village in Germany, in every dungeon in Ita- | heartened, by finding that the Government ly, at every hearth-stone and in every heart (whose conception of the case was wholly dif from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. ferent) was perpetually using language and They have watched, moreover, the steady doing deeds which threw cold water on their and stealthy pace of the great aggressor to- hearty enthusiasm, and mystified and conwards wide dominion. They have seen her founded their honest perceptions of the right incorporating neighbour after neighbour in and just. Yet the incongruities of our posidefiance of resistance and of right,-like a tion, if their view of the objects and nature vast boa-constrictor, first lubricating them of the war was correct, were obvious enough, with diplomatic slime, then crushing them and embarrassing enough too. We were in the close embrace of her "protection," hand and glove with a cordial and gallant then swallowing them by a slow process of ally, who was himself a Despot, and had absorption. They have seen Poland conquer- risen to power by overthrowing the republied, partitioned, and annexed,-Cracow taken can institutions of his country; and it was at a single mouthful,-Finland, Bessarabia, difficult to inscribe the words "Freedom and the Crimea, and Transcaucasia successively Justice" on the banners of a host of which seized and retained. It was discovered that she he commanded at least one-half. Still this had got Prussia and the minor Courts of Ger- might have been got over on the plea-valid many entirely under her control; that she had or invalid as we may deem it--that this Desalready stretched her paw to grasp Denmark pot was really the national choice, and that at some suitable conjuncture; that she had his Government, though not a free, was at supplanted Turkey in the Principalities; and least a popular one. But the difficulty still that two steps more would make her mis- remained, that among those whom our peotress of the Sound and the Dardanelles, and ple looked to as allies in war, and whose thus enfold all Europe in her arms. emancipation and elevation they trusted It was natural, therefore, that the people would result from it, were the patriots of of England, as well as the patriots of other Italy and Hungary; that the sympathies of countries, seeing the gradual advance of these patriots were largely engaged by that this enormous danger,-feeling that to per- revolutionary party in France which was mit the extension of so fatal a government Louis Napoleon's bitterest foe; that it would over any further portion of the earth was, be next to impossible for him to encourage at the very least, a foolish and a criminal or to support the insurgents abroad, while connivance, and conscious that the spread sternly repressing their analogues at home; of freedom and comfort over Southern and and that at this very moment the worst Central Europe was hopeless so long as Rus-Government in the Peninsula is upheld in sia was lord of the ascendant-should rejoice opposition to its outraged subjects by the and applaud when our Government at length bayonets of Frenchmen. The most energetic announced its resolution to resist and beat efforts of both the allied Governments, too, her back. They did not care much for Tur- were pertinaciously directed towards securing key itself. They gave little heed to proto- the active assistance of Austria, the detested cols and proclamations. In their eyes a war oppressor of those Italians and Hungarians against Russia was, ipso facto, and whatever with whose sufferings we so keenly sympawere its pretext or its form, a war against thized-the tyrant more odious to our feelthe mightiest and most persistent foe of pro-ings even than Russia, as exercising her atrogress, of justice, of liberty, and of peace,- cities nearer to our own doors. It was oba war, therefore, in behalf of those great in-vious that if Austria did join us in restrainterests of humanity. They listened to no nice ing and punishing Russia, she would do so distinctions-they turned a deaf ear to the only on condition of our making the war not formal and decorous language of official dis-one for liberty and progress. Her aid must claimers their native instincts told them be purchased by a surrender of those very that the struggle would become, if it was not ulterior hopes, for the sake of which really at the outset, one for grand and worthy aims (far more than out of any regard for Turkey) -they resolved that it should become so the British people hailed the war with welthey were satisfied that timid and lukewarm come, and were disposed to carry it on with Ministers could not prevent its becoming so. energy. We should have to insure success They regarded it, therefore, in the light of a at the price of the objects for which we most sacred cause, and threw their whole heart desired it. On the other hand, too, if Ausinto the strife. tria did join us, it is all but certain that Russia would induce Italy and Hungary to rise and join her. The very victims on whose behalf we, the British nation, were in our secret soul making war, or at least zealously But they took small account of the various complications which prevented the contest from