To understand a limited historical epoch, we must step beyond its
limits, and compare it with other historical epochs. To judge
Governments and their acts, we must measure them by their own times and
the conscience of their contemporaries. Nobody will condemn a British
statesman of the 17th century for acting on a belief in witchcraft, if
he find Bacon himself ranging demonology in the catalogue of science. On
the other hand, if the Stanhopes, the Walpoles, the Townshends, etc.,
were suspected, opposed, and denounced in their own country by their own
contemporaries as tools or accomplices of Russia, it will no longer do
to shelter their policy behind the convenient screen of prejudice and
ignorance common to their time. At the head of the historical evidence
we have to sift, we place, therefore, long-forgotten English pamphlets
printed at the very time of Peter I. These preliminary _pieces des
proces_ we shall, however, limit to three pamphlets, which, from three
different points of view, illustrate the conduct of England towards
Sweden. The first, the _Northern Crisis_ (given in Chapter II.),
revealing the general system of Russia, and the dangers accruing to
England from the Russification of Sweden; the second, called _The
Defensive Treaty_, judging the acts of England by the Treaty of 1700;
and the third, entitled _Truth is but Truth, however it is Timed_,
proving that the new-fangled schemes which magnified Russia into the
paramount Power of the Baltic were in flagrant opposition to the
traditionary policy England had pursued during the course of a whole
century.
The pamphlet called _The Defensive Treaty_ bears no date of publication.
Yet in one passage it states that, for reinforcing the Danish fleet,
eight English men-of-war were left at Copenhagen "_the year before the
last_," and in another passage alludes to the assembling of the
confederate fleet for the Schonen expedition as having occurred "_last
summer_." As the former event took place in 1715, and the latter towards
the end of the summer of 1716, it is evident that the pamphlet was
written and published in the earlier part of the year 1717. The
Defensive Treaty between England and Sweden, the single articles of
which the pamphlet comments upon in the form of queries, was concluded
in 1700 between William III. and Charles XII., and was not to expire
before 1719. Yet, during almost the whole of this period, we find
England continually assisting Russia and waging war against Sweden,
either by secret intrigue or open force, although the treaty was never
rescinded nor war ever declared. This fact is, perhaps, even less
strange than the _conspiration de silence_ under which modern historians
have succeeded in burying it, and among them historians by no means
sparing of censure against the British Government of that time, for
having, without any previous declaration of war, destroyed the Spanish
fleet in the Sicilian waters. But then, at least, England was not bound
to Spain by a defensive treaty. How, then, are we to explain this
contrary treatment of similar cases? The piracy committed against Spain
was one of the weapons which the Whig Ministers, seceding from the
Cabinet in 1717, caught hold of to harass their remaining colleagues.
When the latter stepped forward in 1718, and urged Parliament to declare
war against Spain, Sir Robert Walpole rose from his seat in the Commons,
and in a most virulent speech denounced the late ministerial acts "as
contrary to the laws of nations, and a breach of solemn treaties."
"Giving sanction to them in the manner proposed," he said, "could have
no other view than to screen ministers, who were conscious of having
done something amiss, and who, having begun a war against Spain, would
now make it the Parliament's war." The treachery against Sweden and the
connivance at the plans of Russia, never happening to afford the
ostensible pretext for a family quarrel amongst the Whig rulers (they
being rather unanimous on these points), never obtained the honours of
historical criticism so lavishly spent upon the Spanish incident.
How apt modern historians generally are to receive their cue from the
official tricksters themselves, is best shown by their reflections on
the commercial interests of England with respect to Russia and Sweden.
Nothing has been more exaggerated than the dimensions of the trade
opened to Great Britain by the huge market of the Russia of Peter the
Great, and his immediate successors. Statements bearing not the
slightest touch of criticism have been allowed to creep from one
book-shelf to another, till they became at last historical household
furniture, to be inherited by every successive historian, without even
the _beneficium inventarii_. Some incontrovertible statistical figures
will suffice to blot out these hoary common-places.
BRITISH COMMERCE FROM 1697-1700.
L
Export to Russia 58,884
Import from Russia 112,252
---------
Total 171,136
Export to Sweden 57,555
Import from Sweden 212,094
---------
Total 269,649
During the same period the total
L
Export of England amounted to 3,525,906
Import 3,482,586
---------
Total 7,008,492
In 1716, after all the Swedish provinces in the Baltic, and on the Gulfs
of Finland and Bothnia, had fallen into the hands of Peter I., the
L
Export to Russia was 113,154
Import from Russia 197,270
--------
Total 310,424
Export to Sweden 24,101
Import from Sweden 136,959
--------
Total 161,060
At the same time, the total of English exports and imports together
reached about L10,000,000. It will be seen from these figures, when
compared with those of 1697-1700, that the increase in the Russian trade
is balanced by the decrease in the Swedish trade, and that what was
added to the one was subtracted from the other.
