Turkey not to be a _casus belli_. Negotiations were commenced at
Vienna, and the celebrated Vienna note was drawn up. This note had its
origin in Paris [Footnote: Earl of Westmorland to Lord Clarendon, July
25, 1853--Blue Book, part ii. p. 19.], was agreed to by the Conference
at Vienna, ratified and approved by the Cabinets of Paris and London
[Footnote: Earl of Clarendon to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, August 2,
1853--Blue Book, part ii. p. 27. Lord Cowley to Lord Clarendon, August
4, 1853--Ibid, part ii. p. 37.], and pronounced by all these authorities
to be such as would satisfy the honour of Russia, and at the same time
be compatible with the 'independence and integrity' of Turkey and the
honour of the Sultan. Russia accepted this note at once [Footnote: Sir
G. H. Seymour to the Earl of Clarendon, August 5, 1853--Blue Book, part
ii. p. 43. Count Nesselrode, August 6, 1853--Ibid, part ii. p. 46.],--
accepted it, I believe, by telegraph, even before the precise words of
it had been received in St. Petersburgh [Footnote: Sir G. H. Seymour to
Lord Clarendon, August 12, 1853--Blue Book, part ii. p. 50. Count
Nesselrode to Baron Meyendorff, September 7, 1853--Ibid, part ii. p.
101.]. Everybody thought the question now settled; a Cabinet Minister
assured me we should never hear another word about it; 'the whole thing
is at an end,' he said, and so it appeared for a moment. But the Turk
refused the note which had been drawn up by his own arbitrators, and
which Russia had accepted [Footnote: Lord Stratford de Redcliffe to the
Earl of Clarendon, August 13, 1853--Blue Book, part iv. p. 69. Lord
Stratford to the Earl of Clarendon, August 14, 1853--Ibid, part ii. p.
71.]. And what did the Ministers say then, and what did their organ, the
_Times_, say? They said it was merely a difference about words; it
was a pity the Turk made any difficulty, but it would soon be settled
[Footnote: Lord Cowley to Lord Clarendon, from Paris, September 2, 1853--
Blue Book, part iv. p. 87. Lord Clarendon to Lord Stratford de
Redcliffe, September 10, 1853--Ibid, part iv. p. 95. The _Times_,
September 17, 1853.]. But it was not settled, and why not? It is said
that the Russian Government put an improper construction on the Vienna
note. But it is unfortunate for those who say this, that the Turk placed
precisely the same construction upon it; and further, it is upon record
that the French Government advised the Russian Government to accept it,
on the ground that 'its general sense differed in nothing from the sense
of the proposition of Prince Menchikoff.' [Footnote: Earl of Clarendon
to the Earl of Westmoreland, July 25, 1853--Blue Book, part ii. p. 1.
Count Nesselrode's Memorandum of March 2, 1854, in the _Journal des
Debats_.] It is, however, easy to see why the Russian Government
should, when the Turks refused the award of their own arbitrators, re-
state its original claim, that it might not be damaged by whatever
concession it had made in accepting the award; and this is evidently the
explanation of the document issued by Count Nesselrode, and about which
so much has been said. But, after this, the Emperor of Russia spoke to
Lord Westmoreland on the subject at Olmutz, and expressed his readiness
to accept the Vienna note, with any clause which the Conference might
add to it, explaining and restricting its meaning; [Footnote: Lord
Westmoreland to Lord Clarendon, September 28, 1853--Blue Book, part ii.
p. 129. Lord Cowley to Lord Clarendon, October 4, 1853--Ibid, part ii.
p. 131. Lord Clarendon to Lord Cowley, October 7, 1853--Ibid, part ii.
p. 140. Lord Clarendon to Lord A. Loftus--Ibid, part ii. p. 132.] and he
urged that this should be done at once, as he was anxious that his
troops should re-cross the Pruth before winter. [Footnote: Earl of
Westmoreland, September 14, 1853--Blue Book, part ii. p. 106.] It was in
this very week that the Turks summoned a grand council, and, contrary to
the advice of England and France, determined on a declaration of war.
