Karl Marx

The Problem of the Ionian Islands

From the English.

*New-York Daily Tribune*, No. 5526, January 6, 1859.

London, December 7, 1858

The case of Mr William Hudson Guernsey, alias Washington Guernsey, criminally prosecuted for the theft of two secret despatches from the library of the British Colonial Office, which the Lord High Commissioner for the Ionian Islands, Sir John Young, addressed on 10 June 1857 and 18 July 1858 to the former government of Lord Palmerston, has just been tried before the Central Criminal Court under the presidency of Baron Martin and has ended with the acquittal of the accused. The trial was interesting from a political as well as a legal standpoint. As will be remembered, the Homeric Mr Gladstone, on his extraordinary mission to pacify the Ionian Islands, had just left London when – like a Scythian arrow, shot by an invisible hand – Sir John Young’s despatch appeared in the columns of the *Daily News*. The despatch proposes the abandonment of the protectorate over the islands. They are to be made over to Greece, but only after the finest morsel – Corfu – has been cut off and incorporated into the colonial dominions of Great Britain. Universal astonishment was great. The part of the London press that opposes secret diplomacy congratulated Lord Derby’s cabinet on the bold step of initiating the public into the secret of the diplomatic whisperings. In naive enthusiasm, the *Morning Star* proclaimed that a new epoch of international politics had dawned in the United Kingdom. But the sweet voice of praise was immediately drowned out by the shrill and angry voices of criticism. The press hostile to the ministry eagerly pounced upon what it called a “premeditated gross blunder”, which, they said, aimed primarily and exclusively at the destruction of

Mr Gladstone’s political independence and at his temporary removal from the parliamentary arena; while at the same time his own principals, in order to thwart his mission, perpetrated an unscrupulous stroke of Machiavellian perfidy by publishing a document that placed Gladstone in a false position vis-à-vis the partner with whom he was to negotiate, vis-à-vis public opinion in England, and vis-à-vis the international law of Europe. To finish off an over-trusting rival, wrote the *Times*, the *Globe*, the *Observer*, and the smaller newspapers hostile to the ministry, the Derby cabinet had not hesitated to commit an indiscretion that, under the given circumstances, amounted to nothing less than treason. How could Mr Gladstone negotiate if the Ionians were informed not only that a preconceived decision had been reached on Britannia’s side, but also if the leading Ionian patriots were compromised by the betrayal of the fact that they had accepted a plan that foresaw the dismemberment of the seven islands? How could he negotiate in the face of the European protests that would certainly arise from such a violation of the Treaty of Vienna, that treaty which establishes England not as the possessor of Corfu but only as the protector of the seven islands, and which regulated for ever the territorial distribution of the map of Europe? In fact, these newspaper articles were followed by serious warnings from Russia and France.

Let me remark en passant that the Treaty of Vienna, the only recognised code of international law in Europe, forms one of the most monstrous *fictiones juris publici* (fictions of public law) in the annals of humanity. What does the first article of this treaty say? Perpetual exclusion of the Bonaparte family from the French throne; yet there sits Louis Napoleon, the founder of the Second Empire, whom all the crowned heads of Europe recognise and fawn upon, before whom they bow and with whom they fraternise. Another article states that Belgium is assigned to Holland for ever, whereas the separation of Belgium from Holland over the last eighteen years has been not only a *fait accompli* (an accomplished fact) but a legal fact. Then the Treaty of Vienna prescribes that Cracow, incorporated into Austria since 1846, shall remain for ever an independent republic; and the last, but not least, provision lays down that Poland, annexed to the Russian Empire by Nicholas, shall be an independent constitutional kingdom, linked to Russia only by the personal bonds of the Romanov

dynasty. Thus leaf after leaf has been torn out of this sacred book of the European *jus publicum* (public law), and it is invoked only when it suits the interests of one party or the weakness of another.

The Derby cabinet visibly wavered as to whether to pocket the undeserved praise of one part of the press or to retort against the undeserved calumnies of the other. After a week’s vacillation, however, it resolved upon the latter step and declared by means of a public notice that it had nothing to do with the publication of Sir John Young’s despatches and that an investigation was presently under way to discover the author of the criminal stroke. Finally, Mr William Hudson Guernsey was tracked down as the guilty man, tried before the Central Criminal Court, and charged with having stolen the despatches. The Derby cabinet consequently emerges victorious from this struggle; and here ends the political interest in the trial. But as a consequence of this trial, the attention of world public opinion has once again been directed to the relations between Great Britain and the Ionian Islands. That Sir John Young’s plan was no private crotchet is convincingly proved by the following extract from a public message of his predecessor, Sir Henry Ward, to the Ionian Parliament on 13 April 1850.