assuming this noble and simple character, and were perplexed, annoyed, and dis 144 wishing to make war with Russia, would actually have become the allies and auxiliaries of that very power, and our hearts would be torn with the most conflicting sympathies and wishes. It was not difficult to see that the war could scarcely become what the great body of Englishmen fancied that it was or hoped that it would be, unless Austria should become avowedly hostile or coldly and inimically neutral, and unless the Government of France could be materially modified in the direction of liberalism, events, the first of which was not very probable, and the second at present scarcely feasible. The British Government in the meanwhile took a different view of the war in which they were reluctantly involved. They could not avoid it; justice and policy alike imperatively forced it upon them. But, from the first, they were anxious above all things that it should be a war of Governments and not of Peoples; that it should be like old dynastic wars, not like recent revolutionary ones; that it should be fought out in the champsclos which they assigned to it; and should at all hazards-even at the hazard of incomplete success-be prevented from extending or degenerating into a contest for the emancipation of the oppressed nationalities. Hence they courted Austria; hence they bore with Prussia; hence they ostentatiously snubbed the patriots of every land; hence they held language which greatly discouraged and disturbed the nation ;-hence their exhortations to the warm-hearted masses eager for a gallant struggle in a sacred cause, was the final and freezing one of Talleyrand to the young diplomatist whom he was sending forth-Et surtout, Monsieur, point de zèle!" We cannot wonder that this should have been the feeling of Ministers, at all events in the outset. It was natural that they should look at the matter as experienced politicians, brought up in the traditions of ancestral policy; too old and too cold to feel very vehemently virtuous indignation at any imperial delinquency: too weighted with the responsibilities of office to allow their natural passions-if they had any-to obscure their perceptions of means, and of difficulties, and of probable consequences. They felt somewhat like men of honour and of peace whom a bully had dragged into a duel, which they would meet, indeed, if they could not help it, but which, on every account, they would greatly prefer to arrange through the medium of friends and "explanations," if they could do so with propriety. They felt no personal animosity against the Czar, such as burned in the breast of the people; or, if they did, it was not for having committed an atrocity, but for having got them and Europe into hot water. They were quite conscious, indeed, that, having shewn the cloven foot whose existence they had long suspected, the northern Colossus must be made to understand that his march of territorial aggrandizement could not any longer be tamely acquiesced in-natural as it was, and skilfully as it had been hitherto disguised. But they had been born and bred in official traditions; they believed in the balance of power; they had faith in the virtue of negotiations and démonstrations; and their idea was to renot within the bounds of justice. Their strain Russia within the limits of treatiescomplaint against her was, not that she had broken the Decalogue, but that she had broken signed engagements, not that she had set at nought the laws of morality, but that she had violated the treaties of 1815, 1829, and 1841,-not that she had coveted her neighbour's house and seized upon his goods, but that she had cheated ambassadors, and Their feelings on the occasion, therefore, "disturbed existing arrangements.' were necessarily different from those entertained by the people, and far more temperate and measured. help us to explain a matter which has given And these considerations, by the way, will rise to much natural vexation and not quite just disappointment, viz.,-the coldness or non-sympathy of the Americans. At first sight, no doubt, it seems but fitting that in civilisation, the good wishes, at least, of the the battle we are waging for justice and people who boast themselves the most enlightened upon earth should be enlisted on our side; that in striving to repress the World, we should have the hearty prayers, aggressions of the great despot of the Old if not the active assistance, of the great republic of the New; and that a land, once the hope and refuge of the injured and the persecuted, should, on all occasions, be more ready to plead for, and encourage the oppressed, than to applaud and hound on the oppressor. Unhappily, it is not so, and among many less worthy and avowable reasons why it should not be so, is one which is not discreditable to the Americans, and ought not it clear to them that the war we are waging to be surprising to us. It is difficult to make is in any intelligible sense a war on behalf of freedom. There is an unquestionable inconsistency, indeed, in the same people who so fêted and glorified Kossuth, now sympathizing with the despot by whom Kossuth was crushed. But, on the other hand, the partialities of America are necessarily republican;-and