Two correspondences dated London, September 20 and 23, 1853, published in the New-York Daily Tribune, No. 3889, October 4, 1853, pp. 5-6, and No. 3892, October 7, 1853, p. 6, both signed Karl Marx; attributed by MEGA² (I/12) to Karl Marx (the first) and to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (the second), under the titles given below as headings. Text from the original newspaper (Library of Congress, Chronicling America). Traducción al español.
The Western Powers and Turkey—Imminent Economic Crisis—Railway Construction in India
New-York Daily Tribune, No. 3889, October 4, 1853
London, Tuesday, Sept. 20, 1853.
In my letter of July 19, I said:
“The Western Powers commence by encouraging the Sultan to resist the Czar, from fear of the encroachments of Russia, and terminate by compelling the former to yield, from fear of a general war giving rise to a general revolution.”
Now, at this moment the strength of the combined fleets is intended to be used for Russia against Turkey. If the Anglo-French fleet enter the Dardanelles at all, it will be done not to bombard Sebastopol, but to reduce to terms the Mussulmans who might prevent the Sultan from accepting without conditions the Vienna Note.
“On the 13th of September,” says D. Urquhart, “the four foreign Secretaries quietly assembled in Downing-st., and decided to send orders to Constantinople to enforce upon the Porte the withdrawal of the modifications which the European Conference had accepted. Not content with this, and in case the Sultan should find himself unable to resist the exasperation of his people, they send orders for the squadron to advance into the waters of the Bosphorus to support him against his subjects. Nor content with this, they also dispatched orders to Omar Pacha to forbid him from passing from one province to another in his Sovereign’s Dominions. They have consequently contemplated the rebellion as the result of their dispatch, and provided means for putting it down, these means being the allied squadron.
It was from Sunday’s Journal des Debats that the English public became acquainted with this news. The Journal des Debats stated that Mr. Reeves, having left London on the 12th inst., with dispatches for Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, arrived in Paris on the morning and left it on the evening of the 14th, after he had communicated to the French Government the tenor of his instructions, ordering the English Ambassador to demand the entire adhesion of the Porte to the Vienna proposals, the retraction of its modifications of the 19th August, threatening it with the withdrawal of the support of the four Powers in the event of a war arising from her refusal to yield, and offering it the assistance of the French and English fleets for putting down any insurrection that might break out in Constantinople if the Porte were to comply with the Vienna Note, and against Omar Pacha, if he dared to act in disobedience to the orders of the Porte. Before the arrival of the Journal des Débats, we were informed that the Vienna Conference, on receipt of the Emperor’s refusal, sent proposals to the Sultan that he should recall his words, that he should sign the note he had refused to sign, and be content with an assurance that the Conference would put any interpretation on the note agreeable to the Sultan himself. The Times avoids speaking of the compromising revelations made by the Journal des Débats. So does The Morning Chronicle, The Morning Post, and the whole of the governmental London press. In the meantime The Morning Post denounces the fanaticism of the Constantinople mob, The Morning Chronicle is exciting its dull readers by romantic descriptions of the fierce and undisciplined Asiatic hordes inundating European Turkey, and swelling Omar Pacha’s army; the gallant Globe publishes day after day carefully selected extracts from the peace-mongering press of the Manchester school, and, in due time, the respectable classes of England will be prepared “to annihilate Paganism,” and to shout with Prince Gortchacoff, “Long life to the Czar! Long life to the God of the Russians!”
In its to-day’s number The Times discovers that “the Turkish question has plainly become a question of words;” the inference to be drawn from its premises being, that the Sultan who intends exposing the peace of the world for mere words, must be forcibly brought to reason by the more sober-minded Palmerstons and Aberdeens. The Czar, we are told by The Times, having preferred unjust demands upon the Sultan, the Sultan rejected them, the Czar seized the Danubian Principalities, England and France dispatched their fleets to Besika Bay, and the representatives of these Powers met those of Austria and Prussia in Vienna.
