P.S.--I fancy that the first effect of the Indian affair will be to draw
still closer the alliance between England and France.
Tocqueville, November 15, 1857.
I am somewhat angry with you, my dear Senior, for not having yet given us
your news.[1] It is treating our friendship unfairly, I have not written
to you because I doubted your following exactly your intended route, but
I will write to you at Athens, as I think that you must now be there. If
you have followed your itinerary your travels must have been most
interesting to you, and they will be equally curious to us. I conclude
that you only passed quickly through the Principalities in following the
course of the Danube. I, however, had depended on you for furnishing me
with clear ideas of a country which is at present so interesting to
Europe, and which I think is destined to play an important part in the
future. And what say you of our friends the Turks? Was it worth while to
spend so much money and to shed so much blood in order to retain in
Europe savages who are ill disguised as civilised men? I am impatient to
talk to you, and almost equally so to read you.
I shall have little to tell you. I have not stirred from home since I
left England, and am leading the life of a gentleman-farmer; a life which
pleases me more and more every day, and would really make me happy, if my
wife were not suffering from an obstinate neuralgic affection in the
face. I fear that she may have to go to some mineral waters, which she
would be sorry to do; for, as you know, she hates travelling, and does no
justice to the reputation for wandering possessed by the English race.
I can tell you nothing on politics which you will not find in the
newspapers. The great question at present for all civilised Governments
seems to be the financial. The crisis from which America and England are
suffering will probably extend everywhere. As for India, you are out, not
perhaps of your difficulties, but of your greatest dangers. This affair,
and that of the Crimea, show how little sympathy there is for England
abroad. There was everything to interest us in your success--similarity
of race, of religion, and of civilisation. Your loss of India could have
served no cause but that of barbarism. Yet I venture to affirm that the
whole Continent, though it detested the cruelties of your enemies, did
not wish you to triumph.
Much of this is, without doubt, to be attributed to the evil passions
which make men always desire the fall of the prosperous and the strong.
But much belongs to a less dishonourable cause--to the conviction of all
nations that England considers them only with reference to her own
greatness; that she has less sympathy than any other modern nation; that
she never notices what passes among foreigners, what they think, feel,
suffer, or do, but with relation to the use which England can make of
their actions, their sufferings, their feelings, or their thoughts; and
that when she seems most to care for them she really cares only for
herself. All this is exaggerated, but not without truth.
Kindest regards from us both to you and to Mrs. Senior.