The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston by Karl Marx

3

At a recent meeting in London to protest against the action of the British
Embassy in the present controversy between Russia and Turkey, a gentleman who
presumed to find special fault with Lord Palmerston was saluted and silenced by
a storm of indignant hisses. The meeting evidently thought that if Russia had a
friend in the ministry, it was not the noble viscount, and would no doubt have
rent the air with cheers had some one been able to announce that his lordship
had become prime minister. This astonishing confidence in a man so false and
hollow is another proof of the ease with which people are imposed on by
brilliant abilities, and a new evidence of the necessity of taking off
the mask from this wily enemy to the progress of human freedom.

Accordingly, with the history of the last 25 years and the debates of
Parliament for guides, we proceed with the task of exposing the real part which
this accomplished actor has performed in the drama of modern Europe.

The noble viscount is generally known as the chivalrous protector of the
Poles, and never fails to give vent to his painful feelings with regard to
Poland, before the deputations which are once every year presented to him by
“dear, dull, deadly” Dudley Stuart,[11] “a worthy who makes
speeches, passes resolutions, votes addresses, goes up with deputations, has at
all times the necessary quantity of confidence in the necessary individual, and
can also, if necessary, give three cheers for the Queen.”

The Poles had been in arms for about a month, when Lord Palmerston came into
office in November, 1830. As early as August 8, 1831, Mr. Hunt presented to the
House a petition from the Westminster Union in favour of the Poles, and
“for the dismissal of Lord Palmerston from his Majesty's Councils.”
Mr. Hume[12]
stated on the same day he concluded from the silence of the noble lord that the
Government “intended to do nothing for the Poles, but allow them to
remain at the mercy of Russia.” To this Lord Palmerston replied,
“that whatever obligations existing treaties imposed, would at all times
receive the attention of the Government.” Now, what sort of obligations
were, in his opinion, imposed on England by existing treaties? “The
claims of Russia,” he tells us himself, “to the possession of
Poland bear the date of the treaty of Vienna”—(House of
Commons, July 9 1833), and that treaty makes this possession dependent
upon the observance of the Polish Constitution by the Czar. But from a
subsequent speech we learn that “the mere fact of this country being a
party to the treaty of Vienna, was not synonymous with England’s
guaranteeing that there would be no infraction of that treaty by
Russia.”—(House of Commons, March 26, 1834)

That is to say, you may guarantee a treaty without guaranteeing that it
should be observed. This is the principle on which the Milanese said to the
Emperor Barbarossa: "You have had our oath, but remember we did not swear to
keep it."

In one respect the treaty of Vienna was good enough. It gave to the British
Government, as one of the contracting parties,

“a right to entertain and express an opinion on any
act which tends to a violation of that treaty. ... The contracting parties to
the treaty of Vienna had a right to require that the Constitution of Poland
should not be touched, and this was an opinion which I have not concealed from
the Russian Government. I communicated it by anticipation to that
Government previous to the taking of Warsaw, and before the result of
hostilities was known. I communicated it again when Warsaw fell. The Russian
Government, however, took a different view of the question.”—(House
of Commons, July 9, 1833)

He had quietly anticipated the downfall of Poland, and had availed himself
of this opportunity to entertain and express an opinion on certain articles of
the treaty of Vienna, persuaded as he was that the magnanimous Czar was merely
waiting till he had crushed the Polish people by armed force to do homage to a
Constitution he had trampled upon when they were yet possessed of unbounded
means of resistance. At the same time the noble lord charged the Poles with
having “taken the uncalled for, and in his opinion,
unjustifiable, step of the dethronement of the
Emperor.”—(House of Commons, July 9, 1832)

"He could also say that the Poles were the aggressors, for they commenced
the contest."—(House of Commons, August 7, 1832.)

When the apprehensions that Poland would be extinguished became universal
and troublesome, he declared that “to exterminate Poland, either morally
or politically, is so perfectly impracticable that I think there need be no
apprehension of its being attempted.”—(House of Commons,
June 28, 1832.)

