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XXXIV.

1839.

While the enthusiastic democrats of Paris were thus CHAP. laying the foundation of the revolution, which, nine years after, overturned the throne, the partisans of Napoleon 44. were not less active in strengthening their own party, and Progress of the Napopreparing the way for that still more marvellous change, leon party. which enabled him to reap the whole fruits of the coming convulsion. In their anxiety to propitiate the Liberal majority in the Chambers, the Government unconsciously favoured the growth of the feelings which were favourable to the imperial dynasty. A pension of 100,000 francs (£4000) a-year was settled, with the cordial approbation of the Chamber, on the widow of Murat; monuments were everywhere erected or designed to perpetuate the memory of the glories of the Empire. The press cautiously, but assiduously, inculcated the same ideas; and the very remarkable work of Prince Louis, Les Idées Napoléoniennes, in a skilful manner favoured them, by representing the incessant wars, which were the chief reproach against his memory, as a temporary and painful effort to secure that general and lasting peace which was the grand object of his desire. "Napoleon," it was said, "was always the friend of peace; he was the protector of commerce and industry: it was for this he waged war with England, the eternal oppressor of both: he was the civiliser of the world; the most pacific and liberal sovereign that ever reigned. It was for the interests of real freedom that he suppressed the Tribunate, its worst enemy, and chased the deputies who had betrayed it through the windows of St Cloud. If he went to Moscow, it was that he might conquer the peace of the world in the Kremlin; if he sacrificed millions of soldiers, it was because that peace could be purchased at no lower price." These ideas were not only sedulously inculcated in Le Capitole, a journal specially devoted to the Napoleon interests, but in several other publications, both in France and foreign states. The report was carefully circulated in secret, and therefore the more readily believed, that Prince Napoleon

CHAP. XXXIV.

1839.

was in reality supported by Austria, Russia, and Great Britain; and in a pamphlet published at this time, which made a considerable sensation, it was openly asserted that the existing Government was incapable of providing for the security, prosperity, and glory of France, and that the Napoleon dynasty alone was equal to its requirements. Prince Louis at this time addressed a letter to the editor 57, 58; Vie of the Times, in which he solemnly disclaimed any connection with the enterprise of Barbès, and declared that, if his friends engaged in any attempt in his favour, he would be found at its head.1

1 Cap. X.

de L. Napoleon, par Lespes, i. 33.

45.

strength of

ment.

May 28.

66

While future events, however, were in this manner Increased casting their shadows before," the government of Louis the Govern- Philippe was in the mean time greatly strengthened by the insurrection in Paris and defeat of Barbès. The question of the secret-service money came on for discussion on May 28th, a fortnight after the suppression of the revolt, and the sum of 1,200,000 francs (£48,000), proposed by Government, was carried by a majority of 262 to 71. It was, however, a reduction of 500,000 francs (£20,000) on the vote of the preceding year. This majority, on what was always the trying question for Ministers, confirmed them in office for the remainder of the session, and they were careful not to shake the advantage they had gained, by bringing forward any measure on which their majority might be less decided. Railway lines, then so much the object of interest, soon succeeded, and absorbed the principal atten2 Ann. Hist. tion of the Chamber, before which no other question of general domestic interest was brought during the remainder of the session.2

xxii. 111

113.

46. Debate on the affairs of the East.

Foreign affairs, however, were now beginning to occupy a large share of public attention, and debates, fraught with the dearest interests of humanity, and prophetic of future changes, took place on that all-important subject. Turkey had at that period been reduced to the last straits, in consequence of the victories of Ibrahim Pasha in Asia

XXXIV.

1839.

1 Ante, c.

Minor, and the refusal of England and France to render CHAP. her any aid, when applied to for succour, when the victorious Egyptian legions threatened Constantinople in 1832. The result had been, that Russia gave the required assistance, and extorted, as the price of it, the Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, which excluded all ships of war, except the Russian and Turkish, from the Black Sea, and converted its waters into a Muscovite lake.1 The Western xxxii. § 30. Powers had become sensible, when it was too late, of their extreme folly in thus throwing Turkey into the arms of Russia; and each was endeavouring to repair it, and regain its lost influence in the Levant,-France by supporting Mehemet Ali in his Syrian conquests, England by upholding the decaying Ottoman empire against its southern enemy, so as to avoid all pretence for any further interference on the part of the colossus of the north.