Why did they meet them in Vienna? In favor of Turkey, says The Times. “Not only could there be no desire of coercing the Ottoman Government, but there was no occasion for such an action.” If, then, there is now a desire on the part of the four Powers for coercing the Ottoman Government, “it is simply because there is now” an occasion for “such an action.” Would it then be wrong to suppose that the sole and principal aim of the Vienna Conference and of the interference of Palmerston and Aberdeen has been the affording such an occasion, that they made only a show of resistance to Russia, in order to gain a pretext for coercing Turkey into submission to her?
“The demands of Russia,” continues The Times, were “thought unjustifiable by the other great Powers, incompatible with the sovereign rights of the Sultan,” and therefore, the great Powers drew up a Note to be presented by the Sultan to the Czar, ratifying all the demands of the Czar and something more. “The terms of this document,” says The Times, “were liable to misconstruction, but, two points were unimpeachably clear—first, that the four Powers intended to maintain the territorial and administrative rights of the Porte: and, next, that in the event of dispute they would have been bound by this intention.”
Why should the Sultan not subscribe a note, derogatory of his sovereign rights and surrendering the protectorate of twelve millions of his subjects to the control of the autocrat, while he feels himself backed by the good “intentions” of the four Powers and by their being bound by hidden “good intentions” in the case of a dispute? As the Sultan has had occasion to learn, the four Powers feel themselves not bound either by the law of nations, or by explicit treaties, to defend him in the event of a dispute with Russia; why should he not trust to their valor in the event of a dispute arising from a note which endows Russia with open claims and Turkey with “hidden intentions?”
“Let us take,” says The Times, “the extreme case of supposing that, after the acceptance pure et simple of the original Vienna note, the Czar should have availed himself of those opportunities with which the note is thought to have provided him.” What then? “The Sultan would have protested, and the case would have arisen from the application of the adjustment of 1853.” As if there had arisen no case from the application of the adjustment of 1840 and 1841, of the treaty of Balta-Liman, and of the violation of the law of nations, characterized by Lord Clarendon himself as “an act of piracy!” “The ambiguity,” says The Times, “would merely have misled the Emperor of Russia.” Exactly so, as the treaty of 1841 has “misled” him to keep the united fleets out of the Dardanelles while he himself entered the Principalities.
The Sultan, however, is stiff-necked. He has refused compliance with a note which was able to express its good intentions for Turkey only by delivering her up to Russia. He proposed certain modifications in this note, and “the four Powers,” says The Times, “showed by their approval of the Turkish modifications, that they believed them to coincide with their own proposals.” But, as the Emperor of Russia is of a contrary opinion, and as The Times thinks it most undoubtedly true, that the Czar’s “proceedings in this dispute deserve no consideration whatever.” The Times comes to the conclusion that, as Russia will not yield to the reasonable conditions of Turkey, Turkey must yield to the unreasonable conditions of Russia, and that “a state which is yet so impotent as to require European protection at every menace of aggression from without or insurrection from within, must at least so far pay the penalty of its weakness as to receive aid indispensable to its existence on the terms least onerous to its supporters.” The four Powers, of course, must join Russia against Turkey, because Turkey is supposed to want their aid in order to resist Russia.—Turkey must “pay the penalty for its weakness,” in having had recourse to the four great Powers she is obliged by treaties to appeal to.
“There is no alternative. Either the laws of England have to be exercised in their penal rigor upon the persons of four traitors, (Aberdeen, Clarendon, Palmerston, and Russell), or the Czar of Russia commands the world.” Such declamation as this uttered in The Morning Advertiser, by D. Urquhart, is good for nothing. Who is to judge the four traitors? Parliament. Who forms that Parliament? The representatives of the Stockjobbers, the Millocrats, and the Aristocrats. And what foreign policy do these representatives represent? That of the paix partout et toujours. And who execute their ideas of foreign policy? The identical four men to be condemned by them as traitors, according to the simple-minded Morning Advertiser. One thing must be evident at least, that it is the Stockjobbers, and the Peacemongering Bourgeoisie, represented in the Government by the Oligarchy, who surrender Europe to Russia, and that in order to resist the encroachments of the Czar, we must, above all, overthrow the inglorious Empire of those mean, cringing and infamous adorers of the veau d’or.