When reminded afterwards of the vague expectations thus held out, he averred
that he had been misunderstood, that he had said so not in the political but
the Pickwickian [i.e., naively idealistic, after the
Dickens character] sense of the word, meaning that the Emperor of
Russia was unable “to exterminate nominally or physically so many
millions of men as the Polish kingdom in its divided state
contained,”—(House of Commons, April 20,
1836.)

When the House threatened to interfere during the struggle of the Poles, he
appealed to his ministerial responsibility. When the thing was done, he coolly
told them that “no vote of this House would have the slightest effect in
reversing the decision of Russia.”—(House of Commons,
July 9, 1833)

When the atrocities committed by the Russians, after the fall of Warsaw,
were denounced, he recommended to the House great tenderness towards the
Emperor of Russia, declaring that “no person could regret more than he
did the expressions which had been uttered”—(House of Commons,
June 28, 1832—that “the present Emperor of Russia was
a man of high and generous feelings”—that “where cases of
undue severity on the part of the Russian Government to the Poles have
occurred, we may set this down as a proof that the power of the Emperor of
Russia is practically limited, and we may take it for granted that the Emperor
has, in those instances, yielded to the influence of others, rather than
followed the dictates of his spontaneous feelings.”—(House of
Commons, July 9, 1833)

When the doom of Poland was sealed on the one hand, and on the other the
dissolution of the Turkish Empire became imminent, from the rebellion of
Mehemet Ali,[13] he assured the House that “affairs in
general were proceeding in a satisfactory train.”—(House of
Commons, January 26, 1832.)

A motion for granting subsidies to the Polish refugees having been made, it
was “exceedingly painful to him to oppose the grant of any money to those
individuals, which the natural and spontaneous feelings of every generous man
would lead him to acquiesce in; but it was not consistent with his duty to
propose any grant of money to those unfortunate
persons.”—(House of Commons, March 25, 1834) This
same tender-hearted man had secretly defrayed, as we shall see by and by, the
cost of Poland's fall, to a great extent, out of the pockets of the British
people.

The noble lord took good care to withhold all State papers about the Polish
catastrophe from Parliament. But statements made in the House of Commons which
he never so much as attempted to controvert, leave no doubt as to the game he
played at that fatal epoch.

After the Polish revolution had broken out, the Consul of Austria did not
quit Warsaw, and the Austrian Government went so far as to send a Polish agent,
M. Walewski, to Paris, with the mission of negotiating with the Governments of
France and England about the re-establishment of a Polish kingdom. The Court of
the Tuileries declared “it was ready to join England in case of her
consenting to the project.” Lord Palmerston rejected the offer. In 1831,
M. de Talleyrand,[14] the Ambassador of France at the Court of St.
James, proposed a plan of combined action on the part of France and England,
but met with a distinct refusal and with a note from the noble lord, stating
that “an amicable intermediation on the Polish question would be declined
by Russia; that the Powers had just declined a similar offer on the part of
France; that the intervention of the two Courts of France and England could
only be by force in case of a refusal on the part of Russia; and the amicable
and satisfactory relations between the Cabinet of St. James and the Cabinet of
St. Petersburg, would not allow his British Majesty to undertake such an
interference. The time was NOT YET come to undertake such a plan with success
against the will of a sovereign whose rights were
indisputable.”

This was not all. On February 23, 1848, Mr. Anstey[15] made the following declaration in
the House of Commons:

“Sweden was arming her fleet for the purpose of making
a diversion in favour of Poland, and of regaining to herself the provinces in
the Baltic, which have been so unjustly wrested from her in the last war. The
noble lord instructed our ambassador at the Court of Stockholm in a contrary
sense, and Sweden discontinued her armaments. The Persian Court had, with a
similar purpose, despatched an army three days on its march towards the Russian
frontier, under the command of the Persian Crown Prince. The Secretary of
Legation at the court of Teheran, Sir John M’Neill, followed the prince,
at a distance of three days' march from his headquarters, overtook him, and
there, under instructions from the noble lord, and in the name of England,
threatened Persia with war if the prince advanced another step towards the
Russian frontier. Similar inducements were used by the noble lord to prevent
Turkey from renewing war on her side.”