[Footnote: Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, September 26, 1853--Blue Book,
part ii. p. 130. M. Drouyn de Lhuys to Count Walewski, October 4, 1853--
Ibid, part ii. p. 136.]
Now, observe the course taken by our Government. They agreed to the
Vienna note; not fewer than five Members of this Cabinet have filled the
office of Foreign Secretary, and therefore may be supposed capable of
comprehending its meaning: it was a note drawn up by the friends of
Turkey, and by arbitrators self-constituted on behalf of Turkey; they
urged its acceptance on the Russian Government, and the Russian
Government accepted it; there was then a dispute about its precise
meaning, and Russia agreed, and even proposed that the arbitrators at
Vienna should amend it, by explaining it, and limiting its meaning, so
that no question of its intention should henceforth exist. But, the
Turks having rejected it, our Government turned round, and declared the
Vienna note, their own note, entirely inadmissible, and defended the
conduct of the Turks in having rejected it. The Turks declared war,
against the advice of the English and French Governments [Footnote: Lord
Stratford de Redcliffe, September 20, 1853--Blue Book, part ii. pp. 149,
151. Lord Clarendon, October 24, 1853--Ibid, part ii. p. 131. Lord
Stratford, November 17, 1853--Ibid, part ii. pp. 271, 281. Lord
Stratford--Ibid, part ii. p. 288. Lord Clarendon to Lord Stratford,
November 8, 1853--Ibid, part ii. p. 219.]--so, at least, it appears from
the Blue Books; but the moment war was declared by Turkey, our
Government openly applauded it. England, then, was committed to the war.
She had promised armed assistance to Turkey--a country without
government [Footnote: Lord Clarendon to Lord Stratford--Blue Book, part
i. pp. 81, 82. Lord Stratford to M. E. Pisani, June 22, 1853--Ibid, part
i. p. 383. The same to the same, July 4--Ibid, part i. pp. 383, 384.],
and whose administration was at the mercy of contending factions; and
incapable of fixing a policy for herself, she allowed herself to be
dragged on by the current of events at Constantinople. She 'drifted,' as
Lord Clarendon said, exactly describing his own position, into the war,
apparently without rudder and without compass.
The whole policy of our Government in this matter is marked with an
imbecility perhaps without example. I will not say they intended a war
from the first, though there are not wanting many evidences that war was
the object of at least a section of the Cabinet. A distinguished Member
of the House of Commons said to a friend of mine, immediately after the
accession of the present Government to office, 'You have a war Ministry,
and you will have a war.' But I leave this question to point out the
disgraceful feebleness of the Cabinet, if I am to absolve them from the
guilt of having sought occasion for war. They promised the Turk armed
assistance on conditions, or without conditions. They, in concert with
France, Austria, and Prussia, took the original dispute out of the hands
of Russia and Turkey, and formed themselves into a court of arbitration
in the interests of Turkey; they made an award, which they declared to
be safe and honourable for both parties; this award was accepted by
Russia and rejected by Turkey; and they then turned round upon their own
award, declared it to be 'totally inadmissible,' and made war upon the
very country whose Government, at their suggestion and urgent
recommendation, had frankly accepted it. At this moment England is
engaged in a murderous warfare with Russia, although the Russian
Government accepted her own terms of peace, and has been willing to
accept them in the sense of England's own interpretation of them ever
since they were offered; and at the same time England is allied with
Turkey, whose Government rejected the award of England, and who entered
into the war in opposition to the advice of England. Surely, when the
Vienna note was accepted by Russia, the Turks should have been prevented
from going to war, or should have been allowed to go to war at their own
risk.