Immediately after the arrival of the Vienna note at Constantinople, the Ottoman Porte called 80,000 men of the Redifs under arms. According to a telegraphic dispatch dated Constantinople, Sept. 5, the Turkish Ministry had resolved, after a conference held at the house of the Grand Vizier, to maintain their last note at the hazard of war. The enthusiasm of the Mussulman population has reached its highest pitch. The Sultan, having reviewed the Egyptian troops, and being received with deafening acclamations, was, after the review, lifted from his horse by the multitude and carried in triumph through the streets of Stambul. He has reiterated to the Hospodars of Moldavia and Wallachia his order to quiet the principalities. As the Russian subjects resident at Constantinople have been convicted of intriguing against the Turkish Government, Reschid Pacha has given a warning to the Russian Consul on their behalf. A Constantinople journal states that the Israelite community at Constantinople has offered to the Sultan a million of piasters in order to contribute to the expenses occasioned by the military preparations of the Empire. The Smyrna Israelites are said to have come to a similar resolution. A letter in the Vienna Press informs us that several Boyards have been arrested at Galatz because they had entered into a secret correspondence with Omar Pacha informing him of all details with regard to the state of the Russian army in the Principalities. A letter of Omar Pacha has been found inviting these Boyards to enlist as many foreigners as possible.
Prince Menchikoff had arrived at Vienna on the 13th instant, accompanied by a Secretary, and as the bearer of a new manifesto of the Emperor Nicholas, addressed to the European Powers, and explaining his reasons for rejecting the Turkish modifications. The Emperor himself will arrive at Olmütz on the 21st instant, accompanied by Count Nesselrode and by Baron de Meyendorff. The King of Prussia whom he had summoned by the Prince de Lieven to the Olmütz Conference, has refused to make his appearance on the ground that, under existing circumstances, such a step on his part would have too much éclat. A Russian corps d’armée 30,000 strong is stationed now at Krajowo on the frontiers of Bulgaria. Until now there have existed only eight army commissariats in the Russian Empire. A regular ninth commissariat has just been established at Bucharest—a sure indication that the Russians do not think of evacuating the Principalities.
On the 15th of Sept. the Bank of England raised its rates of interest to 4 1-2 per cent. The Money article in to-day’s Times tells us that “The measure is regarded with general satisfaction.” In the same article, however, we find it stated that, “At about 2 P.M. business at the Stock Exchange was in fact almost wholly suspended, and when the announcement was made, shortly afterward, of the advance to 4 1-2 per cent., prices declined to 95 for money and 95 1-8 to 95 1-4 for the 13th of Oct. A general opinion prevailed, that if the advance had been to 5 instead of 4 1-2 per cent., the effect on the market would possibly have been less unfavorable, since the public would then have considered the probability of any further action to have ceased. * * * * * In the Railway market a severe relapse occurred, after the breaking up of the Bank Court, and prices of all kinds left off with a very unsettled appearance.” The writer in The Times congratulates the Bank Directors on their following up the policy of the Peel Act. “In proportion as the circulation diminished from the drain of gold, the Directors have asked a higher price for the use of what remained, and have thus allowed the Bank Charter Act of Sir R. Peel that free course, by which alone its soundness can be demonstrated, and which was prevented by the infatuated proceedings of the Directors in 1847.” Now I have shown in a former letter that the infatuation of the Directors in 1849 consisted precisely in their close adherence to the Peel Act, the “free course” of which had to be interrupted by Government, in order to save the Banking Department from the necessity of stopping payment. We read in The Globe:
“It is highly improbable that the causes which have produced our present prosperity will continue to operate in the same proportion. Unhealthy results have already appeared in Manchester, where some of the largest firms have been compelled to limit their amount of production. . . . . . . All departments of the Stock Exchange continue in a very depressed state. The Railway market is in a complete state of panic. . . . . . . The efflux of gold to the Continent continues, and nearly half a million of money goes over to St. Petersburg in a day or two by steamer. . . . . . . One object of its (the Bank’s) husbanding its resources of specie is probably a desire to assist the Chancellor of the Exchequer with the seven or eight millions which he will require to pay off the South Sea stockholders and other dissentients.”
