XXXIV. 1841. ture, no less than 185,000,000 francs (£7,400,000);* CHAP. and M. Hermann calculated that if the same rate of expenditure were to go on for two years longer, as the late ministry had intended, the deficit would amount to 800,000,000 francs (£32,000,000), which could only be provided for by a regular loan, the resources of exchequer bills or other temporary expedients being entirely exhausted. Without doubt this burden, heavy as it was, would be esteemed light by the nation, if it was deemed indispensable to the national independence or security. But it was not so clear it would be calmly submitted to if it arose from the impetuous and warlike disposition of 1 Moniteur, a single Minister, who was content to set the world in May 8, flames in order to revive the worn-out fervour of the Re- Hist. xxiv. 335-337; public, or realise the dreams of Napoleon for the establish- Cap. x. 281. ment of French influence on the banks of the Nile.1 1841; Ann. Feb. 13, garding the The Ministry in France having been changed on the 114. Eastern question, there was no difficulty experienced by Treaty of the other powers in coming to an accommodation regard- 1841, reing it. By two hatti-sheriffs addressed by the Sultan to East. Mehemet Ali, the latter was confirmed in the government of Egypt in hereditary right, and provisionally in those of Nubia, Darfour, Sennaar, and Kordofan, and an act of amnesty published in favour of such subjects of the Porte as had revolted, and should return to their allegi ance. But such was the influence of Russia in the conferences which preceded this treaty, and such the blindness to the future of the other powers, that a clause was inserted in it binding them to recognise as part of the international law of Europe the treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, XXXIV. 1841. CHAP. in which Russia, as the price of its assistance to the Porte, had extorted the closing of the Dardanelles against the ships of war of all foreign nations. The clause was in these words: "Their Majesties the Emperor of Austria, the King of the French, the Queen of Great Britain, the King of Prussia, and the Emperor of all the Russias, persuaded that their accord offers the surest guarantee for the peace of Europe, the object of their whole solicitude, and being anxious to give to the Sultan a public proof of their respect for the inviolability of his rights of sovereignty, as well as of their desire to confirm the security of his empire, have resolved, on the invitation of the Sultan, to confirm by a solemn act their resolution to conform to the ancient rule of the Ottoman empire, in virtue of which the passage of the Straits of the Bosphorus and of the Dardanelles is to remain for ever closed to the vessels of war of foreign nations, as long as the Porte shall remain at peace. And on his side the Sultan declares that he is firmly resolved to maintain in future the rule followed in time past as the immutable law of his empire, by which it is forbidden to the vessels of war of all foreign nations to enter the Straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus as long as the Ottoman Hist. xxiv. Porte shall enjoy peace, reserving the right to grant firmans of passage to light vessels of war employed in the service of ambassadors of friendly powers."1 1 Treaty, Feb. 13, 1841; Ann. 153, 154; Doc. Hist. Great 115. escape rope made at this period. No doubt can now remain that the crisis which this treaty terminated was of the most violent kind; and that which Eu- Europe was indebted to the firmness of Louis Philippe, and the wisdom of M. Guizot, for deliverance from a war which not only would have been attended by the most fearful devastation and effusion of blood, but would probably have terminated in destroying the independence of all the states of the Continent. England and France, the only two powers, it was well known, who were capable of coercing the rapidly-increasing power of Russia, stood on the edge of a desperate conflict, in which all the powers XXXIV. 1841. of Europe were again, as in 1813, to have been arrayed CHAP. against France, and their arms, instead of being united to defend the liberties of Europe against Muscovite aggression, would have been turned with fratricidal fury against each other. What would have resulted from such a conflict, but a vast and most perilous addition to the power of Russia, the state by whose strength and ambition the other states of Europe are most seriously threatened? Without adopting implicitly the hyperbole of M. Thiers, "that the war would steep in blood ten generations,” it may safely be concluded that it would have done enough in one generation to put in the most imminent hazard the liberties of all Europe. The "war of opinion," which Mr Canning foresaw, would have been induced by M. Thiers; and to what other end could that have led but the dividing Europe into two factions, which would have set not only nation against nation, but class against class, and could have terminated in no other result but a second subjection of the entire Continent to French domination, or the not less withering weight of