a judicial authority, or with a view to future reference to such, and so as that the party whose act is impugned has the opportunity of hearing the charge and replying to it. As in a marriage settlement, will, or contract, there is a specified purpose. There are certain parts, as the roof the walls of a house; they must be there for a house to be a house. It requires that there be an act, and a right or contract which it violates. There the Protest has to specify. If it does not do so, it is no protest. Being a reservation of the rights that are assailed, not to protest is to bar their subsequent recovery. The act becomes precedent. Other legal deeds are optional as to time—a Protest is linked to the occasion. It cannot be made without a necessity, and when the necessity arises it cannot be neglected. There can be no choice as to its performance, no hesitation as to its period, and no ambiguity as to its terms.

Supposing that the attorney or solicitor of the injured party were to record a document in Court, which argued, but did not protest, and abstained from alleging the act which was the occasion of it, and even assumed the fact not to have occurred, could such a document be of avail, and would the term protest apply? The only inference would be, that the agent had been tampered with by the opposite party.

Transactions between nations were, until lately, con­ducted in as formal a manner as between individuals; and when an Empire protested, it protested in no other manner than a Cheesemonger; and to the agents between nations the responsibilities attached, to which, to this day, those are subject who have to manage cases which involve the shifting of a Scullery sink, or the dilapidation of a Pigsty.

The nation, therefore, entertains simultaneously two opinions diametrically opposed. It judges and acts ac­cording to opposite rules, on matters which do not differ in their own essence and character. The contradiction in legal procedure, however, invokes, also, one in sense; and the consequences of neglect, which we should foresee in regard to the things we do attend to, have reality overtaken us in respect to those which we have neglected. It is dangerous to rob a hen roost, but not so to betray a nation; and while petty offences are pursued with the sternest vengeance, it is safe to perpetrate the mightiest of crimes. And, therefore, while it is difficult to deceive individual intelligence, in respect to small private concerns, it has become easy to circumvent collective wisdom in respect to the weightiest matters.

If this be judged a good and proper condition, then is Lord Palmerston’s Protest quite in order; and there is nothing to be said about it. If it be judged that a nation’s honour, character, interests, and existence, are things that have to be watched over with all the care, and be guarded with all the forms that the wisdom of the people can devise, or the resources of its legal habits and experience furnish—then again, is there nothing to be said of Lord Palmerston’s Protest. The occasion is furnished for the application of a people’s recovered sense, and it would stand the first or the last count in an impeachment.

What serves it to argue about Cracow, or Poland, or Spain, when men do not attach clear meanings to terms— when they do not know the meaning of indistinct phraseo­logy, or of informal steps—when they feel no distaste for baseness, no disgust for falsehood, or antipathy for crime, and have lost the sense of the penalties of the law, and are negligent of syntax? They cannot understand the facts, and if they understood them, they could not go to the remedy; yet the same men would call to a policeman if their pockets were picked, and bring an action if their field was trespassed on! Once, however, let a man understand that law is law, whether between nations or indi­viduals—that a Protest is a Protest equally in a case of rupture of private contract or of public treaty; then would fraud and infamy be stamped upon the face of this instrument—then would the remedy be comprehended in the punishment of the delinquent—and then, rating the amount of guilt, not by the meanness, but by the grandeur of the matter to which it was applied, would an indignant nation recover from its dream that the remedial process against great offenders had become obsolete, and that the laws which protect us against wrong from private men at home suffice not to protect us against danger and harm, the work of our public functionaries abroad.

I beg the reader to disencumber his mind from the load of anterior evidence. Let him forget the successive falsehoods and tricks, their sequence, cohesion, and object, and let him place before himself this solitary fact—

The sequestration of Cracow has not been protested against by the Minister of England, and that Minister has given to a surreptitious document the form and name of Protest. His so-called document is constructed out of arguments against the reasons that had been, or might be, put forward for the act; and he has framed for himself the occasion of penning the sentences which should stand for a Protest, and avoid being one—by the supposition that the act had not occurred!

Suppose now that the Russian Ambassador in London had had the opportunity of changing the Protest of the British Minister—would not the composition of such a document have been a signal instance of dexterity?

Suppose that some of those extravagant and pertinacious accusers of Lord Palmerston had sketched beforehand, according to their monomania, that Minister’s protest—would not such a document as this have been considered a proof of malignity, rather than of wit?

When Lord Palmerston came a to office, whatever per­version has taken place, a protest was still a protest. If a Minister was reputed to have protested, it was that he had done so. War was still war, and peace still peace;—there might have been unjust wars; there might be disgraceful peace, or insecure peace and needless war, but the name, the thing, the form still remained. It is he that has brought forth the chaos of speech, whence at once the jumble in the affairs of the world and in the thoughts of its inhabitants. During eighteen years this man has been at work—he has been in the heart of the British Cabinet, the reflexion of an intelligence as alien as hostile to England and to Europe. Directed to the ruin of Europe, and acting under England’s mask and with her power, this intelligence has disturbed the common forms of procedure; this is what is seen in every common case of fraud. It is requisite, then, to trace this process and this system in some of its earlier stages.

In 1833 a quarrel between the Pacha of Egypt and the Sultan, which was all managed from St. Petersburg through London, brought a request of succour from Turkey to England; it was not answered that it was unlawful for us to yield such succour but that we had not the means to do so, and with the consent of the King and the Cabinet, Russia was requested to afford that support to the Sultan which he had requested from us, and had already rejected the offer of from Russia. Consequently, a Russian squadron appeared in the Bosphorus, to the utter astonishment of the Turkish Government and the consternation of the Turkish people. This Russian succour did not pass down to meet the danger, which it only aggravated by its presence. It encamped on the Giant’s Hill, and then the question came to be no longer the repelling of the Pacha of Egypt, but the getting rid their new allies. As the price of the succour thus imposed by England on Turkey, that is to say, as the condition of the withdrawal of her troops, the signature of the Turkish Government was by Russia required to a treaty, which was no less than a defensive alliance against England and France, and which bound Turkey, in case of the event of war between Russia and these or any other Power, to close the Dardanelles against their vessels. That is to say, that Turkey, who alone contemplated war between them and Russia in her quarrel, was to close to them the passage by which her enemy could be reached, or she could be saved. The treaty appeared first in the columns of the Morning Herald, and Lord Palmerston stated in the House, though with a certain ambiguity of phrase, that he had himself learnt it only through that channel. The treaty I said had been imposed upon the Turkish Government as the condition of getting rid of the Russian troops, but the Turkish Government looked to England and to France to save them both from the occupation which had been doubly England’s doing, and from the new treaty, which was directed, not against Turkey, but against herself. It consequently determined to communicate to the English Embassy the secret article respecting the closing of the Dardanelles, and thereby place England in the necessity of meeting Russia directly. I have it on the authority of a Minister of the Porte, that the very original paper was returned to the Porte by the Russian Ambassador, with a recommendation to choose better, another time, their confidants. This, of course, might have been the treachery of a Dragoman (the Eng­lish and Russian Dragomans were brothers), but see what follows! The treaty is signed. An angry correspondence ensues between England and, not Russia, but Turkey; it is she that is ground between the upper and the nether millstone. Lord Palmerston thus fixes on her that she is party to a secret and offensive Treaty against England. Thus is the Turkish Government, which we have spurned when it appealed to us to rescue it, driven into sheltering itself under this very treaty against England. England and France then protest—it is a joint protest. France always follows England—the composition of the document devolves, therefore, upon Lord Palmerston, and it is the very prototype of that document which we have under consideration. The grievance is not brought home to Russia. No allusion to the compact—no exclusive advantages in the East—no abolition of the treaty required; and, under the mask of anger and with the tone of petulance, a boisterous interference ensues, which serves to embarrass Turkey and support Russia. An English and French squadron are sent to carry a protest against Russia—not to the Sound, but to the Dardanelles, after Turkey had been constrained and provoked into making common cause with Russia to defend the passage. The document was couched in these terms—England and France will act as if no such treaty had been signed. To which, of course, Russia replied that she would act as if the protest had never been made. The dexterous squadrons, having done their work, effected a judicious retreat to Malta and Toulon.