The Morning Post of the 13th inst. reports from Manchester:
“The market for cloth and yarn is dull, and the prices of all descriptions of manufactures are barely supported. The absence of demand from almost every foreign market and the anticipated money pressure at home, have mainly contributed to a state of things which is most anomalous, when contrasted with the accounts of prosperity generally current.”
The same journal, of the 15th inst., winds up a leading article on the collecting élements of the approaching crisis in the following terms:
“We warn the commercial world that we are at a phase in which care and steady consideration are eminently requisite in the conception and conduct of enterprise. Our financial position, besides, is one which, in our view, is full of dangers even more serious and more difficult of avoidance than our commercial.”
From the combined statements of The Globe and Morning Post, it follows that while the demand is declining on the one hand, the supply, on the other, has been overdone. Manufacturers will attempt to cover their retreat by falling back on the quarrel existing with their workmen. The trade reporter in yesterday’s Morning Chronicle writes from Manchester:
“Manufactures are becoming greatly indifferent about entering into engagements, from the persuasion that an extensive, if not universal stoppage of mills must take place before any settlement of the wages question can be effected. On this subject there have been conferences among employers in various parts of the districts within the last few days; and it is evident that the exorbitant clamors set up by the operatives, together with the wild attempts at dictation, are forcing the millowners into a general combination for self-defense.”
We read in the money article of The Times:
“Masters are forming Unions for self-defense, in all the districts. At Ashton, Staley Bridge, Hyde, and Glossop, nearly 100 firms have placed their names to a deed of Union within the last few days. At Preston the masters have entered into heavy bonds to each other to resist the operatives by closing their mills for three months.”
A telegraphic dispatch from Marseilles reports that wheat has again advanced by 2 frs. 25 cent. per hectolitre. The augmentation of the interest on treasury bonds, announced in The Moniteur, produced a most unfavorable impression at the Bourse; that measure being generally considered as a sign that the Government is in want of money. A loan was spoken of which the Government would be obliged to contract. The Minister of Finance has sent a circular to a vast number of landed proprietors, asking them to pay six months taxes in advance, as a mark of gratitude for the great benefits which the present Government had conferred on them, and for the additional value which it had imparted to property. “This,” remarks The Observer, “is the beginning of the end.”
Having dwelt in a former letter on the vital importance of railways for India, I think fit to give now the latest news which has been published with regard to the progress and prospects of the intended network. The first Indian railway was the line now in operation between Bombay and Tannah. Another line is now to be carried from Calcutta to Russnehael on the Ganges, a distance of 180 miles, and then to proceed along the right bank of the river to Patna, Benares and Allahabad. From Allahabad it will be conducted across the Doab to Agra and thence to Delhi, traversing in this manner a space of 1,100 miles. It is contemplated to establish steam ferry-boats across the Soane and Tunona, and that the Calcutta line will finally proceed from Delhi to Lahore. In Madras a railway is to be commenced forthwith, which, running 70 miles due west, will branch off into two arms—one pursuing the Ghauts and terminating at Calicut, the other being carried on by Bellary and Poonah to Bombay. This skeleton of the chain of railways will be completed by the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway, the preliminary surveys for which are now proceeding under the sanction of the Court of Directors. This line will pass from Bombay by Baroda to Agra, where it will meet the great trunk railway from Calcutta to Delhi, and by its means Bombay, the Capital of Western India, and the best port of communication with Europe, for all Hindostan will be put in communication with Calcutta on the one hand, and with the Punjaub and the north-western provinces on the other. The promoters of this scheme intend also to throw out branches into the great cotton district of the interior. In the meantime, measures are in progress for extending the electric telegraph throughout the whole of the peninsula of India.