In 1730, the
L
Export to Russia was 46,275
Import from Russia 258,802
--------
Total 305,077
Fifteen years, then, after the consolidation in the meanwhile of the
Muscovite settlement on the Baltic, the British trade with Russia had
fallen off by L5,347. The general trade of England reaching in 1730 the
sum of L16,329,001, the Russian trade amounted not yet to 1/53rd of its
total value. Again, thirty years later, in 1760, the account between
Great Britain and Russia stands thus:
L
Import from Russia (in 1760) 536,504
Export to Russia 39,761
--------
Total L576,265
while the general trade of England amounted to L26,361,760. Comparing
these figures with those of 1706, we find that the total of the Russian
commerce, after nearly half a century, has increased by the trifling sum
of only L265,841. That England suffered positive loss by her new
commercial relations with Russia under Peter I. and Catherine I.
becomes evident on comparing, on the one side, the export and import
figures, and on the other, the sums expended on the frequent naval
expeditions to the Baltic which England undertook during the lifetime of
Charles XII., in order to break down his resistance to Russia, and,
after his death, on the professed necessity of checking the maritime
encroachments of Russia.
Another glance at the statistical data given for the years 1697, 1700,
1716, 1730, and 1760, will show that the British _export_ trade to
Russia was continually falling off, save in 1716, when Russia engrossed
the whole Swedish trade on the eastern coast of the Baltic and the Gulf
of Bothnia, and had not yet found the opportunity of subjecting it to
her own regulations. From L58,884, at which the British exports to
Russia stood during 1697-1700, when Russia was still precluded from the
Baltic, they had sunk to L46,275 in 1730, and to L39,761 in 1760,
showing a decrease of L19,123, or about 1/3rd of their original amount
in 1700. If, then, since, the absorption of the Swedish provinces by
Russia, the British market proved expanding for Russia raw produce, the
Russian market, on its side, proved straitening for British
manufacturers, a feature of that trade which could hardly recommend it
at a time when the Balance of Trade doctrine ruled supreme. To trace the
circumstances which produced the increase of the Anglo-Russian trade
under Catherine II. would lead us too far from the period we are
considering.
On the whole, then, we arrive at the following conclusions: During the
first sixty years of the eighteenth century the total Anglo-Russian
trade formed but a very diminutive fraction of the general trade of
England, say less than 1/45th. Its sudden increase during the earliest
years of Peter's sway over the Baltic did not at all affect the general
balance of British trade, as it was a simple transfer from its Swedish
account to its Russian account. In the later times of Peter I., as well
as under his immediate successors, Catherine I. and Anne, the
Anglo-Russian trade was positively declining; during the whole epoch,
dating from the final settlement of Russia in the Baltic provinces, the
export of British manufactures to Russia was continually falling off, so
that at its end it stood one-third lower than at its beginning, when
that trade was still confined to the port of Archangel. Neither the
contemporaries of Peter I., nor the next British generation reaped any
benefit from the advancement of Russia to the Baltic. In general the
Baltic trade of Great Britain was at that time trifling in regard of the
capital involved, but important in regard of its character. It afforded
England the raw produce for its maritime stores. That from the latter
point of view the Baltic was in safer keeping in the hands of Sweden
than in those of Russia, was not only proved by the pamphlets we are
reprinting, but fully understood by the British Ministers themselves.
Stanhope writing, for instance, to Townshend on October 16th, 1716:
"It is certain that if the Czar be let alone three years, he will
be absolute master in those seas."[21]
If, then, neither the navigation nor the general commerce of England was
interested in the treacherous support given to Russia against Sweden,
there existed, indeed, one small fraction of British merchants whose
interests were identical with the Russian ones--the Russian Trade
Company. It was this gentry that raised a cry against Sweden. See, for
instance:
"Several grievances of the English merchants in their trade into
the dominions of the King of Sweden, whereby it does appear how
dangerous it may be for the English nation to depend on Sweden only
for the supply of the naval stores, when they might be amply
furnished with the like stores from the dominions of the Emperor of
Russia."
"The case of the merchants trading to Russia" (a petition to
Parliament), etc.