No cloud then overshadowed the harmony of England and France; and Lord Palmerston was then under the control of that burning indignation, or, as his own organs expressed it, that “morbid irritation” against Russia, which kept his anxious colleagues in continual alarm, lest, on awakening some morning, they should find England plunged in a war With Russia.

The interpretation of the words “that England would act as if no such treaty had been signed”, is, that she would, send men of war into the Black Sea, despite the article for their exclusion,—Lord Palmerston sends Lord Durham to St. Petersburgh via the Black Sea. This, of course, is for the purpose of acting up to his word. He sends a man of war to convey him, and an Arlmiralty steamer, but the guns of the English vessel that enters the now Russian waters, are unrove from the ports and struck down into the hold! France at that moment had obtained a firman for a man of war for the Black Sea, but follow­ing England, it is stopped. Meanwhile Austria, without the slightest hesitation on her side, or difficulty 0n the part of the Turks, sends into the Black Sea a man of war. No one but Lord Palmerston has closed up the Black Sea. When Turkey, through a confidential channel, besought the English Government to send up a squadron, Lord Palmerston said that whoever proposed such a thing must be a “Russian”, for it would be the prostration of the independence of Turkey. The manner of the conveyance of Lord Durham alone suffices to prove the whole case. He made for her the occasion of the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi; he repelled the Turkish Government when it appealed to him against it, before its signature; after it is signed, he makes it the cause of a quarrel, not with Russia, but with Turkey—he pretends to protest against Russia, to carry along with him France, and then practically confirms the treaty by establishing a precedent of submission to its stipulations, and to more than its stipulations; he induces France to do the same. The treaty was for eight years : it expired on July 8, 1841. A few days before quitting office, he re-enacts, as a common bond for all Europe, the secret stipulations of this very treaty, and gives France, by joining it, the occasion of re-associating herself with Europe. He then goes down to Tiverton, and denounces on the hustings her razzias in Africa.

Thus, by the change of the thing, was a new meaning given to the word Protest, and henceforward, when it was said that a Minister had protested, no particular meaning was conveyed, and no consequences followed; and thus it has become possible, as we see today, for a public discussion to be carried on respecting the strength of a protest; and we are kept in suspense as to whether M. Guizot’s or Lord Palmerston’s is the stronger. A Protest cannot be strengthened by any language, nor weakened by any. It cannot go beyond a Protest, and unless it comes up to a Protest, it is none. Nobody speaks of a vigorous and energetic. contract of marriage, nor of a firm and decided deed of settlement; if we discussed the epithets which such deeds might merit or suggest, it would be a sign that the tenure of property was very insecure. Thus was confirmed and extended that singular contrast between public and private business, which allows a whole nation to be circumvented with more ease than a single man. Who, in his private business, would call such a deed a Protest, or confide an affair of 10s. to an attorney who had drawn it up?

This has not been the only occasion, since this attorney has had the conduct of our business, in which he has had to deal with flagrant acts of outrage of the adverse party. Turkey is not the only neighbour of Russia whom England has to support, and which, during the last eighteen years, Russia has trampled upon. With Persia, Poland, and Central Asia, all successively the objects of these acts, England had treaties for their protection, either generally or specially, as against Russia; in each case he has abstained from doing anything to thwart Russia, or from establishing England’s right; but, as in the case of Cracow, he has prepared, first the occasion for her, and then falsified the right of England.

In 1828, an aggressive war was made against Persia. England neither supported Persia, as bound by treaty, nor protested. But in this case Lord Palmerston was not Minister. His speech in the House of Commons of June 1st, 1829, shows, however, that this was his work. There was, indeed, a nominal Foreign Minister; but in defiance of the solemn warning of Canning, he had been admitted to a seat in the Cabinet as Secretary at War, and he has himself taken credit for having prevented England from supporting Persia. As there was no Protest, to him may be attributed the first disuse of such a measure when imperatively required.

The purport of that speech was, that Turkey ought to be abandoned as Persia had been; and the doctrine he advocated was, that England could in no case be against Russia. It was naturally the occasion of the warm recommendations of the speaker, by the Russian Ambassadors in London to their Court, as the man to whom Russia had henceforward to look in England, and as the leader of an anti-Austrian, alliance. The introduction of Lord Palmerston into the Foreign Office followed, and he suddenly changed from Russia’s most devoted partisan to her bitterest foe. Then came the war in Poland. France, as usual, turned to England, and proposed to her to unite in supporting Poland. How was it that the “friend of Poland” and the “enemy of Russia” did not seize this occasion? There was then no Montpensier marriage. How was it that the fact of France’s proposition never was heard? After Poland’s fall, that Minister was called to account by some of his own Radical supporters for having vio0lated a pledge which he had given to them that Poland should be supported if they left matters to him. If he did not positively state, he left them to infer, that if England had taken any steps to support Poland, France would have placed herself on the side of Russia.

To induce the Belgian Congress to accept the protocols of London—protocols by which Germany may and will be shaken to its centre, he put forward his anxiety to have his hands free there, in order to act against Russia in support of Poland. He employed a Pole at Brussels to effect this purpose, by which, among other things, the violation of the treaty of Vienna, by usurpations of Austria and Russia over the Diet, were sanctioned.

How was it in 1831, that Poland fell? Russia had then no allies to put forward, with their hands to do her work, and with their bodies to shield her person : then there was no rancour between England and France : then no Quadruple Treaty to make Spain a bone of contention—no Treaty of Unxiar Skelessi had closed the Dardanelles—no Eng­lish troops and money had set up a Russian protégé on the throne of Persia—no troops had landed from a Russian line-of-battle ship to enforce the orders of a British Secretary of State for expelling (on the plea that they were Russians) a Regency from Greece—Asia was as yet untortured and undisturbed—Austria was bound to England, no less than France. How then did Poland fall? Lord Palmerston was Minister.

How was no effort made in her defence? “Turkey was ready to launch her 200,000 horse across the Ukraine”. The Cabinet of Vienna only sought to be set free to renounce, as she has so often desired, her share of Poland. Sweden would have obeyed the double impulse of Cabinet and people. France was in all the fervour yet of her Barricades, and England of her Reform; in fact, the signal only was wanted— and that signal the Crown Prince of Persia was about to give by entering the Russian territories. How were all these dispositions thwarted? Lord Palmerston was Minister! The Persian Prince was followed by the secretary of the English legation, and by him constrained to march back again.

The dexterity of Sir John M'Neill was in that hour Russia’s sole protection. Her Eastern and Southern frontiers were entirely naked. She had had to withdraw even her garrison from Orenburg, to send into Poland. It was not the aid of England— it was not the co-operation of England and France, that was required, and but for the positive aid against Poland of the Minister of England, the year 1831 would have witnessed a greater catastrophe than 1815, or than 1453.