republicanism is the avowed or The Significance of the Struggle. horror of both the English and the French Governments. If there is one court in Europe which the Americans especially dislike and despise, it is that of Austria; and to obtain the aid and alliance of Austria in this war has been the ceaseless endeavour of the Western Powers. The sympathies of America go avowedly with the oppressed nationalities;—and it has been the most anxious aim of the allies, from the outset, to prevent these nationalities from mingling in the strife. Of the four powers who were, were supposed to be, arrayed against Russia, one was a constitutional monarchy, but the other three were despots; the first of whom was the supposed tyrant of his Christian subjects; the second, the notorious and brutal oppressor of all those republican aspirations which America longed to aid; while the third had just transformed a republic into an empire. How could such a war, waged by such parties and with such allies, be represented as a genuine war for liberty? It cannot be gainsaid that it was not the standard of freedom or self-government that we raised; it was the standard of justice, of civilization, of established treaties, of the status quo of the balance of power in Europe. How could we reasonably ask American sympathy or aid for such a complicated, hybrid, conventional, old-world banner? If, indeed, as at one time seemed not improbable, Austria had taken her natural side and cast in her lot with the aggressor, and Italy, Hungary, and Poland had risen, and we had welcomed them as comrades and espoused their cause, and furnished them with arms, and if, then, America had stood aloof or given amity or countenance to our antagonist, no reproaches could have been too bitter or too just, and no plea could have wiped away the stain upon her character. But that she should feel no good-will towards the success of a struggle which, though carried on against a despot, is not carried on for freedom-or, at least, only distantly, contingently, and inferentially so-need excite little surprise, and scarcely warrants any heavy condemnation. The "Traveller in Italy," whose letter to the Times we have placed at the head of this article and who must be somebody,' because that journal, though dissenting from his views, yet treats him with respect comments with great ability and general justice on that want of broad, clear, forecasting statesmanship which has, from the first, been the weak point in the conduct of the Western Powers with reference to the present war. He goes at once to the heart of the matter, and points out that their radical error-that which has lain at the root of all 145 our difficulties hitherto, that which bids fair to prove the source of manifold embarrassments to come, consisted in this;-that the conflict, as originally conceived, and as still mainly carried on by our rulers, was a conflict for the maintenance of the STATUS QUOof that existing set of political and territorial arrangements which Russian ambition had threatened to disturb. It is true, that after a while, they enlarged their demands, but this enlargment consisted of little more than claiming fresh securities for the status quo. It is true, that as the struggle proceeds, their likely to expand and to grow clear, till it estimate of its grandeur and its object seems may in time assume the height and dimensions of a great and intelligible principle. But this progress of official ideas is slow, limited, and reluctant. And we cannot but remember that, to begin with, our rulers were most careful to disclaim any sympathy with or countenance of even the justest revolutionary movements; they ostentatiously and, we think, most mischievously announced their intention not to interfere with the territorial possessions of their unscrupulous antagonist; proclaimed their determination not only to uphold the Ottoman Empire as it then existed, but to secure its permanence by "linking it more closely with the general European system;" and they made the most pertinacious efforts, if not the most questionable concessions, in hopes of obtaining Austrian co-operation;-the price which Austria of course (tacitly or avowedly) demanded for the co-operation which she only made a show of giving, being our connivance in the status quo throughout her suffering, groaning, misgoverned, malcontent dominions. force, that this originally erroneous concepIt will be alleged, and with considerable tion of the nature of the contest, or rather this unfortunate character given to it, was an almost inevitable one, for which the ministers of no nation ought to be severely blamed. No doubt, as only aggressors on the one hand, and revolutionary reformers on the other, undertake a war for the disturbance able and defensive wars must, at the outset, of the existing order of things, so all reasonbe undertaken for the maintenance of that existing order. The status quo is the thing immediately assailed: it becomes, therefore, ex vi termini, the thing to be ostensibly defended. But as soon as fighting becomes unavoidable,-as soon as all efforts of menace or persuasion to ward off a convulsion and a contest have proved unavailing,-as soon as the sword is drawn and blood has begun to