To Colonel Evans, asking for the production of papers with regard to
Prussia's violation of her pretended neutrality in the Russo-Polish war, Lord
Palmerston replied, “that the ministers of this country could not have
witnessed that contest without the deepest regret, and it would be most
satisfactory for them to see it terminated.”—(House of Commons,
August 16, 1831.)

Certainly he wished to see it terminated as soon as possible, and Prussia
shared in his feelings.

On a subsequent occasion, Mr. H. Gally Knight thus summed up the whole
proceedings of the noble lord with regard to the Polish revolution:

"There is something curiously inconsistent in the
proceedings of the noble lord when Russia is concerned. ... On the subject of
Poland, the noble lord has disappointed us again and again; remember when the
noble lord was pressed to exert himself in favour of Poland, then he admitted
the justice of the cause—the justice of our complaints; but he said,
‘Only restrain yourselves at present, there is an ambassador fast setting
out, of known liberal sentiments; you will only embarrass his negotiation, if
you incense the Power with whom he has to deal. So, take my advice, be quiet at
present, and be assured that a great deal will be effected.’ We trusted
to those assurances; the liberal ambassador went; whether he ever approached
the subject or not was never known, but all we got were the fine words of the
noble lord, and no results.”—(House of Commons, July 13,
1840)

The so-called kingdom of Poland having disappeared from the map of Europe,
there remained still, in the free town of Cracow, a fantastic remnant of Polish
nationality. The Czar Alexander, during the general anarchy resulting from the
fall of the French Empire, had not conquered the Duchy of Warsaw but simply
seized it, and wished, of course, to keep it, together with Cracow, which had
been incorporated with the Duchy by Bonaparte. Austria, once possessed of
Cracow, wished to have it back. The Czar being unable to obtain it himself, and
unwilling to cede it to Austria, proposed to constitute it a free town.
Accordingly the Treaty of Vienna stipulated in Article VI, “the town of
Cracow with its territory is to be for ever a free, independent and strictly
neutral city, under the protection of Austria, Russia, and Prussia”; and
in Article IX, “the courts of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, engage to
respect, and to cause to be always respected, the neutrality of the free town
of Cracow and its territory. No armed force shall be introduced on any
pretence whatever.”

Immediately after the close of the Polish insurrection of 1830-31, the
Russian troops suddenly entered Cracow, the occupation of which lasted two
months. This, however, was considered as a transitory necessity of war, and in
the turmoil of that time was soon forgotten.

In 1836, Cracow was again occupied by the troops of Austria, Russia, and
Prussia, on the pretext of forcing the authorities of Cracow to deliver up the
individuals concerned in the Polish revolution five years before.

On this occasion the noble lord refrained from all remonstrance, on the
ground, as he stated in 1836 and 1840, “that it was difficult to give
effect to our remonstrances.” As soon, however, as Cracow was definitely
confiscated by Austria, a simple remonstrance appeared to him to be “the
only effectual means.” When the three northern Powers occupied Cracow in
1836, its Constitution was abrogated, the three consular residences assumed the
highest authority—the police was entrusted to Austrian spies—the
senate overthrown—the tribunals suspended—the university put down
by prohibiting the students of the neighbouring provinces from frequenting
it—and the commerce of the free city, with the surrounding countries,
destroyed.

In March, 1836, when interpellated on the occupation of Cracow, Lord
Palmerston declared that occupation to be of a merely transitory character. Of
so palliative and apologetic a kind was the construction he put on the doings
of his three northern allies, that he felt himself obliged suddenly to stop and
interrupt the even tenor of his speech by the solemn declaration, “I
stand not up here to defend the measure, which on the contrary, I MUST censure
and condemn. I have merely stated those circumstances which, though they do not
excuse the forcible occupation of Cracow, might yet afford a justification,
etc....” He admitted that the Treaty of Vienna bound the three Powers to
abstain from any step without the previous consent of England, but “they
may be justly said to have paid an involuntary homage to the justice
and plain dealing of this country, by supposing that we would never give our
assent to such a proceeding”.