“It is not incumbent upon me, in the name of the British Crown, to speak of that distant future, hinted at in the message, in which the scattered members of the Greek people might be reunited with the consent of the European powers in one mighty empire. Yet I find no difficulty in giving expression to my own opinion” (he spoke in the name of the British Crown) “that, were such an event within the range of human possibilities, the monarch and the Parliament of England would be equally willing to ensure that the Ionians should resume their place as members of the new power, which would in its turn occupy its due place in world politics.”

In the meantime, Great Britain’s philanthropic feelings for the islands gave vent to themselves in a truly Austrian cruelty with which Sir Henry Ward put down the rebellion then occurring on the islands. Out of a population of 200,000 souls, 8,000 were punished with hanging, flogging, imprisonment, and banishment; women and children were whipped until the blood flowed. Lest I be suspected of exaggeration, I

quote the British newspaper the *Morning Chronicle* of 25 April 1850:

“A shudder comes over us at the horrible retaliatory measures that were imposed by the courts-martial under the direction of the Lord High Commissioner. Death, deportation, and flogging punishments were imposed upon the unhappy offenders, in some cases
without trial
, in others by
summary process under martial law
. There were 21 executions and a great number of other punishments.”

Yet then the British boast that they have blessed the Ionians with a free constitution and have developed their material resources to a height that forms a bright contrast to the wretched economic condition of Greece proper. Now as for the constitution, at the time when Lord Grey was indulging in constitution-mongering for the whole colonial empire of Great Britain, it was simply impossible for him to pass over the Ionian Islands; yet he gave them back only that which England had fraudulently wrested from them for many long years.

By a treaty drawn up by Count Capodistrias and signed with Russia at Paris in 1815, the protection of the Ionian Islands was conferred upon Great Britain on the express condition that it should adhere to the Russian constitution granted to the islands in 1803. The first British Lord High Commissioner, Sir Thomas Maitland, abolished this constitution and replaced it with one that invested him with absolute power. In 1839, the Ionian Chevalier Mustoxydes declared in his “Pro Memoria”, which the House of Commons had printed on 22 June 1840:

“The Ionians do not enjoy the privilege that was left to the Greek communities even in the days of Turkish tyranny, the privilege of choosing their own judicial officials and administering their own affairs; they are instead subject to officials forced upon them by the police. The slight leeway that was allowed to the municipal bodies of each island in the administration of their own revenues has been wrested from them, and in order to make them more dependent, these revenues have been thrown into the public treasury.”

As for the development of material resources, it suffices to say that England, free-trade England, is not ashamed to plague the Ionians with export duties, a barbarous device which, as it seems, is to be found only in the financial code of Turkey. Thus, for example, currants, the chief product of the islands, are burdened with an export duty of 22
1
/
2
per cent.

“The intervening seas,” says an Ionian, “which form, so to speak, the highroad of the islands, are blocked after the manner of a toll-gate in every port by transit duties, which tax goods of all kinds that are
exchanged from island to island
.”

That is not all. During the first twenty-three years of British administration, taxation was increased threefold and expenditure fivefold. Later, a reduction took place, but in 1850 there was a deficit that equalled half of the former total taxation, as the following table shows:

Annual Taxation

Expenditure

1815

£68,459

£48,500

1817*

£108,997

£87,420

1850

£147,482

£170,000

* first year of the British protectorate

Thus export duties on their own products, transit duties between the various islands, increased taxation and waste of expenditure are the economic blessings which John Bull brought to the Ionians. According to his oracle in Printing House Square, he hankers after colonies only in order to make them acquainted with the principles of liberty; if we stick to the facts, however, the Ionian Islands, just like India and Ireland, prove only that, in order to be free at home, John Bull must enslave abroad. Thus he gives vent to his moral indignation at Bonaparte’s spy system in Paris at the very moment when he is introducing it himself in Dublin.

The legal interest in the case in question concentrates upon one point: Guernsey’s defender admitted that ten copies of the despatches had been stolen, but pleaded the innocence of his client because there was no intention of using them for private purposes. If the crime of theft depends only upon the intention with which the property of another is unlawfully appropriated, then the criminal law is, in this respect, brought to a dead halt. The solid citizens on the jury can scarcely have intended to bring about such a revolution in property relations, but rather wished, through their verdict, merely to establish that public documents are not the property of the government, but of the public.