flow, then, surely, it behoves all sagacious and conscientious statesmen, gravely to consider whether the status quo be one which it is possible permanently to maintain, or wise to endeavour to maintain, or permissible to go to war in order to maintain. It is obvious that existing political arrangements, however unjust, unsatisfactory, or inherently unstable, may righteously and prudently be acquiesced in-in preference to the certain evils and uncertain risks attendant on hostilities and revolutions -by those who yet regard them as so faulty and unnatural, that it would be nothing short of a crime to strike one blow in their defence. Many mischievous and imperfect things may be passively endured, which yet it would be wrong and foolish actively to support, and absolute madness to restore. Hence the moment that the peaceable continuance of a defective status quo has been made impossible by the attack of an aggressor, it surely becomes the duty of those who rule and guide the destinies of nations to strive, not for its maintenance or restoration, but for the substitution in its stead of arrangements more satisfactory and self-sustaining, because more consonant to nature, to justice, to undeniable human rights, and to irrepressible human aspirations. Now, it will scarcely be denied, even by our statesmen themselves, that the existing European arrangements,-to the sustenance of which they so incautiously and unwarrantably got pledged, and in defiance of which they in a manner went to war,-were in many quarters of the most indefensible character;—such as contained within them elements of perpetual discord, of frequent convulsions, of certain self-destruction at no distant date; such as no man of justice or humanity, no one who cherished the rights, or valued the progress of mankind, could contemplate without pain, or uphold without compunction or misgiving; such, in fine, as it is impossible to defend in the name of any principle, unless the dogma that "whatever is is right" can be dignified by this reverend name. These arrangements, as nearly every one now admits, were made at a time when the obligations of political morality were interpreted far more laxly than at present; when years of desperate and deadly conflict had blunted all men's sensibilities and exasperated all men's passions; and when the law of the strongest had so long reigned supreme, that the rights of the weak found no diplomatists to plead for them, and no sovereigns to respect them. At the Congress of Vienna-that shameful spectacle of the supremacy of might over all considerations of decency or justice, where territories and peoples were parcelled out among the conquerors in utter disregard of the claims alike of property, or affection, or affinity, where human beings by the million were bought and sold as nakedly and publicly as ever were American negroes or Russian serfs, alloted and partitioned like spoil among the buccaneers,-at that great slavemart it was that the present proprietary and political divisions of Europe were contrived, with the exception of those modifications which Russia has since made for her own advantage, and in her own style of arbitrary brigandage. Finland, torn from Sweden because Russia coveted it, and was too wilful and too powerful to be gainsaid; Norway, torn from Denmark to compensate Sweden, because Sweden had contributed to overthrow Napoleon, and Denmark was too feeble to resist her spoilers; Poland, handed over body and soul to the great aggressor, who first annexed and then absorbed her; Bessarabia, Georgia, and the mouths of the Danube, seized by Russia, while Europe stood by and tacitly sanctioned the criminal aggrandizement; Venice, after long centuries of freedom and of pride, delivered up to the barbarous despotism of a race she hated and despised, and which had no shadow of a title to her sovereignty; Hungary, trampled down from a constitutional state into a conquered and enslaved department, by the combined forces of the two grand autocrats of Europe: these are among the most prominent and uneasy elements of that status quo to which the Western Powers so rashly and needlessly committed themselves. We are now beginning to catch glimpses of the embarrassments in which this lapse from high-minded statesmanship has involved them. The difficulties which it threw in the way of their rapid success, has already been severely felt. They have had to fight with their hands tied; they have had to forego advantages which a bolder and wider policy would have made irresistible in their cause; they have had to discourage and bid back allies who would fain have assisted them to conquer. For how could they hope to enlist the aid of feeble states against a mighty and vindictive power, whom they announced their intention neither to weaken nor dismember? And how was it possible to arouse any foreign popular enthusiasm on behalf of a war which was waged in the name of no grand principle, and in favour of no sacred cause? The truth is, that the peculiar composition of the three great empires of Eastern Europe-Russia, Austria, and Turkey-rendered the status quo precisely the very last watchword we ought to have inscribed upon our banner; and this not only because it was revolting to the patriot, but because it was perplexing and compromising to the The Significance of the Struggle. 