The Western Powers and Turkey—Symptoms of Economic Crisis
New-York Daily Tribune, No. 3892, October 7, 1853
London, Friday, Sept. 23, 1853.
The Globe, in its number of Sept. 20, denies the authenticity of the statement of the Journal des Débats with regard to the mission of Mr. Reeves, and The Times of Wednesday reprints the article of The Globe under the head of gobemoucherie, accusing the French press of trading in canards. But did not the leading article of The Times I analyzed in my last letter wholly confirm the statement of the Journal des Débats? Has there appeared any refutation in the Paris Moniteur? Did not, on the same day that The Globe gave the lie to the Débats, the Assemblée Nationale reiterate that “Lord Redcliffe was to notify to the Sultan that, if he refused to withdraw his modification, the English fleet would enter the Dardanelles, and the French fleet would not be slow to follow?” Did not The Times, on the same day on which it reproduced the denial of The Globe, explicitly declare that “England and France had no business to interfere between Russia and Turkey, except on the terms proposed by the four allied Powers, and accepted by Russia, whether these terms were agreeable to the haughty spirit of Turkey or not?” Were we not told by The Morning Post, before the Journal des Débats had arrived at London, that “on the receipt of the Emperor of Russia’s answer to the proposal for the modifications of the Vienna note, the conference of the representatives of the great Powers had immediately assembled, and on the 4th inst. dispatched a courier to Constantinople with certain communications from the Conference to the Divan, which it was hoped would induce the Porte to accept the Vienna note?” Finally, we read in a morning paper of to-day that “Mr. Reeves is going to Constantinople, that he is the bearer of dispatches from Lord Clarendon to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, and that a connection of the most intimate kind exists between him and the Foreign Office, he having been the channel of communication between Downing-st. and Printing-house Square.”
The truth is, that since the last revelations made by the French Press, the Eastern question has again assumed quite a new aspect, and the ignominious resolutions the English Ministry had decided upon are likely to be frustrated by events contrary to all their calculations and expectations.
Austria has seceded from the joint action with her pretended allies; the Vienna conference has been broken off, at least for a moment. Russia has pulled off the mask she thinks no longer of any avail, and the English ministry is driven out of its last entrenchments.
“Lord Aberdeen,” as The Liverpool Courier justly remarks, “recommended that the Sultan should have recourse to a transparent and contemptible fraud; that the parties to the Vienna conference should exercise a mental reservation with regard to the note, and that the Sultan should read it in an unnatural sense, i. e., the terms of the note being clear and precise, and the Emperor of Russia having refused point blank to adopt the Sultan’s modifications, the Powers should hold themselves prepared, hereafter, to act as if those modifications had been received.”
M. Drouin de l’Huys suggested to the Vienna conference an explanatory note conceived in that hypocritical sense, and to be communicated to the Porte, but Count Buol rejected this proposition, declaring that it “was too friendly to the Porte, that the time was gone by for collective action, and that each power was free to act as it pleased.” Thus the English ministry has lost the resource of covering itself with the common arbitration of the European Areopagus, that joint stock company disappearing before one word of the Austrian Minister, as it had been conjured up by him. In the beginning Austria wanted no conference at all till Russia had crossed the Pruth. Russia having advanced to the Danube, Austria does want the conference no more, at least no more on its primitive conditions. On the other hand Count de Nesselrode has published two circulars, which do not any longer allow backing the original Vienna note by hidden “good intentions” or interpreting it in any other sense than its literal one.
The modifications proposed by the Porte have reduced the whole question to “a mere question of words,” shouted the whole ministerial press.
