Karl Marx

[The Four Points]

[*Neue Oder-Zeitung* No. 20 of January 13, 1855]

London, January 9. The Vienna telegraphic dispatch about the acceptance of the four points on the part of Russia caused on the one hand a rise in consols on the local stock exchange—at one moment 2 1/2 per cent above Saturday’s rate—and on the other a veritable panic in the tallow, oil, and seed market, where an early conclusion of peace would give the signal for enormous bankruptcies. Today the excitement among the City men has again vanished, and they now fairly unanimously regard the negotiations on the four points as a second edition of the negotiations on the “Vienna Note.” According to the thoroughly ministerial *Morning Chronicle* it was
premature
to speak of a genuine acceptance of the required guarantees on the part of Russia. It had merely declared itself ready to negotiate on their basis, as interpreted jointly by the three powers. The *Times* thinks it may celebrate a victory for Western policy, and on this occasion declares:

“We cannot too decidedly reject the assumption that this war is to bring about a so-called revision of the map of Europe by means of conquests or revolutions in which this country has at least absolutely no interest.”

“The allies,” says the *Morning Post*, “have done enough to be able to withdraw with honour from the theatre of war if their conditions are accepted.”

According to the *Daily News*, Russia’s aim in resuming negotiations is to strengthen Prussia’s faith in its moderation, to sow discord among the German powers, and to loosen the relationship of the Western powers with Austria. The only important thing in the four points is said to be the additional article according to which the Dardanelles treaty of July 13 is to be revised “with a view to restricting Russian sea power in the Black Sea.” It is rumoured in the City that the ministry is ready to drop this additional article. Finally, the *Morning Advertiser* declares that the last Russian step was concerted with Austria in order to give the latter an opportunity to rid itself of its obligations towards the Western powers. According to a newly arrived dispatch, it is stipulated that the negotiations are not to interrupt the war operations.

[*Neue Oder-Zeitung* No. 23 of January 15, 1855]

London, January 12. The unconditional acceptance of the “four points”—and that in the sense of the “three” powers—on the part of Russia has now turned out to be a “hoax” <a newspaper canard> of the *Morning Post* and the *Times*. We were all the more inclined to believe the “hoax” as we know from Pozzo di Borgo’s secret dispatches, which became known as a result of the Warsaw insurrection, that this master of diplomacy lays down the principle:

“In all cases of collision, Russia must allow the great European powers to force
its own conditions
upon it.”

And we can see only four Russian
punch lines
in the “four” points. If Russia does not accept them for the time being, we find the explanation for that too in Master Pozzo di Borgo. Russia, he explains, may make such apparent concessions to the West only from a victorious camp. This is necessary for the preservation of the “prestige” on which its power rests. And up to now Russia has indeed managed to get into a “camp” but not yet to a “victory.” Had Silistria fallen, the “four points” would long since have been set up. According to the *Times* and the *Morning Post*, the “four points” in the sense of the “three powers” were accepted as the basis for negotiations, in order to advance from them as a minimum. It now turns out that Prince Gorchakov understands them as a problematic maximum, from which on the contrary haggling down is to be done, or which are solely intended to provide the pretext for a second “Vienna Conference.” The *Morning Post* confides to us today in a pompous, diplomatically oracular leader <leading article> that the interim meetings of the diplomats in Vienna merely form the preparatory school for the

actual conference, which will only assemble on February 1 and will certainly not fail to surprise the world more or less.

Yesterday the following Admiralty notice was posted at Lloyd’s:

“With reference to the last paragraph of my letter of November 8 (1854), which contained the communication that the French and English admirals in the Black Sea had received orders from their respective governments to extend the blockade from the mouths of the Danube to all ports of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov still in the enemy’s possession, I am directed by the Lords of the Admiralty to inform you, so that the commercial public may be acquainted with this, that the Governments of England and France have further resolved that the blockade in question shall come into force on and after February 1 (1855), and that due notice of the blockade of the particular ports shall be given in the London *Gazette* as soon as it is put into force. Signed:
W. A. B. Hamilton
.”

Thus it is openly admitted that the allied fleets have hitherto blockaded only their own allies at the mouth of the Danube, but neither the Russian ports in the Black Sea nor those in the Sea of Azov. And yet the ministry had repeatedly declared in Parliament—in April, in August and in October—that it had given the “strictest orders” to blockade the ports and coasts of Russia. As late as December 21, Lord Granville declared in the Lords on behalf of the ministry

“that Odessa was blockaded by five warships, which were constantly cruising to and fro before the port and from which the government was receiving continuous reports.”

In a letter addressed to a daily paper, a well-known English pamphleteer sums up the consequences of the blockade measures adopted, or rather
not
adopted, by the coalition as follows:

“1. The British Government supplies from England the enemy of England with the financial means to carry on the war against it. 2. The Danube is blockaded in order to impoverish the Principalities and to cut off our own grain supplies. 3. Odessa, Taganrog, Kerch, etc., remain unmolested in order to deliver reinforcements, ammunition, and provisions to the Russian troops in the Crimea. 4. The sham blockade ruins our merchants while it enriches the Greek, Russian, and Austrian ones.”

The *Times* also takes the opportunity of Mr. Hamilton’s notice for violent attacks on the “blockade diplomacy” of the ministry. It is characteristic of the thunderer of Printing-House Square <square in London, home of the editorial office of the *Times*> that its

thunder has always been hurled *post festum* <after the event>. From March 26, 1854, to today the *Times* defended the “blockade diplomacy.” Today, when its bluster crosses no ministerial measures but does gain it popularity, it suddenly becomes clairvoyant.