147 statesman. In every one of these states the us into direct and inevitable antagonism government ruled over conquered, ill-amal- with five-sixths of the population. It has gamated and malcontent populations: to- caused the people to regard us, and has enwards every one of them, therefore, our po- abled Russia to represent us, as their enesition, whether as allies or enemies, was anom- my; as in league with their oppressor; as alous, inconsistent, and false. If they were the ally of the government they hate. Beallies, we inevitably fell into a position of ing in a state of chronic opposition, of conhostility towards their subjects; if they stant though inchoate and subdued rebellion were enemies, we refused ourselves the as- to their foreign rulers, and looking upon the sistance we might have derived from the sway of the Porte as a yoke which they purnatural sympathy of their subjects. liance with the Porte, we were hated by the to throw off, they necessarily regarded us In al-posed, as soon as they were strong enough, Turkish Christians; at war with the Court as auxilaries come to aid their tyrant and to of Russia, our dislike of insurgent move- dash to the ground their fondest hopes, the ments and revolutionary allies forbade us to moment we announced that our intention profit by the national aspirations of the was not merely to save the Ottoman empire Poles. Let us look at the cases a little in from becoming the prey of Muscovite amdetail. We abjured territorial changes and bition, but to stereotype and perpetuate that proclaimed the maintenance of existing ar- empire, by "linking it with the European rangements. How did this operate, how system;" that we objected alike to a "Greek must it have operated, in the Crimea? It empire," or to a federation of republics; * was of course utterly impossible to look for and that we came not only to save them any aid or futherance, or for anything be- from falling under a new foreign dominayond the most cold and suspicious semi- tion, but to retain them under the dominion neutrality, from the Tartars or the Crimean of the old. Russia was not slow or unskilresidents of any race, after having announced ful to take advantage of this signal blunder. our intention to wrest from Russia none It made it easy for her to assume the attieven of her more recent acquisitions. could we expect, or even wish, the inhabi-tian subjects of a Mussulman oppressor, and How tude of protector and rescuer of the Christants to give us information, or to furnish us supplies, or to enlist in our service, or to tified with friendship for the ruled. It is to represent hostility to the rulers as idenplace their means of transport at our dis- true that the friendship was interested and posal, when they knew and we avowed that hollow-the friendship of the wolf for the we were not going to conquer the pe- lamb; it is true that the more sensible and ninsula, but only to ravage and overrun it, clear-sighted of the Greeks saw it in this -not to retain it, but only to seize it; and light; but still, having one common enemy that as soon as peace was concluded, (an the Turk, Russia, and the Turkish Chrisevent which any hour might bring about, as tians became by force of circumstances innegotiations were constantly going on,) we evitable, even if involuntary, allies, and we, should restore it and them to their former by a parity of reasoning, became their inevmasters, to be dealt with according to the itable foes. Now, it is always anomalous dispositions they had manifested during our and damaging to encounter the hostility, temporary occupation? If our design had even if only covert, of the nation whose been to secure to ourselves the hostility of battles we come to fight and of whose “inthe natives, both during the contest and after dependence and integrity" we have constisuccess, it would have been impossible to tuted ourselves the defenders, to be received have hit upon a road which led more directly with suspicion and dislike, in place of being to that end. It is true that now we are be- welcomed with open arms as champions and ginning to recognise our mistake and to re- deliverers. Our armies have suffered seconsider our plan. We are slowly awaken-verely from this awkward situation. Though ing to a conception of the indisputable truth, that to restore the Crimea and its splendid harbour to the power which has used them so ill, and which needs them only for aggressive purposes, would be one of those follies which border closely upon crime. But the mischief of our original proclamation has not been less effective and serious for our tardy and partial recantation. In European Turkey the case has been still worse. Throughout that land, our championship of the status quo has brought the lower Greeks are reputed the most venal of races, yet such is their hatred of the Mussulman and of all who come to aid him, that we have found it impossible to obtain, either in Turkey or the Crimea, that ample and reliable information as to the movements and projects of the enemy which is one of the surest elements of military suc cess. In fact, we feel ourselves to a great Clarendon to Sir H. Seymour. |