By no means, says Nesselrode. The Czar puts the same interpretation upon the original text as the Sultan did. The original note is nothing and has never been intended to be anything but a second edition of Menchikoff’s note, and we do abide by the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text. The ministerial Globe is of course amazed at the discovery that both the Czar and the Sultan, regard the original note “as implying recognition of those demands which Russia had preferred, which Turkey had refused, and which the four Powers did not (?) intend to indorse,” and that “Russia insists upon an absolute recognition of the claims which she first advanced.” And why should she not? If she was bold enough to advance those claims four months ago, why should she desist now after having won the first campaign?
The same Globe which pretended some days ago the Turkish modifications to be scholastic quibbles, superfluous subtilities, is now obliged to own that “the Russian interpretation shows that they were necessary.”
The first dispatch of Nesselrode is not yet made public, but The Morning Post assures us that it declares “the Vienna note to be neither more nor less than the equivalent of Prince Menchikoff’s note,” and The Evening Globe adds, that according to it,
“The Emperor regarded the Vienna note as securing for him that recognition on Turkey, and that hold upon her Government, which the Porte, with the support of the four Powers, had refused, and which it was the object of the mediation to prevent. That the Emperor never ceased to reserve to himself the right of dealing directly with Turkey alone, setting aside the mediators whom he affected to acknowledge.”
At no time did he affect to acknowledge them as mediators. He permitted three of them to march in the rear of Austria, while he allowed Austria herself to come an humble supplicant to him.
As to the second dispatch, dated St. Petersburg, 7th, published by the Berlin Zeit, on the 18th inst., and addressed to Baron Meyendorf at Vienna, Nesselrode is perfectly right in stating that the original note was described to him as an “ultimatum” by the Austrian Envoy, which Russia obliged herself to give her consent to upon the express condition of its being accepted by the Porte without any alteration whatever. “Will any one refuse to bear this testimony to the loyauté of the Emperor?” It is true that he has committed a little act of “piracy” on the Principalities; that he has overrun them, seized them, taxed them, governed them, plundered them, appropriated them, eaten them up, notwithstanding the proclamations of Gortchakoff; but never mind. Did he not, on the other hand, “on the receipt of a first draft of a note, notify his accession to it by telegraph, without waiting to learn if it had been approved in London or in Paris?” Could he be expected to do more than to notify by telegraph, that a note, dictated by a Russian Minister at Vienna, would not be rejected by a Russian Minister at St. Petersburgh? Could he do more for Paris and London than not even to wait for their approval? But he did more, indeed. The draft, whose acceptance he condescended to notify by telegraph, was “altered” at Paris and London, and “did he retract his consent, or raise the smallest difficulty?” It is true, that according to his own statement, the note in its “final form” is “neither more nor less than an equivalent of Prince Menchikoff’s note;” but an equivalent note remains, at all instances, “different” from the original one; and had he “not stipulated the acceptance of the Menchikoff note without any alteration?” Might he not, “on this ground alone, have refused to take it into consideration?” He did not do so. “Could a more conciliatory spirit be shown?” The ultimatum of the Vienna Conference is no business of his; it is their own property. “It is their affair to consider the delays which will result” from the Sultan not yielding. He, for his part, does not care about staying some months longer in the Principalities, where his troops are clothed and fed for nothing.
Odessa does not suffer from the mouth of the Danube being blocked, and, if the occupation of the Principalities contributes to raise the price of wheat at Mark-lane, the profane Imperials will find the quicker their way back to the Holy Russia. It is, therefore, for Austria and the Powers to “declare to the Porte, frankly and firmly, that they, after having in vain opened up to it the only road that could lead to an immediate restoration of its relations with us henceforth leave the task for itself alone.” They did enough for the Sultan by having opened the road to the Danube to the Czar and closed the road to the Black Sea to the Allied Squadron. Nesselrode’s “august master” denounces then, “the warlike inspiration which seems at present to influence the Sultan and the majority of his Ministers.” He, on his part, would certainly prefer the Sultan taking it coolly, opposing peace tracts to gunboats, and compliments to Cossacks. “He has exhausted the measure of concessions, without the Porte having yet made a single one. His Majesty can go no further.” Certainly not, he can go no further, without crossing the Danube. Nesselrode compresses his whole argument into a masterly dilemma not to be escaped from. Either the alterations proposed by the Porte mean nothing, or they mean something. If they mean nothing, why should the Porte insist upon them? If they mean something, “it is very simple that we refuse to accede to them.”