All that I have said is capable of substantiation when evidence shall be required on oath, and Westminster Hall shall be again decked out for a great and solemn scene of national justice. Time, indeed, puts witnesses under the earth, and obscures in various ways the available evidence; on the other hand, the accumulation of new crimes and the confirmation of anterior charges and prognostications, more than compensates, perhaps, for what we lose. And above all, the indignation which at some particular point cannot fail to be aroused, will be pointed in the true direction by the finger posts we have left, even should the great task fall into other hands, and we who first detected the secret and proclaimed the crime be laid in our graves.

The idea has been industriously spread, and lightly ac­cepted, that I stand alone—at least amongst the public servants of the Crown, and who have therefore had per­sonal knowledge of this Minister and his acts, and practical acquaintance with the business of diplomacy—in believing him to be playing false. I stand alone in one respect only, and that is in the public charge. Others, and amongst them men of high standing in the service, and others of great weight as practical men of business in the eyes of the nation, concur with me in common con­victions, originating in their several experience in distinct matters. There are others, too, who know the truth, and whose testimony may he made unwittingly available. If I have spoken what others knowing have concealed, it has been a difference, not in the judgment of the case, but in the estimate of the nation. Most men in our age will consider that they have a duty to their families and their position, before their duty to the laws or the State; and this might, alone suffice to account for the suppression from a betrayed nation of any indication of the truth. But that which has lost to this great cause its power, in pre­eminent witnesses and accusers, has been the judgment that it was already past redemption; and they have refused to exert their courage, where they were destitute of hope. They have been borne to the earth, or sunk even beneath it, by the desperate resolution of yielding to the fate of a constitution judged to be irrevocably lost. If I have acted differently, it is not that I have indulged in hope, but I have excluded despair, or rather, putting aside all thought of consequences, have endeavoured to do my duty.

By the Persian war of 1828, when Russia succeeded because Lord Palmerston had got a seat in the Cabinet as Secretary of War—by the Turkish war of 1829, where she had his aid, as leader of a powerful opposition—by the Polish war of 1831, where she triumphed because he was Foreign Minister, and held back the world ready to fall upon her—she was so strengthened as to be able to address herself practically to removing, with his aid, the obstacles that stood in the way of her attempting the conquest of India. By her triumph of 1828, and by the subsequent placing, through direct British intervention, of the Russian candidate upon the throne, was Persia converted from an outwork of our defence into the first parallel of Russia’s attack upon our Indian Empire. She then passes on to the second. Persia invades Herat, with the avowed purpose of reaching Delhi, and the confession that she acted under Russian dictation. The Afghan States, bound to England as Persia had been by a defensive treaty against Russia (for all those countries, up to that period, had but one external motive, which was dread of Russia; but one hope and desire, which was, protection from England against her), were approached by her agents with promises and bribes; her emissaries were detected even within our territories, tampering with our subjects, and organizing amongst our neighbours and our allies a gigantic conspiracy against us, from the Caucasus to the Sutlej.

Now then, came the occasion for the application of a Protest, or of a remonstrance, or of a declaration; some act, in fine, of resistance on the part of the British Government, or some expression of anger; and Lord Palmerston, on Oct. 20, 1838, does address to the Russian Government, not exactly a Protest, but a protesting and denunciatory note. There is in this case no assumption that the facts had not occurred; the grievances are circumstantially, clearly, and peremptorily put down. It is stated that the Government of England knows these things, not that it has been informed. The Russian Government is told that the proofs are in hand that its correspondence has been intercepted. No door of escape is left to it. Such a statement, was only to be met by a denial, and the English Government has spoken, so that a denial would be a declaration of war. The Russian Government is placed in the alter­native of war or the humiliation of a self-accusation. Lord Palmerston had left nothing unsaid regarding the vastness of her ambition, the unscrupulousness of her means, the perfidiousness of her agents, and the worthlessness of her word, that her bitterest foe could have inserted in a Review.

Here we shall have a test of the value of Protests, and an occasion of understanding the purpose of the protester.

This document was never noticed by the Russian Govern­ment. No reply was ever given to it. The case which it stated was a fiction from beginning to end.

It was perfectly true that Russia had been sending emissaries into Central Asia, not— for that was hopeless—to produce any results there, but to furnish the pretext for this very note, upon which a simulated quarrel being established, a pretext would be afforded for sending an English army to attack the Afghans. Thus would be reversed the positions of Russia and England in Central Asia, and England instead of Russia would be the power dreaded, and Russia instead of England the power appealed to and called in. The Protest against Russia was addressed to her after the danger at Herat had passed away, and the expedition across the Indus to overthrow her influence was undertaken after the English Government had expressed, itself perfectly satisfied with her “explanations and conduct”. Russia never altered her conduct or offered explanation.

But a gulph yawned for the colleagues of the Minister between the fierce protest and the placid satisfaction, with no Mahomet’s bridge to carry them across. In October there is the Protest, in December there is the satisfaction, but no answer, no acknowledgment even of the receipt of the document! How were the colleagues of the Minister to be got over from the one bank to the other? These bodies were ferried across with an ingenuity that equals the process employed by Metellus, and by which he carried the first elephants to Italy across the Straits of Messina, without their even suspecting that they had been off the dry land.

For four years had these affairs been going on in Central Asia, without disturbing the mind of either Government, but it somehow happened that the same chord was simultaneously struck in Downing Street and St. Petersburg, and gave forth the same tone at precisely the same moment. And as Lord Palmerston had been waiting all this while till he caught her (as he tells her) well out, so had she all the while been equally waiting for him: consequently a Protest and a denunciation, in the form of a Note, leaves St. Petersburg concurrently with the Note from London. The two shoot by each other in the Catgut, and simultaneously alight on the shores of the respective countries.

Before the astounded eye of each unconscious Minister, bursts forth from the official envelope the facsimile of his own unparalleled production—there lay on the table before him the very indignation that he had felt and expressed, the very charges that he had made, the forms of compo­sition that he had employed, and to the very space that he had filled. Reflected as from a mirror, appeared to each a character and dexterity corresponding with his own—the same scorn of baseness, the same perspicacity in affairs, the same benevolence for the human race, the same patriotic devotion, the same resolution to dare all things in a just cause—

Arcades ambo

Et cantare pares et respondere parati

Thus were the Elephants led into their ark, and then disembarked on the other coast, without even suspecting that they had been off dry land. They fancied that there was a real “row”, and were very glad to have it settled anyhow. After having had occasion to admire their colleague’s firmness, they had the satisfaction of commending his prudence. A Russian Bow-street report, that a man had shot himself, sufficed to substantiate the consolatory announcement made to the discriminating Parliament of an enlightened people—that Russia had disavowed her agents, and renounced her designs. “Safe men”, and judicious statesmen, were satisfied that there might be something to complain of on both sides, and the Quarterly Review archly brought down the matter to the meanest capacity, in an argument summed up by the quotation— “Sister, sister, where did you find the needle?”

How could the mutual indignation not explode? How did it subside? Was it the colleagues of the English, or the Russian Minister that were holding Irm back? If either could be restrained, how did the valour of the other instantaneously cool? If a sham, for which was the delu­sion? Was there an English Minister in the Foreign Office at St. Petersburg, or a Russian one in the Foreign Office in London? Clearly there was no English reviewer in St. Petersburg.

After this, the English Envoy, driven from the Court of Teheran, confided the affairs of England to the Russian Ambassador, and there was a short quiet laugh at Czarskoizlo.