It was they who in the years 1714, 1715, and 1716, regularly assembled
twice a week before the opening of Parliament, to draw up in public
meetings the complaints of the British merchantmen against Sweden. On
this small fraction the Ministers relied; they were even busy in getting
up its demonstrations, as may be seen from the letters addressed by
Count Gyllenborg to Baron Goertz, dated 4th of November and 4th of
December, 1716, wanting, as they did, but the shadow of a pretext to
drive their "mercenary Parliament," as Gyllenborg calls it, where they
liked. The influence of these British merchants trading to Russia was
again exhibited in the year 1765, and our own times have witnessed the
working for his interest, of a Russian merchant at the head of the Board
of Trade, and of a Chancellor of the Exchequer in the interest of a
cousin engaged in the Archangel trade.
The oligarchy which, after the "glorious revolution," usurped wealth and
power at the cost of the mass of the British people, was, of course,
forced to look out for allies, not only abroad, but also at home. The
latter they found in what the French would call _la haute bourgeoisie_,
as represented by the Bank of England, the money-lenders, State
creditors, East India and other trading corporations, the great
manufacturers, etc. How tenderly they managed the material interests of
that class may be learned from the whole of their domestic
legislation--Bank Acts, Protectionist enactments, Poor Regulations, etc.
As to their _foreign policy_, they wanted to give it the appearance at
least of being altogether regulated by the mercantile interest, an
appearance the more easily to be produced, as the exclusive interest of
one or the other small fraction of that class would, of course, be
always identified with this or that Ministerial measure. The interested
fraction then raised the commerce and navigation cry, which the nation
stupidly re-echoed.
At that time, then, there devolved on the Cabinet, at least, the _onus_
of inventing _mercantile pretexts_, however futile, for their measures
of foreign policy. In our own epoch, British Ministers have thrown this
burden on foreign nations, leaving to the French, the Germans, etc.,
the irksome task of discovering the _secret_ and _hidden_ mercantile
springs of their actions. Lord Palmerston, for instance, takes a step
apparently the most damaging to the material interests of Great Britain.
Up starts a State philosopher, on the other side of the Atlantic, or of
the Channel, or in the heart of Germany, who puts his head to the rack
to dig out the mysteries of the mercantile Machiavelism of "perfide
Albion," of which Palmerston is supposed the unscrupulous and
unflinching executor. We will, _en passant_, show, by a few modern
instances, what desperate shifts those foreigners have been driven to,
who feel themselves obliged to interpret Palmerston's acts by what they
imagine to be the English commercial policy. In his valuable _Histoire
Politique et Sociale des Principautes Danubiennes_, M. Elias Regnault,
startled by the Russian conduct, before and during the years 1848-49 of
Mr. Colquhoun, the British Consul at Bucharest, suspects that England
has some secret material interest in keeping down the trade of the
Principalities. The late Dr. Cunibert, private physician of old Milosh,
in his most interesting account of the Russian intrigues in Servia,
gives a curious relation of the manner in which Lord Palmerston, through
the instrumentality of Colonel Hodges, betrayed Milosh to Russia by
feigning to support him against her. Fully believing in the personal
integrity of Hodges, and the patriotic zeal of Palmerston, Dr. Cunibert
is found to go a step further than M. Elias Regnault. He suspects
England of being interested in putting down Turkish commerce generally.
General Mieroslawski, in his last work on Poland, is not very far from
intimating that mercantile Machiavelism instigated England to sacrifice
her own _prestige_ in Asia Minor, by the surrender of Kars. As a last
instance may serve the present lucubrations of the Paris papers, hunting
after the secret springs of commercial jealousy, which induce Palmerston
to oppose the cutting of the Isthmus of Suez canal.
To return to our subject. The mercantile pretext hit upon by the
Townshends, Stanhopes, etc., for the hostile demonstrations against
Sweden, was the following. Towards the end of 1713, Peter I. had
ordered all the hemp and other produce of his dominions, destined for
export, to be carried to St. Petersburg instead of Archangel. Then the
Swedish Regency, during the absence of Charles XII., and Charles XII.