I have said nothing here of the fact that all these troubles have sprung
out of the demands made by France upon the Turkish Government, and urged
in language more insulting than any which has been shown to have been
used by Prince Menchikoff [Footnote: Col. Rose to the Earl of
Malmesbury, November 20, 1852--Blue Book, part i. p. 49. Lord J. Russell
to Lord Cowley, January 28, 1853--Ibid, part i. p. 67.]. I have said
nothing of the diplomatic war which has been raging for many years past
in Constantinople, and in which England has been behind no other Power
in attempting to subject the Porte to foreign influences [Footnote: Blue
Book--Correspondence respecting the Condition of Protestants in Turkey,
1841-51, pp. 5-8.] I have said nothing of the abundant evidence there is
that we are not only at war with Russia, but with all the Christian
population of the Turkish Empire, and that we are building up our
Eastern policy on a false foundation--namely, on the perpetual
maintenance of the most immoral and filthy of all despotisms over one of
the fairest portions of the earth which it has desolated, and over a
population it has degraded but has not been able to destroy. I have said
nothing of the wretched delusion that we are fighting for civilization
in supporting the Turk against the Russian and against the subject
Christian population of Turkey. I have said nothing about our pretended
sacrifices for freedom in this war, in which our great and now dominant
ally is a monarch who, last in Europe, struck down a free constitution,
and dispersed by military violence a national Representative Assembly.
My doctrine would have been non-intervention in this case. The danger of
the Russian power was a phantom [Footnote: 'There never has been a great
State whose power for external aggression has been more overrated than
Russia. She may be impregnable within her own boundaries, BUT SHE IS
NEARLY POWERLESS FOR ANY PURPOSE OF OFFENCE.'--_Lord Palmerston, in
the House of Commons_, 1853.]; the necessity of permanently upholding
the Mahometan rule in Europe is an absurdity. Our love for civilization,
when we subject the Greeks and Christians to the Turks, is a sham; and
our sacrifices for freedom, when working out the behests of the Emperor
of the French and coaxing Austria to help us, is a pitiful imposture.
The evils of non-intervention were remote and vague, and could neither
be weighed nor described in any accurate terms. The good we can judge
something of already, by estimating the cost of a contrary policy. And
what is that cost? War in the north and south of Europe, threatening to
involve every country of Europe. Many, perhaps fifty millions sterling,
in the course of expenditure by this country alone, to be raised from
the taxes of a people whose extrication from ignorance and poverty can
only be hoped for from the continuance of peace. The disturbance of
trade throughout the world, the derangement of monetary affairs, and
difficulties and ruin to thousands of families. Another year of high
prices of food, notwithstanding a full harvest in England, chiefly
because war interferes with imports, and we have declared our principal
foreign food-growers to be our enemies. The loss of human life to an
enormous extent. Many thousands of our own countrymen have already
perished of pestilence and in the field; and hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of English families will be plunged into sorrow, as a part of
the penalty to be paid for the folly of the nation and its rulers.
When the time comes for the 'inquisition for blood,' who shall answer
for these things? You have read the tidings from the Crimea; you have,
perhaps, shuddered at the slaughter; you remember the terrific picture,--
I speak not of the battle, and the charge, and the tumultuous
excitement of the conflict, but of the field after the battle--Russians,
in their frenzy or their terror, shooting Englishmen who would have
offered them water to quench their agony of thirst; Englishmen, in
crowds, rifling the pockets of the men they had slain or wounded, taking
their few shillings or roubles, and discovering among the plunder of the
stiffening corpses images of the 'Virgin and the Child.' You have read
this, and your imagination has followed the fearful details. This is
war,--every crime which human nature can commit or imagine, every
horror it can perpetrate or suffer; and this it is which our Christian
Government recklessly plunges into, and which so many of our countrymen
at this moment think it patriotic to applaud! You must excuse me if I
cannot go with you. I will have no part in this terrible crime. My hands
shall be unstained with the blood which is being shed. The necessity of
maintaining themselves in office may influence an administration;
delusions may mislead a people; _Vattel_ may afford you a law and a
defence; but no respect for men who form a Government, no regard I have
for 'going with the stream,' and no fear of being deemed wanting in
patriotism, shall influence me in favour of a policy which, in my
conscience, I believe to be as criminal before God as it is destructive
of the true interest of my country.
I have only to ask you to forgive me for writing so long a letter. You
have forced it from me, and I would not have written it did I not so
much appreciate your sincerity and your good intentions towards me.
Believe me to be, very sincerely yours,
JOHN BRIGHT.
October 29.