With the light derived from these collateral transactions, we shall be able more clearly to trace the steps taken, to prepare at Cracow the present catastrophe.

I remain, Sir, &c.

December 17.

 

N.B.—The note of the Russian Government referred to in this letter was the subject of a debate in Parliament, on the 1st of March, 1843. The following extracts are from the pamphlet already quoted, in which that debate is analysed.

“Russia's words are quoted by one ex-minister to prove the necessity of acting against Russia. Russia’s words are quoted by another ex-minister to prove that there were no grounds of quarrel with Russia. How is it that British ministers quote Russian words to justify their acts? How is it that they have opposite cases to establish? How is it that they can quote her words in support of both? If Russia contradicts herself, her words could prove two cases. They make her words good testimony for two contradictory facts. Did Russia use contradictory language? Could at one period her words call for hostile measures, and then afterwards her words justify renewal of friendly relations? No. She is nowhere in contradiction with herself in the words she had addressed to the British Cabinet. There was no change after a lapse of time— there was no lapse of time. The two ex-ministers refer to one and the same document!

The double quotation by British ex-ministers proves no perfidy of Russia, it proves their perfidy for her service.

Two ex-colleagues, in the same debate, contradict each other as to what their object was in making a war; and in the House of Commons there is not a man to point out that they adduce as testimony the self-same document; there is not in the House of Commons a man to assert the fact, that the very document referred to by Lord John Russell as causing the war, was accepted as satisfactory before the war was made.

Lord John Russell and Lord Palmerston, opposed in their views of the acts of Russia, are agreed in the results at which they arrive.

Lord Palmerston and Sir Robert Peel, opposed in their estimate of the words of Russia, are agreed in the results at which they arrive.

Lord John Russell dreading Russia’s act, Lord Palmerston dreading her agent’s act, and Sir R. Peel distrusting her words, are all agreed to resist inquiry, which is urged by Mr. Roebuck. Against them is Mr. Roebuck, who looks upon Russia as the injured party. He urges inquiry on the ground that England ought to know what her servants have done, and why they have done it; not that he apprehends either external danger or internal collusion. They, concurring in reasons a thousandfold more cogent than his, namely, the presence of external danger, resist the inquiry which should make it known, and thereby arrest it.

Now let us glance at the facts. It was four months after the explanations which satisfied Lord Palmerston, that the British forces marched to counteract those designs of Russia, which Lord John Russell dreaded. Two months before these explanations were given, had the acts of the agents of Russia, dreaded by Lord Palmerston, been discomfited. Grant to them that the invasion of Afghanistan was a legitimate means of proceeding against Russia —the cause for that invasion, by the declaration of Lord Palmerston, had disappeared four months before it was made. Grant again, that the acts of the unavowed agents of Russia, not the intentions of Russia, was a legitimate cause for the invasion of Afghanistan—this cause had disappeared five months and a half before it was made! But the equivocal acts, whether of Russia or her agents, had been in progress for months and years; no such step is then taken, it is taken after every alleged cause has disappeared. While the acts are in progress, those explanations, that disavowal and recall of her agents, which she is represented to have been so ready to give, are not required —they are required only after they have failed. The playing upon a distinction between the intentions of Russia, and the acts of her agents, and the taking her assurances as a ground of remaining friendly with her, while assuming her acts, even after failure, as a ground for making war upon another people, must surely be sufficient for the comprehension of any reasoning being”.—Appeal against Faction, pp. 27-9.

 

 

 

LETTER IV.

CONFISCATION OF CRACOW IN THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT.

 

 

 

Sir,—With the light derived from these past and concurrent transactions, we proceed now to examine the long and stealthy process by which this final catastrophe has been prepared, and we come to it, if there be meaning in words, purpose in deeds, or value in logic with the certain knowledge that the Minister in England has been serving Russia, with each of the Powers her allies, and enabled to do so effectually, as representing a country that was sup­posed to be the most intelligent in Europe, and which stood the confessed enemy of Russia in no less than three quarters of the globe. Thus was he enabled to carry France always with him, who relied then on his animosi­ties no less than his capacity.

Though we are obliged to speak of England and France conjointly, it must be understood that France has only followed England. In France there have been shilling Ministers, and Ministers controlled by the Chambers and by public opinion; but in England one man has held an unbroken and unhampered sway, and that same Minister has followed no established system of British policy, no recognized doctrines of a powerful party; he has notoriously pursued a course of his own. In doing so he has not appeared as a man enlightening the errors of his times, and forming the judgment of his people, but stealthily and secretly working his own way, battening himself in silence, fencing off assaults with sophisms or falsehoods, and when these became too thick and embarrassing, putting forward a colleague, absenting himself from the House, and boldly but not rashly relying on the “empty benches” of the House of Commons, to which he was wont triumphantly to refer,—or trusting, as a last resource against violated pledges and broken faith, to the House being counted out! He did not want the concurrence, but the abdication of the House. In following, therefore, the prior steps taken at Cracow, when we have to speak of “England and France”, it is “Lord Palmerston” that is to be under­stood.

The Northern Powers have put forward a justification for the confiscation of Cracow, and it is a very remarkable one. It is, that this is not the first time that the Treaty of Vienna has been violated at Cracow. Every act respecting Cracow for the last seventeen years has been a violation of the Treaty of Vienna.

The confiscation of Cracow is not a thunderbolt that has fallen from a clear sky. It is a result—it is the end of a long chain—it is the conclusion of a laboured argument. It is the catastrophe of a drama.

The event and the justification correspond; the event has come by the act of England and France, and the justification consists in the act of England and France. As there can be no ambiguity as to the terms of a Protest, so can there be no choice and no hesitation in the performance of that duty; and England and France, who have now protested, not according to form, did not then protest when there was the necessity; and the purpose is the same in the informality of the present step and the neglect of the former ones. And thus have they positively lent their cooperation to the Northern Powers, and have enabled them first practically to enforce, and now legally to establish the result which they have pretended to resist, and affect to deplore.

The question, therefore, does not lie in the Montpensier marriage, the squabble made with France, the false Protest of the English Minister—but in the seventeen years of his previous labours.

The treaty of Vienna established not only the absolute external independence of the Republic of Cracow, but also its internal constitution. Thus the maintenance of the internal constitution became the condition of its external independence. This was what England and France had to watch over, not only for all the interests ostensibly at stake, but also to prevent those incipient encroachments on the part of Austria, the result of which was evidently to withdraw her from the protective alliance of England and France, and to place her on the side of the aggressive confederacy of Russia and Prussia. How could this be done unless England and France had representatives at Cracow? This care was, after the treaty of Vienna, unfortunately neglected; but, on the occurrence of the Polish war, the importance and necessity of such a step became evident. There was then a Minister in England most zealous, most enterprising, and most hateful of Russia—how did he, supposing that the fall of Poland had been an inevitable catastrophe, not instantly send a British representative to Cracow and urge France, had she been backward, to do the same? There were no insuperable obstacles at home for him to overcome. There were then no democratic and demoniacal jubilations over the rupture of the Treaty of Vienna. He had not to brave public resistance, and he need not have heeded public indifference; but there was neither resistance nor indifference. The resistance and the efforts were the other way: No harder task has he ever had; in none has he shown more determined perseverance; or obtained a more hard-earned success, than in preventing a British (and French) representative from being placed at Cracow. There have been more efforts made in England and in Parliament to obtain the appointment of a British representative in Cracow than for any or for all other external purposes during the last thirty years. Indeed, it was the only specific object in respect to foreign policy that the British nation or Parliament has sought since the peace. It was such men as Mr. Cutlar Ferguson, Sir Stratford Canning, Lord Dudley Stuart, Mr. Patrick Stewart, and Mr. Gaily Knight, who, session after session, urged this measure, and they were supported by almost every man of note on either side of the House, and with the entire concurrence of that House. Its attention indeed, might flag, but his opinion never varied.