Muscovite oppression? Every outbreak of the revolutionary spirit, which M. Thiers so strongly evoked, has, during the last half-century, terminated in a vast addition to the power of Russia; and it was no wonder it was so, for she was the last refuge of the destitute when threatened with revolutionary devastation. on this The treaty of 13th July 1841, which first recognised as 116. part of the public law of Europe the vast concession Reflections relative to the passage of the Dardanelles and the Bos- treaty. phorus, extorted from the weakness of Turkey by the strength of Russia by the treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, is one of the most curious instances on record in the annals of mankind of the insensibility of even the ablest statesmen to the consequences of their own actions, and the danger of being directed in public measures by the memory of the past, rather than the anticipation of the future. That both M. Thiers and Lord Palmerston were most able XXXIV. 1841. CHAP. statesmen is universally known, and has been sufficiently proved by subsequent history. Both were clear-sighted enough to see that it was by Russia that the liberties of Europe were most seriously menaced; and the conduct of both afterwards proved that they were fully alive to this danger. How, then, did these able men, with their eyes open to this danger, and at the head of the only two nations in the world whose union could avert it, act on this crisis? They mutually, and as it were by common consent, brought the two nations to the verge of a desperate war. They did more; they both, by separate means, adopted measures calculated, without intending it, to paralyse the strength of Turkey, where the onslaught was sure to be made. M. Thiers thought that the best thing he could do for Turkey, as the menaced power, was to cut off from it Egypt and Syria; a proceeding much the same as it would be to set about securing the independence of England by cutting off from it Scotland and Wales; and Lord Palmerston, having succeeded in bringing all Europe into his measures, thought he had secured the independence of the Ottoman empire by adopting the Russian treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, closing the Bosphorus and Dardanelles against foreign vessels of war; forgetting that Russia, with eighteen sail of the line, was already there, and that the only result of his diplomatic triumph was to leave Constantinople, with its fleet destroyed at Navarino, unsupported, vis-à-vis of Sebastopol, with its impregnable bastions and four thousand pieces of cannon.1 117. Way in which this about. The way in which this extraordinary result was brought about is sufficiently plain. M. Thiers, enamoured of was brought revolutionary excitement and imperial projects, was anxious to realise Napoleon's favourite design of establishing French influence on the banks of the Nile; and Lord Palmerston, justly dreading the effects of such an acquisition upon the English possessions in India, to which it was half way, ably and skilfully formed an alliance of the XXXIV. 1841. 1 Ante, c. four European powers to baffle the design. In this he CHAP. was entirely successful; but meantime, in his anxiety to check the extension of French influence in the Levant, he forgot the growth of Russia's power in the Black Sea. The Russian diplomatists skilfully and eagerly took advantage of this state of things to persuade the European powers to recognise that closing of the Dardanelles and Bosphorus against foreign ships of war, which she had extorted from the weakness of Turkey.1 Thus did xxxii. § 30. the Black Sea, with the concurrence of all Europe, become a Russian lake, and Constantinople was left at the mercy of its colossal neighbour! Another proof among the many which contemporary history affords, that, situated as the world now is, France and England can never be divided without its turning to the profit of Russia, and that the real pioneers to the advance of despotism are the outbreaks of democracy. 118. sioned the error. It is sometimes said that, to avert this obvious danger, and erect an effectual barrier against Russian aggres- What occasion in the East, it would have been better to have let Ibrahim Pasha advance to Constantinople, and substitute the vigour of a new for the decrepitude of a worn-out dynasty. There does not appear to be any solid ground for this opinion. Egyptian tyranny could no more have averted the march of Muscovite ambition than Ottoman weakness had done. Europe at this time was entirely mistaken on this subject. It mistook the transient vigour which organised and methodised despotism had given to Mehemet Ali for the rising strength of a regenerated civilisation. Such a thing is impossible in the East, and with the Mahommedan religion. There is no renovation there but that of the sword; no regeneration but the physical one arising from the inroad of northern conquerors. When you superinduce the regularity of European administration upon the oppression of Asiatic government, as was done by the Pasha of Egypt, and the English in India, you give for a time a great impulse to national |