The Minister of the Navy, or as he is called here, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Sir
James Graham
, is sufficiently well known on the Continent for that great deed in the Black Cabinet which led the Bandiera brothers to the scaffold. The fact may be less widely known that in 1814, when Emperor Nicholas landed on the English coast, Sir James Graham did not dare to shake the imperial hand proffered him but only to kiss it. (See “Portfolio,” 2nd Series, year 1844.)

[*Neue Oder-Zeitung* No. 29 of January 18, 1855]

London, January 15. For assessing the four points:

“By way of diplomacy nothing further can take place until February 1.” (Until February 5 or 6, says the Vienna correspondent of the *Times*.) “Meanwhile the Tsar has a full month ahead of him to move his forces wherever he wishes. The month gained by the acceptance of the four points may well be extended to two months as there is step-by-step wrangling over each point, which is where the Russian envoy’s instructions probably point, while it is by no means unlikely that the most strenuous attempts will be made to satisfy Austria with conditions that are unacceptable to England and France. To separate the three powers is a very plausible aim.”

Thus the *Morning Post*.

More important than the to-and-fro of the English press about Russia’s secret intentions is its open admission (with the exception, naturally, of the ministerial organs) that the basis of the negotiations, the four points, is not worth negotiating about.

“When the struggle began,” says the *Sunday Times*, “the world was to be made to believe that the object at issue was the break-up of the Russian Empire or at least the gaining of material guarantees for the preservation of European peace. Nothing has been done to achieve the one or the other purpose, and nothing will be done, should peace be concluded on the basis of the so-called
four points
. If there can be any talk here of a triumph, it can only be of a triumph that Russia has carried off.”

“The ministry of all incapacities,” says the *Leader*, “cannot get beyond the four points; it deserves to go down to posterity with the title: The Ministry of the Four Points. No more of this tedious comedy of a war without purpose! Peace, on the basis of the four points, can only be concluded out of fear that in the tumult of war the peoples themselves will become too important; perhaps also to prevent the English from winning back the rights that Cromwell conquered for them. This alone could be the motive for patching up the old conspiracy with Russia again and giving it back permission, under the protection of the peace flag, to renew its encroachments in Europe.”

The *Examiner*, which among the middle-class weeklies indisputably holds first rank, carries a detailed article on the “basis” of the peace negotiations, the essentials of which we summarise briefly.

"If such concessions", it says, among other things, "as may be derived from even the hardest and strictest interpretation of the four points are to be regarded as equivalents for the treasure England has squandered in this struggle, and the blood it has sacrificed, then the Emperor of Russia was a great statesman when he began the war. Russia is not even to pay compensation for the vast sums it has annually extorted from us by non-observance of the Treaty of Vienna. The mouth of the Danube, which, according to the recently published official correspondence, it strove to close to English trade by every means, is to remain in its hands. The point concerning the free navigation of the Danube practically boils down to the status quo, for Russia has never denied that the stipulations of the Treaty of Vienna relating to river navigation are authoritative for the Danube as well. The abolition of the Treaties of Kainardji and Adrianople is of little consequence, since it is agreed on all sides that these treaties did
not
entitle Russia to the demands it makes on Turkey. If, on the other hand, we consider that Russia is to be one of the five Powers exercising a joint protectorate over the Danubian Principalities and the Christian subjects of the Sultan, we believe that the advantages expected from this change are wholly illusory, because it indisputably entails the colossal disadvantage of giving a legal character to Russia's machinations for the
partition of Turkey.
We shall naturally be reminded that the four points include, among other stipulations, a revision of the Treaty of 1841, and specifically a revision in the interest of the balance of powers. The expression is vague and mysterious enough, and after all that has lately transpired, we are by no means convinced that the intended innovation is not incomparably more threatening to the independence of our ally (Turkey) than to the supremacy of our enemy. ... We would have rejected any possibility of such a 'basis', as seems to be debated at this moment in Vienna, as utterly incredible, had not Lord John Russell, in reply to Cobden's speech, solemnly declared in

Parliament that the Government did not in the least wish to deprive Russia of any of its territories."

The last point is, however, absolutely decisive, since, for example, even the freedom of Danube navigation could only be secured if Russia lost the "territory" at the mouths of the Danube, which it has seized, partly through the Treaty of Adrianople in violation of the Treaty of London of 1827, and partly through a ukase of February 1836 in violation of the Treaty of Adrianople. The point which the *Examiner* has failed to emphasise refers to the Dardanelles Treaty of 1841. This treaty differs from the treaty concluded by Lord Palmerston in 1840 only in the circumstance that
France
acceded as a contracting party. The content is the same. Only a few months ago Lord Palmerston declared the Treaty of 1840, and therefore also the Dardanelles Treaty of 1841, to be a victory of England over Russia, and himself to be the
author
of the treaty. How is the
abrogation
of a treaty, which was a victory of England over Russia, suddenly to be a defeat of Russia before England? Or, if England was then deceived by its own ministers and believed it was acting
against
Russia while it was acting
for
it, why not now? During the last extraordinary parliamentary session Disraeli exclaimed: "No four points." From the above extracts one sees that he has found an echo in the liberal press; the astonishment that Russia has accepted the four points, with or without reservation, is beginning to give way to astonishment that England proposed them.