The Minister of England did not take advantage of these dispositions. He did not seek to strengthen his popularity by a step, which, of course, taken by him, could have had no real or practical consequences; he braved public and private opinion, provoked suspicion, and exposed himself to the positive charge of falsehood in pursuit of a determinate in to prevent there being available official testimony against Russia at Cracow, and to prevent—a far more essential point—there being an agent from France, which must have followed the appointment of one from England. On none of these occasions did he deny the case or controvert the arguments of his antagonists. It is nothing but a shuffling out when that can avail, and then a stopping of debates and the obtaining the withdrawal of motions, by pledges given over and over again to do what was required. To the unwonted pertinacity of the Parliament he opposed a pertinacity more constitutional, unintelligible alike on the arguments he advanced, the pledges he gave, and the professions he made, and intelligible only by knowing that this arguments were mystification, his pledges snares, and his professions a mask.

And why was it that the House of Commons was thus pertinacious? Was it not that they foresaw precisely the very thing that now has been realized? And why was Lord Palmerston so pertinacious? Either because his foresight was or was not equal to theirs. Will the House of Commons now revert to what it has said and he has answered, and place him in a dilemma of avowing a foresight inferior or superior to its own? Will it make him responsible for the disaster which his negligence, despite their warnings, has brought—or which his forethought, in contradiction to his professions, has prepared?

There is one objection which I can foresee to the allega­tion of guilty knowledge and intentions, and only one— that, not having an agent at Cracow (however criminal the neglect), he might be in ignorance of the facts. There was nothing to learn at Cracow, though by not having an agent there he was enabled to meet the House of Commons, as he has done on every occasion that the subject has been introduced, by declaring that the Government was without official intelligence. This has been the shield held up on each occasion; it has been his only defence. Yet so official was the infraction, and so formal the communication of the fact, that the law officers of the Crown were enabled to decide upon it. The case was submitted to them for the purpose of ascertaining whether it was lawful or not for the English Government to continue to pay to Russia money under the Treaty of Vienna. They decided against the payment of the money, holding England discharged from every obligation towards Russia of whatever kind. Their decision was kept secret, and the money was paid. Ten years afterwards he was to assume that Cracow had not been confiscated, as the grounds of protesting against the confiscation; and therefore, ten years before, he took care to deprive his country of all power of protes­tation, and by establishing the wrong only to sanction it.

Every part tallies with the other from the beginning to the end, and seems rather the march of an epic or the plot of a play, than the events of human history,—

ad imum

Qualis ab incepto processerit.

It is with good reason that this Minister entertains the House of Commons, as he did on a recent occasion, with jeers and scoffs at the opinion of the law officers of the Crown, but that does not prevent him from using and abusing, in every imaginable shape, the appeal to those authorities. He could obtain upon the sulphur monopoly a false opinion by submitting a false case. In the affair of the Vixen he could stop the House of Commons one day by telling them that the matter could not be proceeded with, as it had been referred to the law officers of the Crown, for whose opinion they must wait; and the next day he tells them, or causes them to be told, that again they cannot proceed in the matter, because that opinion had been given —of course of too delicate and confidential a nature to be divulged in such an assembly. I again repeat what I have before stated, that every transaction between nations is strictly legal, and the Foreign Minister has no lawful action therein, save the reporting and the drawing of the case; and those who framed the constitution of England, or of only other State that has had the faculty to become great, never conceived or established a system of Government by which the safeguard of the laws, which have been the requisite for the protection of the pettiest interests, should be wholly set aside for respect to the gravest. But here is a specimen of the manner in which this man, the arbiter of the destinies of Europe, can trifle with all things, turn all things to profit, trample on the most sacred institutions, jeer at the gravest authorities, and change the most settled opinions.

July 8. 1845.

 

I shall now trace the Parliamentary history of the sequestration of Cracow.

In 1831 a Russian force entered the State of Cracow. It was charged with being a focus of disaffection, but nothing was proved. Cracow was made to bear the expense of the occupation, and it was notorious that the Russian agents had been spreading inflammatory publications. The troops were then withdrawn, and Russia denounced to Austria and Prussia the State of Cracow as a focus of insurrection.

In 1832,now strengthened with the concurrence of Austria and Prussia, Cracow was charged by her as being a place of refuge for Polish refugees, and 300 were demanded, who were immediately delivered up by the State of Cracow; nevertheless, there was a joint occupation, by the forces of the three Powers, who then proceeded to change the organic statute of Vienna; they vested in themselves the appointment of the President, reduced the number of Senators, and abolished nine Professorships in the University, one of them being that of Polish literature. This followed the Russian decree of February 26, 1832, for the. incorporation of Poland.

On the 18th of April, 1832, Mr. Cutlar Ferguson introduced the subject in the House of Commons, himself a member of the Administration, several other members of the Administration spoke on the same side, Mr. Labouchere, Dr. Lusington, Colonel Fox, and Mr. Sheil. Their sentiments were echoed by Lord Sandon, Mr. Hume, Sir Charles Forbes, Mr. Ewart, &c. Mr. Hunt said—

 

"He HAD REASON TO BELIEVE THAT IF THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT HAD NOT HELD BACK FRANCE WOULD HAVE AFFORDED ASSISTANCE TO THE POLES WHEN ASSISTANCE COULD HAVE BEEN OF USE.- Here was the first time that Poland came before the House of Commons, it came with a power which showed that the English Minister was master of it, if he chose to act according to his then professions. The motion proceeded from a member of the very Government of which he formed a part. It also placed him in the alternative of denouncing Russia at the head of British opinion, or of displaying himself as defending her against Poland and his country. To the case was linked also a charge of the deepest dye—that of paralysing the dispositions of France to support Poland. How does the Minister appear on this occasion? How does he escape from this dilemma? He absents himself from the House. Had he got a quinsy or the plague? No. He is busy, and cannot come. He has a tame elephant at hand, and rides over the ford on Lord Althorp’s back. That sagacious statesman informed the House “that Government had received no official information, and for that and other reasons he could not at that moment enter into any explanation relating to the views entertained by his Majesty’s Government respecting this most important question”. And so concluded the first act of the Parliamentary drama.

On the 28th of June, 1832, Mr. Cutlar Ferguson again introduced the subject. The debate was far more animated, the determination of the speakers more resolute, the standing of the men more authoritative. Colonel Evans hoped that the country would no longer be satisfied with speaking, but that it would act. Mr. O'Connell vied with Lord Sandon and Mr. Hume in the vehemence of their denunciations. Lord Morpeth said, that “a case was made out for the energetic intervention of England and of Europe”. Lord Fortescue declared, that “if the perfidy of Russia was suffered to go without punishment, there was an end to any security for the peace, of the neighbouring States”. Lord Palmerston, who on this occasion was present, destitute of an ally amongst his own ranks, came provided with a tame elephant from the opposite camp. Having left it to that sagacious statesman, Sir Robert Peel, to bear the first brunt of the onslaught, the Minister of England arose for the first time to utter in the House of Commons, words in, respect to Poland. He told them that “no man could entertain a doubt that Great Britain had a right to express a full and decided opinion of the performance or non-performance of the stipulations contained in the treaty, nevertheless, it could not be denied that England lay under no obligation, individually and independently of the other contracting parties, to adopt measures of direct interference by force”. This is the man who saw no reason why the protest of England and France should be a conjoint one, but every reason for the reverse! The motion was for the production of papers, namely, the Organic Statute of February, 1832, for the incorporation of Poland—“he was fully prepared to accede to that motion”. The result was the formal recognition of the right of Russia to do what she had done. What part was that of the English Minister, if not that of the advocate, the sole advocate of Russia, in the British Parliament, and that of necessity in self defence because of the steps that he had before practically taken to support her, by preventing a joint intervention to support Poland, not “by force”, for there could have been no occa­sion to employ force where all the strength was on one side, and that side the side of justice?

Years now elapse, and he has it all his own way without either the embarrassments of explanation or of silence. On the 1st of March, 1836, Sir Stratford Canning brought before the House new violations of the Treaty of Vienna by the repetition of an illegal occupation of Cracow. Lord Palmerston replied that the English Government “had not received any official accounts of these events. It was probable that Austrian troops might have entered Cracow, and such an act might be a violation of the Treaty of Vienna, but he was prepared to give no opinion upon the subject”.

Sir Stratford Canning, nowise satisfied by these observations, immediately followed up the statement by a more formal motion on the 18th of the same month, when he introduced the matter in a speech of great length and power, but concluded merely by contenting himself for the present with “placing the question in the hands of her Majesty's Government, reserving, for himself the right of putting the motion, should he find it necessary to do so”. Lord Palmerston replied in a speech almost as elaborate, in which he commended highly Sir Stratford Canning for taking up this important matter, declaring that it was perfectly natural that the House of Commons should take Cracow into its most anxious consideration, but stating that the Government had not received any official communication—that he had himself written to our Ministers abroad for information, but had not received any.” “If the three Powers (said he) had determined to do that which was a measure of unnecessary violence, he was inclined to regard the circumstance of their not communicating it as an act of involuntary homage tacitly paid to the justice and plain-dealing of this country”—(observe the words, plain-dealing)—“for the three Powers well knew that if their intention had been communicated, the answer which would have been returned would have had the effect of endeavouring to dissuade them from the measures that they intended to carry into effect”; he “could not but re­gard the selection of Austrian instead of Russian troops for the purposes of the occupation, as a matter of good feeling and kindly discretion on the part of the three Powers”. Cossacks had been selected for this service. He was followed by Members from both sides, who, for the first time, seemed to break away from his control, and to think and to speak in disobedience. Mr. O'Connely spoke of “the three plundering Powers”, and said, “unless these plunderings were arrested they would soon have to hear of the seizure of the Bosphorus and Con­stantinople; but the time was come to do justice, not only to Poland, but to Sweden, and unless it was speedily ac­complished, Europe must be plunged into war. It was time, too, to make inquiries after the Russo-Putch loan”. Then Lord Palmerston brought out his tame elephant; for he always has one ready in a box, and Lord John Russell having stated that “the explanation required by the Right Honourable Gentleman having been given by his Noble Friend, he recommended that the subject should be allowed to drop, as a very important question”, the Municipal Reform Bill “was coming before the House”.

The same month saw a third debate upon the subject, when it was introduced on the 30th of March by Mr. Patrick Stewart, who inquired whether the Polish refugees, who had been seduced into passing out of the district of Cracow, had been delivered up to Russia, and sent to Siberia. At this time the constant reply of the Minister, “No information”, had led to a pretty general feeling of the necessity of having a British consul at Cracow. This had been repeatedly urged in the House, and still more warmly and repeatedly by the friends of the Minister out of doors. He had not resisted the project, and he had sent away the various reasoners, content each successive month that he was prepared to do something of the kind the next. On the present occasion he but dubiously employs the no information shield. He “had received communications from the ambassadors abroad, but he had none from the authorities themselves”. “It was the in­tention (he stated) of the Government, when they first heard of the state of Cracow and of the disposition to expel certain refugees, to send the British Consul at Warsaw to Cracow to obtain, full information; but before the Government could give effect to their intention (this is on the 30th March, 1836, and five years subsequently to the violation of the territory of Cracow) they heard of the actual occupation of the city by the protecting Powers, and it did not appear to him that that was a fit occasion for the Consul at Warsaw to present himself in the town of Cracow”.

The next step is twenty days later. On the 20th April, Mr. Patrick Stewart brings in a motion for an address to his Majesty, praying the appointment of a diplomatic agent at Cracow. This motion was warmly supported, and it was met by Lord Palmerston by the expression of the “entire Friend”, and the motion was withdrawn upon the assurance given by the Minister, that “his Majesty's Government do intend to send a consular agent to Cracow”. There was a majority at Mr. Patrick Stewart's back!

Some months elapse, and nothing is done. Two Members of the House, at different times, are on the point of renewing notices of motions upon the subject, and are successively induced to withdraw them, by the assurance given by Lord Palmerston, that “he was about to send an agent to Cracow”—that “it was a settled thing”—that “he was committed to it”—that “he had pledged his word to it”; and on one of these occasions he used these words :—“They may make difficulties about receiving a Consul; but that will not matter, for in that case I shall send a Minister”. A year, however, elapsing without any fruits, Lord Dudley Stuart, on the 22d of March, 1837, recalling his promise, inquired from him what he intended to do. Lord Palmerston admitted the correctness of the statement, but said that, “having experienced greater difficulties than he had anticipated, he had altered his intention, and had not sent a consular agent to Cracow, and that it was not his intention to do so”. The reason for the change was no reason, but the reason of the change was clear. He was able from the dispositions of the House of Commons to haul in, in 1837, upon the slack he had given them in 1836, of which the proofs will be seen in what follows. Lord Dudley Stuart addressed to the Minister, on the steps of the lobby, these words— “No man can henceforward trust your word”, upon which the Minister laughed. This was no secret at the time. It led to none of those who heard it feeling of indignation or alarm. No one conceived that it was disreputable to have such a man for Minister, or that the condition of the nation might be precarious whose interests were confided to such hands, wholly uncontrolled and unsupervised. Lord Dudley Stuart having been on the former occasion replied to by Lord Palmerston, that “whenever the Noble Lord chose to bring the question before the House, he was sure that he would be able to state reasons to prove that he had exercised a sound discretion in having changed his original intention”, did bring forward on the 25th of May the case of Cracow, not merely upon its own grounds, “but as affecting the character of the Noble Lord the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs”. Lord Palmerston did not redeem his pledge; he did not show valid reasons to the House for the change of his original intention he did not offer any reason at all; He was absent. He had no friend to reply for him; no colleague was put forward to “tell lies” for him; and the case went by default in favour of the party who did not appear. The House was counted out! And be it remarked that this is the invariable and sole defence of Lord Palmerston when charged —he stays away or he does not answer. Not indeed that he has yet had one to charge him face to face.

On the 13th July, 1840, the first diplomatic man in England, a speech of research, gravity, and dignity, brought before Parliament the violation of the public law, the violation of England’s rights, by the three Powers at Cracow. The answer of Lord Palmerston was as follows —“He said at the time, and he still said, that the occupation of Cracow was against the principles of the treaty of Vienna”. He had never said anything of the kind, he had never, on any occasion, admitted any of the facts. He had never denied them, it is true, and he had been equally careful to avoid admitting them. To deny them would have exposed him to the detection of his purpose; to admit them must have entailed change of his conduct; and now the false assertion that he had admitted them explains the reason why he had avoided either to admit or to deny. He had always said that if the facts alleged were true, they would amount to violations, not of the principles of the treaty, but of the treaty itself. He was now about to accept the facts, and, therefore, he throws out the screen between the treaty of Vienna and its principles. How should the House of Commons be able to deal with such a master of ambiguous speech! “But”, he continues, “it was one thing to state an opinion and another thing to compel three Powers to undo acts which they had done, while, from geographical circumstances, there were no means to enforce the opinion of England, unless by an appeal to arms, which would involve us in a war with those Powers, as Cracow was a place in which no English action could directly take place”.

He now admits the facts which before he had invariably evaded—now he admits the wrong done to England—now he admits that submission to that wrong has only been in consequence of physical weakness. He holds them to be aggressors, and dangerous ones, since they are aggressors only by their might, and might resulting from numbers and position. How is this compatible with his former reasonings against the probability of their having done or their doing such things? How was this compatible with his denial of aid to Poland, when there were means of reaching Cracow? How is this compatible with his paralysing the dispositions of France to do so? And how, above all, is the one or the other compatible with his signature but two clays thereafter of a treaty with those very three Powers—who had thus settled the affairs of Cracow—for the settlement of the affairs of Constantinople?—a treaty that was at once to separate England and France, and to dismember the Ottoman empire in Egypt —a treaty that was signed against France, because he had not found her as yet as docile in the affairs of Constantino­ple as she had been in those of Cracow—a treaty that was to lead to a new series of convulsions for the East, of dissensions and convulsions for Europe—a treaty that was to unite England in a bond with those who had violated all existing treaties by purposes of aggression and dismemberment!

A Minister declares that his country is without power of doing itself right or justice! What would be the meaning of such words in the mouth of a Minister of Sardinia, or of Naples?—but what are they in that of the Minister of England? And, if you are powerless to do yourselves justice, is that a reason for leaguing with robbers? And, if you are weak in yourselves, is that a reason for estranging from you a powerful neighbour and a willing ally, and for putting yourselves on the side of the robber to attack the ally?

Proof! What proof is requisite? There is the deed. What matters the purpose of the felon, or the motive of the murderer? The deed alone concerns us. No struggle is needed to attain to conviction, but the mind staggers under the idea of the crime. The evidence fails by proving not too little, but too much—guilt more or less than human in one man, sufferance more or less than human in the rest!

However, these transactions have been practicable only by dexterity, and Parliament has been cheated out of its supervision by management. There have been moments when a little more urgency to press, or a little more pertinacity to pursue, would, even with such a House of Commons, have sufficed to arrest these crimes and avert these evils. During the whole of these events there was no speech made at the House to the point; there was no man who saw that crimes had been committed, and that it was in the laws of England that the remedy was to be found; there was no man to denounce a guilty Minister as a traitor; there was no man to treat as guilty of falsehood in his individual capacity him who had been guilty of it in his public one. Had there been one such man there might have been twenty, and then the due privileges of Parliament would have been exerted, the prerogatives of the Crown would have been preserved, the usurping power of a Cabinet, or of a Minister over a Cabinet, would have been rendered impossible—Poland would not have fallen, the public law of Europe would not have been violated, France and England would not have been severed, and Europe would have continued in that repose and the East in that tranquility in which, despite even the lament­able proceedings for the emancipation of Greece, both were found on that unhappy day when Lord Palmerston entered the British Cabinet as Secretary at War, and on that still more, ill-fated day when he took possession of the Foreign Office as British Minister.

Now, what shall we say to the Montpensier marriage Now is it clear or not who made the quarrel and for what purpose? Now is it doubtful whether or not Lord Pal­merston was taken by surprise by the confiscation of Cracow, and if it was merely by accident that the Times upon that occasion announced that it was France that was “ready to surrender everything, from Cracow to Constatinople?” Now is it clear which of the two was the artful politician, Princess Lieven, who brought him into the Cabinet of 1830, or Louis Philippe, who brought him into the Cabinet of 1846? Who now will dispute the wisdom of the dying words of warning of Mr. Canning, or doubt the fulfillment of the prophecy of M. Talleyrand, that he would one day plunge Europe in blood and lay her in ashes?

But, after all what has happened at Cracow? What took place at Cracow in November? Absolutely nothing; no Austrian regiment, no Cossack company, no Bashkir Pulk had entered the walls or territory of that free and independent State, no change had taken place in the University or the Senate; no new infraction of the treaty of Vienna, by open violence, or by superior power; nothing was changed of that which had existed for months, and which might have continued to exist for months and years to come. The confiscation was a gratuitous step, and was an aggressive measure, bold and far-reaching, but only taken in the confidence that the game was safe and the moment entirely propitious.

But this blow to England and France is made to be delivered, not by the three Powers, but by Austria, and, consequently, the equivoque called “protest” is directed against Austria, and then she has to reply to it in such a manner as to bring down upon herself the full hatred of the Poles, and prepare thereby to render her incapable of affording any subsequent resistance when Russia shall claim her own yet unexpressed equivalent, in the full incorporation of Poland and in the substitution of the Greek for the Catholic faith. Thus is Austria interposed between Russia and the protest of England and France, exactly as Turkey was in 1833; for it would be superfluous to speak of Austria otherwise than of Turkey, as one who is no longer a free agent, but constrained; and no longer a free agent solely by the collusive support giver, in secret to Russia by the Minister of England.

We are told, however, that we protest. We attack Austria by our protest; and in favour of what rights is if that we protest? Of these secured by the Treaty of Vienna! Napoleon has recorded his judgment of that treaty as one so humiliating to England, that had he been triumphant he could not have expected to have imposed upon her severer terms. France by that treaty was stripped of all her acquisitions, bound to a penalty and encircled with a chain of forts. Austria by that treaty was dismembered, and lost her German station and prerogatives. Saxony by that treaty was partitioned, so was Sweden, so was Den­mark. By that treaty Italy and the small States of Germany were prostrated. Who gained by this collective loss of Europe? Russia and Russia's satellite, Prussia. This is the treaty in favour of which you have to protest, and to protest in vain. You are obliged to abandon it. Abandon it to regain what you have given up? No, but to surrender it also into the hands of those for whose special gain this aggregate loss of Europe was entailed!

And you fancy the treaty of Vienna is abrogated. That treaty stands; but the rights that you secured thereby are gone, and the bond of equality which united you to others to perform certain things has become, by their violence and your submission, a chain. It is not that the things that you had a right to are not done, but it is that your independent position is now sacrificed and the parties that were your equals have become, by their own misdeeds, your superiors. The relations of the parties have passed from that of equality to that of a supremacy and subordination. Their act presented the necessity of dissolving the bond. But your act is required to dissolve it. That, however, is a legal matter which you do not comprehend.

An individual has it in his power to confer a favour at his own cost; he may even, without dishonour, yield a right; he may be cheated and yet be innocent. Not so an agent. It does not belong to him to be generous any more than to be grasping. He is relieved from the temptations of personal gain, and he is also restricted from the indulgence of personal charities. Nations act not by themselves, but through agents, and for those agents the rule of conduct is laid down, and has to be observed with an exactness and a solemnity commensurate with the transcendant greatness of the concerns with which they deal. It is not merely the obligations of their own vicarious office that they have to fulfil, but the futurity of their people that they have to regard. If a Government is negligent of a right, if it allows the opposite party to find justification in its remissness or in its acts, not only is it culpable in the highest degree that men can incur culpability, but does it become ipso facto the enemy of its nation and the ally of any foreign Power that does it wrong. Possessed, as such a Government is, of the means of acting for the nation, and of giving the tone to its opinions, it becomes an enemy of the direst kind; ruining its affairs, perverting its judgment, and extinguishing the hope of future restoration by the perversion at once of right and of history in their very sources. Whether this state is armed at by indifference, or by purpose—by criminal ignorance, or by guilty know­ledge, it matters not.