Mr. Patrick Stewart having, however, found out that there existed better
means for the preservation of Cracow than the “abstention from
remonstrance,” moved on April 20, 1836, “that the Government should
be ordered to send a representative to the free town of Cracow as consul, there
being three consuls there from the three other powers, Austria, Russia, and
Prussia”. The joint arrival of an English and French consul at Cracow
would prove an event and must, in any case, have prevented the noble lord from
afterwards declaring himself unaware of the intrigues pursued at Cracow by the
Austrians, Russians, and Prussians. The noble viscount seeing that the majority
of the House was favourable to the motion, induced Mr. Stewart to withdraw it,
by solemnly promising that the Government “intended to send a consular
agent to Cracow”. On March 22, 1837, being interpellated by Lord Dudley
Stuart with regard to his promise, the noble lord answered that “he had
altered his intention, and had not sent a consular agent to Cracow, and it was
not at present his intention to do so.” Lord D. Stuart having given
notice that he should move for papers to elucidate this singular transaction,
the noble viscount succeeded in defeating the motion by the simple process of
being absent, and causing the House to be counted out. He never stated why or
wherefore he had not fulfilled his pledge, and withstood all attempts to
squeeze out of him any papers on the subject.

In 1840, the “temporary” occupation still continued, and the
people of Cracow addressed a memorandum to the Governments of France and
England, which says, amongst other things:

“The misfortunes which overwhelm the free city of
Cracow and its inhabitants are such that the undersigned see no further hope
for themselves and their fellow-citizens but in the powerful and enlightened
protection of the Governments of France and England. The situation in which
they find themselves placed gives them a right to invoke the intervention of
every Power subscribed to the Treaty of Vienna.”

Being interrogated on July 13, 1840, about this petition from Cracow,
Palmerston declared “that between Austria and the British Government the
question of the evacuation of Cracow remained only a question of time”.
As to the violation of the Treaty of Vienna “there were no means of
enforcing the opinions of England, supposing that this country was disposed to
do so by arms, because Cracow was evidently a place where no English action
could possibly take place.”

Be it remarked, that two days after this declaration, July 15, 1840, the
noble lord concluded a treaty with Russia, Austria, and Prussia, for closing
the Black Sea to the English navy, probably in order that no English action
could take place in those quarters. It was at the very same time that the noble
lord renewed the Holy Alliance with those Powers against France. As to the
commercial loss sustained by England, consequent upon the occupation of Cracow,
the noble lord demonstrated that “the amount of general exports to
Germany had not fallen off”, which, as Sir Robert Peel [16] justly
remarked, had nothing to do with Cracow, considerable quantities of English
merchandise being sent thither by the Black Sea, Moldavia, and
Galicia—and closely pressed to state his real intentions on the subject
and as to the consular agent to be sent to Cracow, “he thought that his
experience of the manner in which his unfortunate assertion [made by the noble
lord in 1836, in order to escape from the censure of a hostile House] of an
intention to appoint a British consul at Cracow, had been taken up by
honourable gentlemen opposite, justified him in positively refusing to give any
answer to such a question, which might expose him to similar unjustifiable
attacks.”

On August 16, 1846, he stated that “whether the treaty of Vienna is or
is not executed and fulfilled by the great Powers of Europe, depends not upon
the presence of a consular agent at Cracow.” On January, 28, 1847, Cracow
was doomed, and when the noble lord was again asked for the production of
papers relative to the non-appointment of a British consul at Cracow,
he declared that “the subject had no necessary connection with
the discussion on the incorporation of Cracow, and he saw no advantage in
reviving an angry discussion on a subject which had only a passing
interest.” He proved true to his opinion on the production of State
papers, as expressed on March 7, 1837: “If the papers are upon the
questions now under consideration, their production would be dangerous; if they
refer to questions that are gone by, they can obviously be of no use.”