47.

speech on

The system supported by the French Cabinet was to leave everything in statu quo in the Levant, neither dis- Lamartine's turbing the Russians in their influence at Constantinople, the subject. nor Ibrahim in his Syrian conquests. This policy met with a powerful opponent in Lamartine. "I understand," said he, "the system of statu quo for the integrity of the Ottoman empire before the treaties with Russia in 1774, 1792, and 1813-before the annihilation of the Turkish navy in 1827 at Navarino, that act of national madness of France and England for the benefit of Russia. But after the conquest of the Crimea by Catherine-after the Russian protectorate of Wallachia and Moldavia-after the emancipation of Greece, and its occupation by your troops, and the millions of subsidies you have still to pay to uphold its independence-after the subjection of the Black Sea to the Russians, and the erection of Sebastopol, where the Muscovite fleets are only twenty-four hours' sail from Constantinople-after the treaties of Adrianople, Unkiar-Skelessi, and Kutaya, and the dismemberment of the half of the empire by Mehemet Ali

XXXIV.

1839,

CHAP. and yourselves, who protect him,-after all this, to speak of the statu quo, is, allow me to say, as ridiculous as to speak of the existence of Polish nationality. What are you about to arm for the statu quo of the Turkish empire, which is essential, you say, to the security of Europe, when that statu quo is the dismemberment, the annihilation, the agony, of the empire which you pretend to support? Be, then, consistent, and if Turkey is as material to you as you say it is, go to the support, not of the revolt in Syria, but of the imperial government at Constantinople. Lend your counsels, your engineers, your officers, your fleets, to the support of the generous efforts of Sultan Mahmoud to civilise his people; aid him to crush Ibrahim, and to recover Egypt, and all the parts of his empire which are now detaching themselves from it. Instead of this, what are you told to do? Arm for the statu quo. That is to say, spend the blood and treasure of France, to maintain what? Turkey in Europe and Constantinople under the power of Russia; Turkey in Asia, under the sabre of Ibrahim and the usurpation of Mehemet.

48.

"Are the Crimea and the shores of the Black Sea, Continued. covered with Russian fleets and military establishments, the Turkish empire? Are Wallachia and Moldavia, chained by the Russian protectorate, and where an Ottoman soldier does not dare to set his foot? Is it to be found in Servia, which has three times defeated the Turkish armies, and is now rapidly growing under the shade of liberty and the protection of its illustrious chief, Prince Milosch, the Washington of the East? Is it to be sought for in the four millions of Bulgarians, the Greeks of Epirus or Macedonia, or in the Peloponnesus or the Isles, torn by yourselves from the Turkish empire? In fine, are you to look for it in Cyprus, with its forty thousand Christian inhabitants, and sixty Turks in garrison; or in Syria, with its infinite diversity of races; or in Egypt,

Candia, Arabia, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, which are all now more or less independent, and some of which you yourselves have wrested from the Ottomans? No! All these splendid territories must be deducted from the Turkish empire-that is to say, you must subtract three-fourths of its extent. What remains? Constantinople-the finest site for a capital, and the finest situation in the world, but on that very account the most coveted, pressed on one side by the mouth of the Black Sea, where the Russians can debouch any hour they please, and on the other by the entrance into the Archipelago, where the English and French fleets may any day find an entrance. A capital without a territory, and constantly besieged, that is the true state of the Ottoman empire. And in that capital we have an emperor, heroic, but powerless, contemplating the insolent intrigues of the powers who are disputing beforehand the spoils of his empire. It is the last scene of the Lower Empire, at the time of its overthrow by Mahomet II., a second time on the stage. There is the phantom on which you propose to rest your alliance; there is the pillar which, according to you, is to support the weight of the Russian colossus.

CHAP.

XXXIV.

1839.

49.

"What is to be done in these critical circumstances, when the fate of the world, in a manner, hangs in the Continued. balance ? We must take the initiative in the contest which is about to ensue. It is in vain to expect anything from the Arab domination. It was bold after victories, but it had neither a base nor a future. A hero is not there, as in the West, an expression of a people; he is a meteor, a speciality, which appears for a moment amidst the surrounding darkness, only to render it more impenetrable; a man who does great things with the thousand of slaves who surround him, but does nothing to elevate the level of the people below him; who founds nothing, neither an institution, nor a dynasty, nor a legislation, and of whom it may be said, that in dying he folds

VOL. VI.

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