“The evacuation of the Principalities,” said Lord Clarendon, “is a sine qua non, preliminary to any settlement.” Quite the contrary, answers Nesselrode. “The settlement, i. e. the arrival of the Turkish Embassador bearing the Austrian note without alterations is a sine qua non preliminary to the evacuation of the Principalities.”
In one word, the magnanimous Czar is ready to part with the Vienna Conference humbug, as it is no longer wanted for terminating his first campaign; but he will hold the closer the Principalities, as they are the indispensable condition for commencing the second one.
If it be true, as we are informed to-day by telegraphic dispatch, that the Conference has resumed business, the Powers will repeat to Nicholas the song Alexander was received with by the Paris mob:
Vive Alexandre, / Vive le roi des rois, / Sans rien prétendre / Il nous donne des lois.
The Czar himself, however, holds no longer his former control over the Eastern complication. The Sultan has been forced to conjure up the old fanatic spirit, to cause a new invasion of Europe by the rude warlike tribes of Asia, not to be soothed down with diplomatic notes and conventional lies, and there seems transpiring, even through the insolent note of the Muscovite, something like an apprehension at the “warlike spirit” domineering over Stambul. The manifesto, addressed by the Sultan to the Mussulmans, declines any other concession to Russia, and a deputation of the Ulemas is said to have called upon the Sultan to abdicate or to declare war without further delay. The division in the Divan is extreme, and the pacific influence of Reschid Pacha and Mustapha Pacha is giving way to that of Mehemet Ali, the Seraskier.
The infatuation of the so called radical London press is quite incredible. After having told us some days ago, that “the laws of England have to be exercised in their penal rigor upon the persons of four traitors,” (Aberdeen, Clarendon, Palmerston and Russell,) The Morning Advertiser, of yesterday, concludes one of its leaders as follows: “Lord Aberdeen must, therefore, make way for a successor. Need we say who that successor must be? There is but one man to whom the country points at this important junction, as fit to be entrusted with the helm of affairs. That man is Lord Palmerston.” The Morning Advertiser being unable to read events and facts, should at least be able to read the articles of Mr. Urquhart, published day after day in its own columns.
On Tuesday evening a meeting of the inhabitants of Sheffield was called, by requisition to the Mayor, “to take into consideration the present unsettled and unsatisfactory state of the Eastern question and the propriety of memoralizing government on the subject.” A similar meeting is to be held at Stafford and many other attempts are afloat at getting up public demonstrations against Russia and the ministry of “all the talents.” But, generally, public attention is absorbed by the rate of discount, corn prices, strikes and commercial apprehensions, and more yet by the cholera ravaging Newcastle and being met with explanatory notes by the London Board of Health. An order in council has been issued, putting in force the provisions of the Epidemic Disease Act for the next six months throughout the Islands; and hasty preparations for the due reception of the scourge are making in London and other great towns. If I shared the opinions of Mr. Urquhart, I should say, that the Czar had dispatched the Cholera morbus to England with the “secret mission” to break down the last remnant of what is called the Anglo-Saxon spirit.
A wonderful change has come over the manufacturing districts during the last four weeks. In July and the beginning of August there was nothing to be seen but bright prosperity, only slightly overshadowed by the distant cloud of the “Eastern Question,” and more so, perhaps, by the fear that a shortness of hands would prevent our cotton-lords to explore to the dregs, that immense mine of profitable business which they saw before them. The Eastern dispute seemed settled, the crop might certainly turn out a little short, but there was free trade to keep prices down with the never-failing supplies of America, of the Black Sea and the Baltic. Day after day the demand for manufactured goods went on increasing. California and Australia poured forth their golden treasures into the lap of British industry. The Times, forgetting Malthus and all its own former rhapsodies about overpopulation, seriously discussed the question whether the shortness of the supply of working-hands, and consequent rise of wages, would not, by raising the cost of production of British manufactures in a proportionate manner, put a stop to this flourishing trade, unless the Continent sent a colony of workmen. The working classes were, as their employers said, only too well off, so much so, that their demands knew no bounds, and their “impudence” was daily becoming more intolerable. But that was in itself a proof of the immense, unheard-of prosperity which the country was enjoying; and what could be the cause of this prosperity but Free Trade? And what was worth more than all this, was the certitude that the enormous trade done was sound, that there were no stocks, no wild speculation. Thus the manufacturers, one and all, were wont to express themselves, and they acted upon these views; they built factories by the hundred, they ordered steam engines of thousands of horse-power, thousands of power-looms, hundreds of thousands of spindles. Never was engineering and machine-making a more profitable trade than in 1853. Establishments broken down in the whole of their internal organization by the great strike of 1851, now regained their position, and even improved it; and I could name more than one first-rate and celebrated machine-making firm who, but for this unprecedented business, would have succumbed under the consequence of the blow inflicted by the mechanics during the great turn-out.
The fact is that the bright sunshine of prosperity is for the moment hidden by gloomy clouds. No doubt the altered aspect of the Eastern dispute has contributed a good deal; but that affects the home American and Colonial trade very little. The raising of the rate of discount is less a cause than a symptom of something being rotten in the state of Denmark. The shortness of the crop and increase in the price of provisions are no doubt causes which have counteracted and will counteract still more the demand for manufactured goods from those markets which are exposed to the operation of these causes, and among these the home market, the mainstay of British industry, stands in the first rank. But the rise in the price of provisions is at this moment, in most districts of England and Scotland, very nearly or altogether compensated by the rise of wages, so that the purchasing power of the consumer can hardly be said to have been already lessened much. Then the rise in wages has raised the cost of production in those branches of industry in which manual labor prevails; but the price of nearly all manufactured goods was, up to August, pushed a good deal ahead of the cost of production by the large demand. All these causes have coöperated to deaden business; but, after all, they are not sufficient to account for the general anxiety that pervades the commercial classes of the manufacturing districts.
The fact is, that the spell of the Free Trade delusions is vanishing away, and the bold industrial adventurers begin to have a glimmering that economical revulsions, commercial crises and recurrence of overproduction are yet not quite so impossible in a Free Trade country as they dreamt. And over-production there has been, there is, there must be, for even those bugbears of the Manchester Guardian, the “Stocks,” are there; aye, and increasing too. The demand for goods is decidedly falling off, while the supply increases every day. The largest and most numerous of the new industrial constructions are only now gradually coming into operation. The shortness of hands, the strikes of the building trades, the impossibility of supplying the enormous quantities of machinery on order, have caused many an unforseen delay and postponed, for a time, the eruption of those symptoms of industrial plethora which otherwise would have shown themselves sooner. Thus the largest mill in the world, Mr. F. Salt’s, near Bradford, was only to be opened this week, and it will take some time yet, ere the whole of the productive power employed there can be brought fully to bear on the market. Thus plenty of the larger new concerns in Lancashire will not be fit for work before winter, while it will be spring, and perhaps later, before the market will feel the full effect of this new and stupendous accession of productive power. According to the last news from Melbourne and Sidney, import markets were becoming much duller, and many shipments will now be indefinitely postponed. As to over-speculation, we shall hear of that by and by, when accounts come to be closed. Speculation has been distributed over such a variety of articles that it shows less this time than before, although there is plenty of it.