The British Government was, however, very exactly informed of the importance
of Cracow, not only from a political but also from a commercial point of view,
their consul at Warsaw, Colonel Du Flat, having reported to them that

“Cracow, since its elevation into an independent
State, has always been the depot of very considerable quantities of English
merchandise sent thither by the Black Sea, Moldavia, and Galicia, and even via
Trieste; and which afterwards find their way to the surrounding countries. In
the course of years it came into railway communication with the great lines of
Bohemia, Prussia, and Austria ... It is also the central point of the important
line of railway communication between the Adriatic and the Baltic. It will come
into direct communication of the same description with Warsaw. ... Looking,
therefore, to the almost certainty of every great point of the Levant[i.e., the lands around the eastern end of the Mediterranean
sea], and even of India and China, finding its way up the Adriatic, it
cannot be denied that it must be of the greatest commercial importance, even to
England, to have such a station as Cracow, in the centre of the great net of
railways connecting the Western and Eastern Continents.”

Lord Palmerston himself was obliged to confess to the House that the Cracow
insurrection of 1846 had been intentionally provoked by the three Powers.
“I believe the original entrance of the Austrian troops into the
territory of Cracow was in consequence of an application from the
Government.” But, then, those Austrian troops retired. Why they retired
has never yet been explained. With them retired the Government and the
authorities of Cracow; the immediate, at least the early, consequence of that
retirement, was the establishment of a Provisional Government at
Cracow.—(House of Commons, August 17, 1846.)

On the 22nd of February, 1846, the forces of Austria, and afterwards those
of Russia and Prussia, took possession of Cracow. On the 26th of the same
month, the Prefect of Tarnow issued his proclamation calling upon the peasants
to murder their landlords, promising them “a sufficient recompense in
money,” which proclamation was followed by the Galician atrocities, and
the massacre of about 2,000 landed proprietors. On the 12th appeared the
Austrian proclamation to the “faithful Galicians who have aroused
themselves for the maintenance of order and law, and destroyed the enemies of
order.” In the official Gazette of April 28th, Prince Frederick
of Schwarzenberg stated officially that “the acts that had taken place
had been authorised by the Austrian Government,” which, of
course, acted on a common plan with Russia and with Prussia, the lackey of the
Czar. Now, after all these abominations had passed, Lord Palmerston thought fit
to declare in the House:

“I have too high an opinion of the sense of justice
and of right that must animate the Governments of Austria, Russia, and Prussia,
to believe that they can feel any disposition or intention to deal with Cracow
otherwise than Cracow is entitled by treaty-engagements to be dealt
with.”—(House of Commons, August 17, 1846.)

For the noble lord the only business then in hand was to get rid of
Parliament, whose session was drawing to a close. He assured the Commons that
“on the part of the British Government everything shall be done to ensure
a due respect being paid to the provisions of the treaty of Vienna.“ Mr.
Hume giving vent to his doubts about Lord Palmerston’s “intention
to cause the Austro-Russian troops to retire from Cracow,” the noble lord
begged of the House not to give credence to the statements made by Mr. Hume, as
he was in possession of better information, and was convinced that the
occupation of Cracow was only a “TEMPORARY” one. The Parliament of
1846 having been got rid of, in the same manner as that of 1843, out came the
Austrian proclamation of November 11, 1846, incorporating Cracow with the
Austrian dominions. When Parliament re-assembled on January 19, 1847, it was
informed by the Queen's speech that Cracow was gone, but that there remained in
its place a protest on the part of the brave Lord Palmerston. In order to
deprive this protest of even the appearance of a meaning the noble lord
contrived, at that very epoch, to engage England in a quarrel with France on
the occasion of the Spanish marriages,[17] very nearly setting the two countries by the ears;
a performance which was sharply overhauled by Mr. