The India Bill was introduced by Sir C. Wood on the 3rd of June, 1853. The complaints against the system under which India was ruled were that it led to wars, deficits, maladministration of justice, neglect of public works and of education. The Dual Government of the Imperial Board of Control and the Court of Directors of the East India Company was maintained, but the Court of Directors was reduced from thirty members to eighteen, twelve of whom were to be chosen by the Company, and six nominated by the Crown, who were to be Indian officials of ten years’ service. The new system, which was to prevail till Parliament chose to change it, put an end to the old plan of leasing the Indian Empire for a term of years to a Company of merchant adventurers. As to patronage, competition was substituted for nomination as the mode of entering the public service. Direct appointments to the Indian Army were, however, left in the hands of the Directors of the Company. The scheme was warmly discussed, the friends of the Company insisting on immediate legislation; its enemies, thinking that in time they might be able to educate the country up to the point of abolishing the authority of the Directors, and transferring the government of India absolutely to the Crown,[92] pressed for delay. Mr. Disraeli and the bulk of the Tories were for postponing legislation, but in the end the Government carried the Bill.
Lord John Russell, on the 4th of April, explained his scheme for establishing a system of national education. The main point in it was that it empowered Municipal Authorities to raise a rate in aid of voluntary schools, the rate to be applied to pay twopence in the week for each scholar, provided fourpence or fivepence were contributed from other sources. The scheme was, however, abandoned. Lord John had in his speech foreshadowed the introduction of a Bill imposing drastic reforms on the Universities, and this roused the Tory Party to obstruct his proposals. It is but fair to draw attention to this Bill, because Lord John Russell is entitled to the credit of having been the first statesman to present a comprehensive scheme for organising primary education, based on the principle that it is the duty of the community to provide for the instruction of the people by levying an education rate. This, said Mr. W. J. Fox, was “a most important step in the progress of public instruction.”
A Bill empowering the Local Governments in Canada to deal with Clergy Reserves was introduced by Mr. F. Peel on the 15th of February. It is notable because the debates on it illustrate the difference between the ideas of the two parties in the State as to Colonial Government—the Tories in those days being on the whole opposed to granting the Colonies privileges of self-government, whilst the Liberals favoured such grants. In 1791 it was enacted that whenever the Crown disposed of waste lands in Canada, one-seventh of their value should be reserved for the support of the Protestant clergy. The funds, it seems, had not been fairly distributed, the Established Churches of England and Scotland having received the largest share of them. In 1840 the Imperial Legislature had confirmed this appropriation by restraining the Canadian Legislatures from meddling with these funds. The Bill of the Government simply gave the Canadian Legislature the right of dealing with them as it thought fit, on the ground that the disposal of lands which derived their value from Canadian capital and Canadian enterprise was a matter of Colonial rather than of Imperial concern. The Bill was passed.
On the 11th of July a Bill for altering the punishment of transportation was introduced into the House of Lords by the Lord Chancellor. Only one Colony—Western Australia—was willing to receive convicts, and not more than 800 to 1,000 a year could be sent there. The Government proposed, therefore, to limit transportation to such cases of crime as would carry a sentence of fourteen years’ imprisonment, and substitute shorter periods of imprisonment for offences, which up till now had been punished by varying periods of transportation.
This proposal, which was carried, was forced on the State by the great changes which had been effected in the Australian Colonies after the discovery of gold in New South Wales. Here it may be well to notice the manner in which these gold discoveries were made, and their effect on the prosperity of the Empire.
It was on the 10th of September, 1852, that the West India mail steamer brought news to England which revived the old yearning for the discovery of the fabled El Dorado—dormant in the English breast since the days of Raleigh. Gold, it was reported, had been found near Bathurst, in New South Wales, where a frantic rush to the diggings had taken place. The merchant left his warehouse, the shopman his counter, even the lawyers deserted their clients—all eager to join in the headlong race to the mines. But all the gold they were likely to win could not possibly balance the loss caused to the Colony at the time by the mad stampede of the shepherds, who abandoned their countless flocks for the mines. The gold fever was further exacerbated by the subsequent discovery of another rich deposit in Victoria. America had found her El Dorado in California; Englishmen accordingly heard with pride that they, too, had come into a richer heritage in the hitherto despised convict settlements of Australasia. On the 23rd of November, 1852, three vessels from Australia sailed into the Thames with a cargo of seven tons of solid gold. The Eagle brought 160,000 ounces, worth £600,000, and she had made the passage from Melbourne to the Downs in seventy-six days; the Sapphire and Pelham, from Sydney, brought 14,668 ounces and 27,762 ounces respectively; the Maitland, from Sydney, followed with 14,326 ounces; the Australia, the first steamer that arrived from these Colonies, next came in with a still larger quantity; and in December the Dido appeared with a cargo of gold-dust valued at £400,000.
Politically the Protectionists tried to turn these discoveries to some account. They had predicted that Free Trade would ruin the country. On the contrary, £6,000,000 of taxation had been remitted since 1846, and yet there was no shrinkage of revenue. Exports had risen from £58,000,000 to £78,000,000, the shipping trade was brisker than ever, and on the 1st of January, 1853, there were not quite 800,000 paupers in the country.[93] Even the landed interest could not pretend to have been ruined, seeing that the Income Tax assessment under Schedule B, which is levied on rents of agricultural land, had risen from £46,328,811 in 1845 to £46,681,488 in 1852. This tide of prosperity under Free Trade seemed certain to flow rather than to ebb, so that the Tories were taunted with the utter failure of their dismal Protectionist prophecies. It need hardly be said that the Queen, who, as a strong Free Trader, had watched with deep anxiety the result of the great revolution in fiscal policy which she had helped Peel to initiate, was intensely gratified, not to say relieved in mind, when the figures illustrating the commercial condition of her realm were brought under her notice. The Protectionists, however, had an answer to these facts. It was, they averred, the unexpected discovery of gold in Australia that had saved the country from the ruin which they predicted must come from Free Trade. It may be pointed out that the figures we have given for the purpose of showing how the trade of the country stood after 1846, cover the period before, and not the period after, gold was imported from Australia—a circumstance which the Queen and Prince Albert were quick to note and appreciate. The Tory Protectionists, in fact, completely misunderstood the effect which would be produced by any sudden increase in the supply of gold. That effect was two-fold: (1) on the mother country, and (2) on the Australian Colonies.
There is very little mystery about the effect of an increase in the production of gold. The more we put into the market the less valuable will it become. If we double the quantity of gold in circulation, it follows that an article which could be bought for a sovereign will not be sold for less than two sovereigns. The price of the article is thus said to rise, whereas the value, or, properly speaking, the purchasing power of the gold, for which it is exchanged, is said to fall. An increase in the stock of gold ought, therefore, to lead to a rise in prices, and to a fall or depreciation in the value of the metal. In 1853 some foolish persons therefore predicted that gold would soon be as cheap as silver; and yet, though the supply was trebled, gold was not trebly depreciated in value. “Undoubtedly some effect,” says Mr. Walpole, “was consequently made on prices; but the effect was probably only slowly and gradually felt. Gold was absorbed in vast and unprecedented quantities in the arts, and the supply which was actually available for barter was not immediately augmented to the same degree.”[94] It is difficult to understand how so able a writer has been led into an error which must vitiate every deduction drawn from the effect of the Australian gold discoveries on the prosperity of the English people, in the Victorian period. Nobody has ever been able to estimate even approximately the amount of gold that is absorbed in the arts. All that we know is that the amount is so small, that it could not affect such an enormous increase in the supply as that which came from Australia.[95] Besides, as gold did not fall much in value, it was not likely that it would be much absorbed in the arts. But, then, what became of all the gold that was so suddenly poured into England from Australia? Some of it was absorbed in coinage,[96] but not enough to account for the absorption of the vast quantity that remained. The key to the puzzle is, in truth, to be found in the statistics of commerce which we have already cited.
THE CONVEYING OF AUSTRALIAN GOLD FROM THE EAST INDIA DOCKS TO THE BANK OF ENGLAND.
(After the Engraving in the “Illustrated London News.”)
The value of gold was kept up in spite of the sudden increase in the supply, because, under Free Trade, the commerce of the country began to expand by leaps and bounds. The Australian supplies, in fact, were absorbed in trade, for it is obvious that the sudden expansion of business which followed from Free Trade must have caused a corresponding demand for money, not only to conduct the operations of barter, but to pay the wages of the additional workers who produced the articles sold for money. When this fact is grasped, it is easy to understand what the Australian gold discoveries did for England. Had no new supplies of gold been found in 1853, Free Trade would have brought serious disasters in its wake, but not precisely in the form predicted by the Tories. The sudden expansion of trade would have caused a sudden demand for gold; the value of gold must have risen. Supposing gold had thus doubled in value, then the prices of commodities would have been halved, that is to say, one hundred oxen would have sold only for as many sovereigns as fifty sold for before the value of gold was thus increased. Everybody who had to make a fixed money payment, such as rent or interest, would have had their payment doubled, for they would have had to produce twice as much to meet their obligations as originally sufficed for that purpose. The burden of the National Debt, for example, would have been doubled, for, to pay every pound’s worth of interest to the fundholder, the public would have had to realise what represented two pounds’ worth of wealth when the interest was first fixed. In fact, the only people who would have gained, would have been the few who had to receive fixed payments, at the expense of the many who had to make them. The discovery of gold at a time when a liberated and expanding trade was causing an increased demand for the metal was thus a providential coincidence. By preventing the demand from outrunning the supply, it prevented a sudden increase in the value of the metal, which must have reduced prices and upset all the monetary arrangements of the country.
What was the effect of the discovery of gold on the Australian Colonies? Very much the same as the discovery of rich deposits of any other saleable ore, excepting in this respect, that gold is the one metal that commands an immediate sale, at a high and very slightly varying price. Land, Labour, and Capital are the three great requisites of production. Of these Australia, prior to 1853, had only the first in abundance. The gold mines attracted a rush of emigrants to Australia. But gold mining is a lottery in which the prizes fall to the few. The average earnings of the digger were soon found to be lower than the wages paid in other employments. Hence crowds of men who had been attracted to the mines soon left them, and were ready to follow other pursuits, so that the gold rush gave Australia the second element in production—labour. But the gold which was won, and the demands of the mining population, soon stimulated industry and increased wealth in the Colonies—in other words, the gold rush brought to Australia the third requisite of production—capital.
The Australian gold discoveries, therefore, transformed an insignificant penal settlement into a rich and queenly Commonwealth, and saved England from the gold famine, with its disastrous fall in prices, which a sudden expansion of trade must inevitably have produced after Protective duties were abolished. There were, however, two shadows on the picture. The gold rush to Australia depleted the labour market at home. The demands of the Australian Colonies for British goods, after gold had been discovered, were enormous. A sudden diminution in the supply of labour, combined with a corresponding increase in the demand for the goods which Labour produces, naturally led to a demand in England for increased wages. Strikes broke out all over the country. Labour was scarce and business brisk, and though the conflict was, except in rare cases, unaccompanied by violence, it may be said that generally speaking victory lay rather with the workers than with their masters. Wages were forced up, which was perhaps fortunate, because, as the year wore on, it soon became apparent that a bad harvest in England, France, and Germany would seriously increase the price of food.[97] The enormous impetus given to industry, and the rise in wages which followed, enabled skilled labour to bear this increase in the price of bread. The unskilled labourers, however, who from lack of organisation cannot “strike” with much effect, suffered acutely, especially towards the end of the year. But by that time a calamity was within measurable distance, which diverted the minds of the English people from dear bread and bad harvests. That calamity was the Crimean war, which rendered 1853 the last year of “The Great Peace” which followed the battle of Waterloo.
CHAPTER XXIX.
DRIFTING TO WAR.
Origin of the Crimean War—Russia and “the Sick Man”—Coercing Turkey—The Dispute about the Holy Places—A Monkish Quarrel—Contradictory Concessions—The Czar and the Tory Ministry of 1844—The Secret Compact with Peel, Wellington, and Aberdeen—Nesselrode’s Secret Memorandum—The Czar and Sir Hamilton Seymour—Lord John Russell’s Admissions—The Czar’s Bewilderment—Lord Stratford de Redcliffe—The Marplot at Constantinople—A Hectoring Russian Envoy—The Allied Fleets at Besika Bay—The Conference of Vienna—The Vienna Note—The Turkish Modifications—The Case for England—The British Fleet in the Euxine—A Caustic Letter of the Queen to Lord Aberdeen—Prince Albert’s Warnings—The Massacre of Sinope—Internal Feuds in the Cabinet—Lord John Russell’s Intrigues—Palmerston’s Resignation and Return—The Fire at Windsor—Birth of Prince Leopold—The Camp at Chobham—The Czar’s Daughters—Naval Review at Spithead—Royal Visit to Ireland.
When Parliament was prorogued on the 20th of August, 1853, the following passage was inserted in the Queen’s Speech. “It is with deep interest and concern that her Majesty has viewed the serious misunderstanding which has recently risen between Russia and the Ottoman Porte. The Emperor of the French has united with her Majesty in earnest endeavours to reconcile differences, the continuance of which might involve Europe in war.” The war to which these differences led has ever been regarded by the Queen as the one heart-breaking calamity of her reign—a calamity hardly equalled by the great Mutiny, which, though it nearly wrecked her Eastern Empire, ended in establishing her authority more firmly than ever in her Asiatic dominions. No such tangible result as that followed, however, from the war into which the country was now being rapidly hurried. The results of this war—the battles, the siege operations, “the moving accidents by flood and field”—are all well known; but its causes are to this day very imperfectly understood by Englishmen. The folly and weakness of the Aberdeen Ministry, the influence of Prince Albert, the aggressive designs of Russia, the obstinacy and brutality of the Turks, the determination of Napoleon III. to foment a disturbance from which he might emerge with the status of a Ruler who had linked the throne of a parvenu in an alliance with an ancient monarchy, the factious desire of the Tory Opposition to entangle the Coalition Ministry in Foreign troubles—to all these causes have different writers traced the Crimean war. Let us, then, examine carefully, and closely, the development of the dispute that broke the peace of Europe in connection with the attitude to it—sometimes, it must be frankly said, a wrong attitude—which the Queen and the Court of St. James’s held.
The geographical conditions of Russia, and the political state of Turkey, favoured the outbreak of war between these States. Russia has no outlet to the sea except through the Baltic in the north, which is frozen in winter, and through the Bosphorus in the south, which is open all the year, but which is dominated by the Sultan so long as Constantinople is the capital of Turkey. Russia has, therefore, an obvious interest either in making Turkey her vassal, or in expelling the Turks from Europe, and establishing a Power at Constantinople in servitude to the Czar. It is almost a heresy to say that Russia has not aimed at seizing Constantinople herself. Yet if we are to base our judgment on authentic historical documents, and not on the heated imaginings of excited Russophobists, it is necessary to say this. The Emperor Nicholas was the most aggressive of modern Czars, and there is no reason to doubt the cynical candour with which he expressed his views on this subject to Sir George Hamilton Seymour, in his conversations with him early in the year.[98]
Yet it is certain that his ideas as to the reconstitution of European Turkey in the event of the Turkish Empire breaking up, took the form of organising a series of autonomous States, which, like the Danubian Principalities in 1853, should be under his protection, though, perhaps, under the nominal suzerainty of the Turks—by that time banished to Asia Minor—“bag and baggage.” These ideas may have been right or wrong. It is, however, just to say that they were the ideas of the Czar, and that they do not correspond with the scheme for making Constantinople the capital of Russia, which most popular English writers accuse him of cherishing.[99] The interest of Russia being thus revealed, let us see where her opportunity lay. It lay in the fact that the Ottomans, though they had enough bodily strength to conquer, had never enough brain-power to govern a European Empire. In this respect they differed signally from the equally savage hordes of Manchu Tartars, who overran China, and who, instead of destroying, adapted themselves to the civilisation with which they came in contact. The Christian provinces of Turkey, and the Greek Christians, under the rule of the Sultan were misgoverned, plundered, and at times tortured by the myrmidons of a barbarous and feeble autocracy. The Russian Czar, as head of a nation fanatically devoted to the Greek cult, could always find in this misgovernment and oppression apt opportunity for interfering between the Sultan and his Greek subjects. Moreover, in every act of interference the Czar of Muscovy knows that he will be supported to the death by the fervid fanaticism of the Russian people.
But the example of other Powers was not wanting in 1853 to emphasise the promptings of interest and opportunity. In 1852 the Turks determined to strike a blow at Montenegro, with which they had for centuries waged chronic warfare. The Sublime Porte sent Omar Pasha to occupy the Principality of the Black Mountain. Austria, alarmed at the prospect, despatched Count Leiningen to Constantinople, and instructed him to press for the recall of Omar. The Porte yielded to this demand, and recalled him.[100]
Nor was Austria the only Power that was demonstrating the ease with which Turkey might be coerced. France had a dispute pending with Turkey, as to the privileges of the Roman Catholic monks in Jerusalem—a dispute into which the French Emperor, when Prince-President in 1850, had entered with vigour, for the purpose of conciliating the French clergy. Mr. Kinglake insinuates that Napoleon III. manufactured this quarrel in order to force on a European war that might strengthen his position. It is but fair to say that the Emperor inherited the controversy from Louis Philippe.[101] As it led to the assertion of claims on the part of Russia, the rejection of which by Turkey caused the Crimean war, it may be well briefly to set forth its salient points.
In 1740 the Porte, in a treaty with France, granted to the Roman Catholic monks and clergy in Jerusalem the custody of certain places in the Holy Land, associated with the memory of Christ, and to which Greek and Latin Christians were in the habit of making pilgrimages. The Great Church of Bethlehem, the Sanctuary of the Nativity, the Tomb of the Virgin, the Stone of Anointing, and the Seven Arches of the Virgin in the tomb of the Holy Sepulchre, were among the Sacred Places thus ceded.[102] During the Revolution, French zeal for maintaining the privileges of the Romish clergy in Syria grew cool, and the Holy Places in the custody of the Latin monks were shockingly neglected. The Greek Christians, however, not only visited these consecrated spots as pilgrims, but piously repaired them with the sanction of the Porte, thus acquiring by firmans from the Sultan the privilege of worshipping in them. The policy of the Porte seems to have been to induce Latins and Greeks to share the use of the sacred shrines. But Latins and Greeks, under the protection of France and Russia respectively, each claimed an exclusive right of control and guardianship over them. The dispute had been carried on in a desultory way till, in 1850, it was narrowed down to this point: France, on behalf of the Latin monks, contended that, in order to pass into the grotto of the Holy Manger, they should have exclusive possession of the key of the Church of Bethlehem, and of one of the keys—the other being in Greek custody—of each of the two doors of the Holy Manger; further, that the Sanctuary of the Nativity itself should be ornamented with a silver star, and the arms of France. In February, 1853, the Porte adjudicated on the rival claims in a letter addressed to the French Chargé d’Affaires, and in a firman to the Greek patriarch. The representative of France was told that the Latins were to have the keys they demanded. The Patriarch was told that Greeks, Armenians, and Latins should have keys also, and that the Latins were not to have any of the exclusive rights over the Holy Places that they claimed. When it became known that the Porte had thus spoken with “two voices,” France complained that the exclusive rights demanded by her under the Treaty of 1740 were denied in the firman. Russia, on behalf of the Greeks, claimed credit for moderation in accepting the firman as a compromise, and insisted on its being publicly proclaimed at Jerusalem as a charter of Greek privileges. The Porte, in deference to the opposition of France, refused to make public proclamation of the firman.[103] The Russian Consul-General left Jerusalem in high dudgeon. “The Latins,” says Mr. Walpole, “on hearing the decision of the Porte, that they should be allowed to celebrate mass once a year in the Church of the Virgin, near Gethsemane, but that they should not be allowed to disturb the altar and its ornaments, declared that it was impossible to celebrate mass on a schismatic slab of marble, and before a crucifix whose feet were separated.”[104] In this quarrel of a few ignorant monks over the mummeries of their rival rituals lay the germ of that great war in which England sacrificed the lives of 28,000 brave men, and spent £30,000,000 of sterling treasure!
The Porte endeavoured, by contradictory concessions, such as by publicly reading the firman, and by permitting the Latins to put a star over the altar of the Nativity, to please both parties—but in vain. Russia, towards the end of 1852, had moved a corps d’armée on the frontier of Moldavia. France threatened to send her fleet to Syria; and in the end of February, 1853, the Czar sent Prince Menschikoff on a special mission to Constantinople, for the purpose of enforcing the Russian demands.
The turn in affairs that placed Lord Aberdeen at the head of the Queen’s Government did not tend to moderate these demands, or induce the Czar to treat the Porte with any delicacy. The Czar, in fact, was honestly convinced that his views as to the future of Turkey were, in the main, shared by Lord Aberdeen, and therefore by the British Cabinet. It was
well known that when the Czar visited England, in 1844, he had discussed the Eastern Question with the Queen and her principal advisers, and that he and Lord Aberdeen had become personal friends. His Majesty had propounded to Peel and Aberdeen his fixed idea that it would be well, in view of the impending dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, that England and Russia should agree as to the disposal of its European provinces. As Austria would follow Russia, an Anglo-Russian coalition would necessarily dictate terms to France, who, by her support of Mehemet Ali, had shown that her interests were as hostile to those of England in Egypt, as they were to those of Russia in Syria. In fact, the Czar’s conversations with the Tory Ministers in 1844 were almost identical with those which he subsequently held with Sir Hamilton Seymour in 1853. Sir Theodore Martin asserts that Peel rejected these overtures, saying that England did not regard the dissolution of Turkey as imminent, that she wanted no Turkish territory for herself, that she merely desired to prevent any government in Egypt from closing the road to India, and that she must decline to pledge herself to accept Russian plans for disposing of the Turkish territory, till events rendered its disposal a pressing question.[105] Sir Theodore Martin, however, admits that there was “a general concurrence in the principle expressed” by the Czar, that no Great Power—least of all France—should be permitted to aggrandise itself at the expense of Turkey. Now, it seems certain that up to the very moment when war was declared, the Emperor Nicholas was convinced that Lord Aberdeen’s Government would never take sides with France against him, in any quarrel about Turkey. He was convinced, despite the despatches of the British Ministry, that the ideas of the British Government and his own in regard to the future of Turkey, were in principle the same—and this conviction he evidently carried away with him from England in 1844. He must have been, therefore, too stupid to correctly understand what Peel said to him, or Peel must have said more to him than Sir Theodore Martin felt himself at liberty to record, in his masterly but discreet biography of Prince Albert. The manifest reluctance of Lord Aberdeen to thwart the Russian Emperor, and his obvious embarrassment when his duty forced him to comment publicly on Russian diplomacy in 1853, indicate that something more was said. What it was has been revealed by Lord Malmesbury in an entry in his Diary under date the 3rd of June, 1853. “There is,” says Lord Malmesbury, who speaks with the authority of one who had held the seals of the Foreign Office, “a circumstance which I think must strongly influence Lord Aberdeen at this moment; which is, that when the Emperor Nicholas came to England in 1844, he, Sir Robert Peel (then Prime Minister), the Duke of Wellington, and Lord Aberdeen (then Foreign Secretary) drew up and signed a memorandum, the spirit and scope of which was to support Russia in her legitimate protectorship of the Greek religion and the Holy Shrines, and to do so without consulting France. When Lord Derby’s government came in, at first, I was unable to understand the mysterious allusions which Brunnow[106] made now and then, and which he retracted when he saw that either I knew nothing of this paper, or that I desired to ignore it. Since it was composed and written, the position of affairs in Europe is totally changed, and is even reversed. In 1840 the events in the East had then estranged England and France from one another, and Louis Napoleon did not exist as a factor in European policy. Now he is Emperor of the French, and the Duke and Peel are dead, yet it is not unnatural to believe that Nicholas, finding Lord Aberdeen Prime Minister, and the sole survivor of these three English statesmen, should feel that the moment had arrived, so long wished for by Russia, to fall upon Turkey.... He believes that Lord Aberdeen never will join France against him, and probably thinks Palmerston stultified by the drudgery of the Home Office.”[107] This passage in Lord Malmesbury’s Diary explains why Lord Beaconsfield used to say that he knew as a fact within his own knowledge, that had Lord Aberdeen not come to power in 1852, the Crimean war would never have broken out.[108] Perhaps it explains why Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright declared that if the Tories had not been driven from Office in 1852, the Crimean war would have been avoided. It is now only too easy to understand that, if he had this Secret Memorandum in his possession, the Czar Nicholas naturally believed that the British Government were not serious in their antagonism. It is also easy to understand why Lord Aberdeen always shrank from speaking the firm word of warning, which would have induced Russia to pause ere her troops crossed the Pruth, and draw back whilst it was possible to draw back with honour.
The existence of an informal understanding between the Czar and the old Tory Government of 1844 shows us why his Majesty, in conversation with Sir Hamilton Seymour, on the 9th and 14th of January, 1853, reopened the question which he believed he had virtually arranged with that Government. The last living representative of it—Lord Aberdeen—was Prime Minister of England; Turkey was in a more decrepit condition than ever; France seemed bent on reviving the Napoleonic legend—of evil omen to England in Egypt; nay, she was challenging the claim of Russia to secure protection for the Greek Christians in the Ottoman Empire—a claim which the Tory leaders in 1844 were disposed to favour.[109] The Czar therefore thought it most opportune to say to Sir Hamilton Seymour, as he had said to Wellington and Peel, that Turkey, “the Sick Man,” was dying on their hands, that England and Russia should either agree what should or should not be done with his heritage when he died, and, further, to suggest that the Christian provinces of Turkey should be organised as independent States under Russian protection, whilst England occupied Egypt and Candia.[110] Lord John Russell’s reply to these conversations must have also misled the Czar, preoccupied as he was with the fact that, in terms of the Secret Memorandum of 1844, England and Russia had agreed on a common policy in Turkey. Lord John, in effect, said that, as the British Government did not think that the Turk was quite moribund, it was premature to discuss any project, negative or positive, for disposing of his territory, and that England had no desire for territorial aggrandisement. But he went on to add that he thought the Sultan should be “advised” to treat his Christian subjects justly and humanely, because, if he did so, the Czar would not find it “necessary to apply that exceptional protection which his Imperial Majesty has found so burdensome and inconvenient, though no doubt prescribed by duty and sanctioned by treaty.” The words here italicised were not altogether in accord with the facts, for no treaty sanctioned in plain, definite terms this “exceptional protection;” moreover, they admitted the whole Russian case; for, as will be seen, it was precisely because the Czar was supposed to be bent on extorting from Turkey an extension of the sanction given by existing treaties to the Russian Protectorate over her oppressed Christian subjects, that Turkey and England went to war with Russia. Whether that war was right or wrong, this is certain: it was waged by the English Government to rebut a claim, which that Government at the outset admitted. The Czar, through Count Nesselrode, expressed himself satisfied with the self-denying pledges which had passed between the Russian and English Governments, and, as England had promised not to entertain any project for the protection of Turkey without a previous understanding with Russia, so Russia, he said, gave a similar undertaking to England. But he observed that the surest way to prevent the fall of Turkey would be to induce the Porte to treat the Greek Christians with equity and humanity. The English Government, delighted with this friendly communication, advised the Porte to compose the dispute between France and Russia, by offering to accept any arrangement which these two Powers would take as satisfactory. It remonstrated with France for having been the first, not only to raise the quarrel about the Holy Places, but also to support her demands by a threat of war. This was a second admission on the part of England that in this controversy Russia was in the right. Napoleon III. recalled M. de Lavalelle, his hectoring Envoy at Constantinople, and sent M. de La Cour in his place. Russia ceased her warlike preparations on the Moldavian frontier, and the war-cloud on the horizon began to melt away.
Unfortunately for the prospects of peace, Lord Aberdeen ordered Lord Stratford de Redcliffe to resume his duties as Ambassador at Constantinople.
Stratford de Redcliffe was a man of indomitable strength of character, restless energy, and invincible tenacity of purpose. His fitness for the office of a mediator between Turkey, Russia, and France, charged specially to avert war, may be estimated by the following entry in Lord Malmesbury’s Diary, under date February 25th, 1854:—“Lord Bath,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “has come back from Constantinople, and says that Lord Stratford openly boasts having got his personal revenge against the Czar by fomenting the war. He told Lord Bath so.” According to Lord Malmesbury, his hatred to the Czar dated from the time when his Majesty refused to receive him as Ambassador at St. Petersburg. It is now beyond doubt that Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, from the beginning to the end of the negotiations between the Powers, acted the part of a Marplot. As Prince Albert, in a letter to Baron Stockmar on the 27th of November, said, “The prospects of a peaceful settlement in the East do not improve. Lord Stratford fulfils his instructions to the letter, but he so contrives that we are getting constantly deeper and deeper into a war policy.” It is impossible to describe in truer words the malign and baneful influence of the diplomatist who, to gratify his personal rancour, inflicted the torture of war upon his country.