If, in the play of faction, a well-intended and upright man enters by chance the Foreign Office, our case is not improved; for he either knows or does not know that he is no match for his antagonist, and is, therefore, in both cases, equally the enemy of that only knowledge that can rescue us, namely, of our own ignorance and inferiority. You place an accountant to check an account, a fencer to oppose a fencer, a Greek to meet a Greek. Why not, then, a diplomatist to meet a diplomatist?—or, in a word, an Englishman to meet a Russian? For is it to be endured, that the word Russian shall alone be associated with intelligence, and Englishman ever linked to stupidity?

If it were only with France or Germany, or some other of the Gothic States, that we had to deal, there being equality of mind, this danger would not exist; for whatever the incompetence on one side it would be balanced upon the other. But it is a different thing when we have to do with a Power which is different from us, even in race—the mass of whose people looks upon us as a common prey—which feels the certainty of the subsequent mastery of us, through, not physical, but spiritual weapons—which, cunning and astute as the savage, appropriates all the elements of civilized warfare and corruption—which selects its instruments from every race and from every region, because of their appropriate qualifications—which has formed a system and acts upon it, in all times and in every region, and brings upon each spot to bear the results of its success acquired elsewhere—which finds equal facilities, or nearly so, at Berlin, at Vienna, at Munich, at Paris, at Washington, at Tangier, and Katmandu, as in Downing Street. How is it possible that, coming to interfere throughout the whole world, in common with this Government, ours should not be overreached: being over­reached, that it should not become that Power’s ally and its nation’s enemy: that that enmity should not be brought to bear throughout the wide field of action of both—wherever, in fact, England has anything to maintain and Russia to assail, and that is wherever heat or cold has left the earth habitable for man?

The Treaty of Vienna was the greatest triumph of Russia in 1815. It was then the furthest limit to which she attained; she has now placed it behind her, and she presses on. The Treaty of Vienna was the barrier which you had raised in your defence; it is broken through; scattered and discomfited, we retreat beyond; and it is your hands alone that have broken down your defence. All that has been done its your work; nothing has been done that you have not accomplished her daring, indeed, but your labour.

Sometimes safety comes from despair, but there must be despair for such hope. Here we are without the direction of counsel or the remedy of desperation. But surely there are grounds for despair. See and judge yourselves. What hellebore has yet been found for such madness—what morning has broken on such a night? Would that you could despair; then, indeed, might we hope. Russia’s ambition would have passed away as an uneasy dream, had she for a moment triumphed over your indifference.

Whilst the results would appear to show with what ease the Parliament of England had been managed, the steps that have been taken suffice to evince the prudence, wisdom, and necessity of that management. The same case at present occurs. Supposing that the Parliament had been sitting, or that it had been re-assembled at the moment of the announcement of the confiscation of Cracow—what would have been the position of the Minister? How would he—scarcely able to hold his own in the Cabinet, have stood in face of an excitement breaking down habitual restraints, and, above all, without his hitherto never-failing Aegis and protection, Sir Robert Peel? With such men as compose the House of Commons, I do not mean to say that any intelligible or useful course could be adopted; but I do say, with the most perfect conviction and certainty, that Lord Palmerston would have been expelled from power. The menace of Sir R. Peel would have been realized, when, stung for a moment by the “Noble Lord”, he said, in 1842, “Beware!”--and again, “I will quit the Honse!” —when he confessed that he alone stood in the House of Commons, though leader of the Opposition, that “Noble Lord’s” shield and bulwark.

Therefore was it to be considered, in the time selected for the publication of the confiscation of Cracow, what time the House of Commons would be sitting; and further, was it an object to obtain, that the House of Commons should not be re-assembled until the excitement of the moment had passed away. This has not been accomplished without a struggle. It has transpired that there has been a difference in the Cabinet upon this point, and that Lord Palmerston alone, or if not entirely, nearly alone, has succeeded in overruling his colleagues and postponing the meeting of Parliament.

There is a singular connection between the periods of the House of Commons and the dates of diplomatic, events. In July treaties are signed. The explosion comes in the partridge and grouse seasons, from August to November. The Triple Alliance was the 6th July, Unkiar Skelessi was the 8th July, the treaty for closing the Dardanelles the 13th July, for the dismemberment of Turkey and Egypt (called the Pacification of the East) the 15th July, the Quadruple Treaty for Spain, July 27, the collective note of 1839 to interfere in the affairs of the East the 17th July, and the ominous silence that broke, the compact for the Montpensier marriage extended over the same month.

And for this there is good reason. All these measures were adopted without the prior knowledge of Parliament; they were all in opposition to the recorded judgments of the statesmen of every party in this country on the subject of intervention. They every one of them exposed to the danger of the block the head of the Minister who signed them. The Minister did not want any support from opinion in England. He had a disciplined army and navy ready to do his work, and his strength consisted in the nation knowing nothing and caring nothing about what was done, since its power of action was already in his hands. All he had to care about was, that when intelligence reached them from abroad regarding what he had done (for by no other means could they obtain it), the Parliament should not be sitting, and that it should, if possible, be occupied otherwise, and in a manner more agreeable to itself. And therefore were the treaties signed just at the close of one session, which left his hands free until the next, and coming at the close of the one session in the midst of the labours and fatigues of that period, nobody would stop to inquire; it has become an old story before the legislators reassemble; then, whatever they may think, it’s too late, the honour of England has to be supported. No man, besides, could then dare to speak upon the subject without wading through the oceans of Blue Books that have come out in the meantime. They are overwhelmed in a heap of subsequent correspondence and details. The discussion has been worked out inconclusively in the press, and there is on the one hand curiosity extinguished, and on the other a mass of information which no one can master, and which, being mastered, would lead them to nothing. Then the documents are laid on the table in silence, and having already found reasons for everything they did not know, they are now made responsible for everything that has been done.

Lord Palmerston having succeeded on staling off the meeting of Parliament, when it meets, the Spanish marriages and the confiscation of Cracow will be old stories. Are they not so already? Have they not given place to malt, and are they not finally merged in the Christmas pantomime?

Thus it is by system that Parliament has been weaned from its duties and left unconscious of its power. It has been dealt with as the decrepit Merovingian race by the Maires du Palais. Liberty they have indeed of forest and fell, freedom to use the cross-bow and the spear, but Legiones and Fasces are not for them. In all respects, however, the parallel does not hold. It is not a case of usurpation— it is not a convulsion within accompanied by a strengthening abroad—it is not the revival of an effete dynasty or nation—there is neither the hammer of a Charles, nor the sword of a Pepin; but it is the vile ignoble treachery of the sentry that gives up his post, or that leads the enemy into the citadel by a sewer. It is the surrender up of a state in the midst of its strength and confidence by one who could not dare in his own person to injure the meanest subject—delivered up not to peace­ful subjection to an overpowering foe, but to be used for destroying a neighbour possessed of physical means as terrible as its own; but, alas! no better furnished with the qualities of head or heart requisite to perceive or avert danger.

 

I remain, Sir. &e.