himself, after his return from Bender, declared all the Baltic ports,
occupied by the Russians, to be blockaded. Consequently, English ships,
breaking through the blockade, were confiscated. The English Ministry
then asserted that British merchantmen had the right of trading to those
ports according to Article XVII. of the Defensive Treaty of 1700, by
which English commerce, with the exception of contraband of war, was
allowed to go on with ports of the enemy. The absurdity and falsehood of
this pretext being fully exposed in the pamphlet we are about to
reprint, we will only remark that the case had been more than once
decided against commercial nations, not bound, like England, by treaty
to defend the integrity of the Swedish Empire. In the year 1561, when
the Russians took Narva, and laboured hard to establish their commerce
there, the Hanse towns, chiefly Luebeck, tried to possess themselves of
this traffic. Eric XIV., then King of Sweden, resisted their
pretensions. The city of Luebeck represented this resistance as
altogether new, as they had carried on their commerce with the Russians
time out of mind, and pleaded the common right of nations to navigate in
the Baltic, provided their vessels carried no contraband of war. The
King replied that he did not dispute the Hanse towns the liberty of
trading with Russia, but only with Narva, which was no Russian port. In
the year 1579 again, the Russians having broken the suspension of arms
with Sweden, the Danes likewise claimed the navigation to Narva, by
virtue of their treaty, but King John was as firm in maintaining the
contrary, as was his brother Eric.
In her open demonstrations of hostility against the King of Sweden, as
well as in the false pretence on which they were founded, England seemed
only to follow in the track of Holland, which declaring the confiscation
of its ships to be piracy, had issued two proclamations against Sweden
in 1714.
In one respect, the case of the States-General was the same as that of
England. King William had concluded the Defensive Treaty as well for
Holland as for England. Besides, Article XVI., in the Treaty of
Commerce, concluded between Holland and Sweden in 1703, expressly
stipulated that no navigation ought to be allowed to the ports blocked
up by either of the confederates. The then common Dutch cant that "there
was no hindering traders from carrying their merchandise where they
will," was the more impudent as, during the war, ending with the Peace
of Ryswick, the Dutch Republic had declared all France to be blocked up,
forbidden the neutral Powers all trade with that kingdom, and caused all
their ships that went there or came thence to be brought up without any
regard to the nature of their cargoes.
In another respect, the situation of Holland was different from that of
England. Fallen from its commercial and maritime grandeur, Holland had
then already entered upon its epoch of decline. Like Genoa and Venice,
when new roads of commerce had dispossessed them of their old mercantile
supremacy, it was forced to lend out to other nations its capital, grown
too large for the vessels of its own commerce. Its fatherland had begun
to lie there where the best interest for its capital was paid. Russia,
therefore, proved an immense market, less for the commerce than for the
outlay of capital and men. To this moment Holland has remained the
banker of Russia. At the time of Peter they supplied Russia with ships,
officers, arms, and money, so that his fleet, as a contemporary writer
remarks, ought to have been called a Dutch rather than a Muscovite one.
They gloried in having sent the first European merchant ship to St.
Petersburg, and returned the commercial privileges they had obtained
from Peter, or hoped to obtain from him, by that fawning meanness which
characterizes their intercourse with Japan. Here, then, was quite
another solid foundation than in England for the Russianism of
statesmen, whom Peter I. had entrapped during his stay at Amsterdam, and
the Hague in 1697, whom he afterwards directed by his ambassadors, and
with whom he renewed his personal influence during his renewed stay at
Amsterdam in 1716-17. Yet, if the paramount influence England exercised
over Holland during the first _decennia_ of the 18th century be
considered, there can remain no doubt that the proclamations against
Sweden by the States-General would never have been issued, if not with
the previous consent and at the instigation of England. The intimate
connection between the English and Dutch Governments served more than
once the former to put up precedents in the name of Holland, which they
were resolved to act upon in the name of England. On the other hand, it
is no less certain that the Dutch statesmen were employed by the Czar to
influence the British ones. Thus Horace Walpole, the brother of the
"Father of Corruption," the brother-in-law of the Minister, Townshend,
and the British Ambassador at the Hague during 1715-16, was evidently
inveigled into the Russian interest by his Dutch friends. Thus, as we
shall see by-and-by, Theyls, the Secretary to the Dutch Embassy at
Constantinople, at the most critical period of the deadly struggle
between Charles XII. and Peter I., managed affairs at the same time for
the Embassies of England and Holland at the Sublime Porte. This Theylls,
in a print of his, openly claims it as a merit with his nation to have
been the devoted and rewarded agent of Russian intrigue.
FOOTNOTE:
[21] In the year 1657, when the Courts of Denmark and Brandenburg
intended engaging the Muscovites to fall upon Sweden, they instructed
their Minister so to manage the affair that the Czar might by no means
get any footing in the Baltic, because "they did not know what to do
with so troublesome a neighbour." (See Puffendorf's _History of
Brandenburg_.)