Lord Stratford de Redcliffe reached Constantinople on the 5th of April, 1853. There he found that Prince Menschikoff, at the head of a menacing mission, had arrived before him on the 28th of February. Menschikoff began operations by refusing to treat with Fuad Effendi, the Foreign Minister. Fuad resigned in favour of Rifaat Pasha. The tone of the Russian envoy then alarmed the Grand Vizier, who sought advice from Colonel Rose,[111] British Chargé d’Affaires. Colonel Rose immediately begged Admiral Dundas to bring the Mediterranean squadron to the mouth of the Dardanelles, but the Admiral refused to sail without instructions from the Cabinet, and the Cabinet disapproved of Rose’s action. France, however, thought that this act indicated an intention on the part of England to forestall her, and despatched the Toulon squadron to Salamis, without waiting to hear whether Colonel Rose’s action had been sanctioned by his Government.[112] The presence of the French fleet so near the scene of an acrid controversy between France and Russia, would have tended to neutralise the conciliatory diplomacy of England, even if Lord Stratford de Redcliffe had honestly meant to work in the interests of peace.
Lord Stratford, when he arrived at Constantinople, found the Sublime Porte in a panic. Though Russia had assured the English Government that no question then remained open between her, France, and Turkey, except that of the Holy Places, Menschikoff had demanded from the Porte a treaty, the negotiation of which, he said, must be kept secret from the Powers, acknowledging the right of Russia to a protectorate over all Greek Christians in Turkey. Ultimately he offered to accept a Note; but the objection to the concession in any such shape, was that it virtually transferred to the Russian Czar the allegiance of 12,000,000 of the Sultan’s subjects. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe advised the Porte to begin by settling the question of the Holy Places, which was the fons et origo of the dispute. That question was quickly settled, and then Menschikoff promptly and peremptorily pressed the new claim of Russia to a protectorate over the Greek Church in Turkey. On the 5th of May he sent an ultimatum to the Porte demanding its surrender on this point within five days. On Lord Stratford’s advice the Porte refused to surrender, and Prince Menschikoff and his suite left Constantinople in wrath.[113] At this crisis the voice of Nicholas was for war; but that of Nesselrode, his able and tranquil Minister, was for peace. As a compromise the Czar therefore determined that the Danubian Principalities should be occupied by his troops, and held till Turkey guaranteed to Russia “the rights and privileges of all kinds which have been granted by the Sultan to his Greek subjects.”[114] On the 31st of May Nesselrode wrote to Reschid Pasha that Russian troops would cross the Pruth, and on the 2nd of June Admiral Dundas was ordered to proceed with the Mediterranean squadron to Besika Bay. The French fleet was ordered to go there also, and the allied squadrons made their appearance in Turkish waters about the same time.[115] The quarrel up till now had been one between France and Russia. It was thus suddenly transformed into one between France and England on the one side and Russia on the other. On the 2nd of July Prince Gortschakoff entered the Principalities; and then Austria, which had selfishly held aloof, became nervous as to the control of the Danube, and manifested a desire to act with the Western Powers. Turkey was advised not to treat Russian aggression on the Principalities as a casus belli, and the Porte met it with a protest, though it was very nearly forced by its fanatical Moslem subjects to declare war. In England the Government was condemned for its extreme reticence in Parliament as to the turn affairs were taking; and up to this point the Cabinet certainly committed three blunders. In the first place, they permitted Lord Stratford to encourage the Porte to resist Russia, without having come to a clear and definite determination to support that resistance by force, if Russia proved unbending. Secondly, they relied too much on Count Nesselrode’s smooth, pacific assurances after they knew, or ought to have known, from Prince Menschikoff’s proposal of a secret treaty to the Porte, and from the warlike demonstration on the Moldavian frontier,[116] that these assurances were illusory. Thirdly, they did not meet the proposal for a secret treaty and the demonstration on the frontier by ordering Dundas to Besika Bay, and they met the occupation of the Principalities by sending Dundas, not to the Black Sea, but only to Besika Bay. Lord Aberdeen’s apologists allege that the latter step would have caused Russia to occupy Constantinople. That is a feeble defence, for subsequent events showed that Russia could not even mobilise enough troops to hold the Principalities against the Turks. The English Government did enough to irritate the Czar, and though they did not do enough to check him, they did too much to enable them to extricate themselves with honour from the quarrel.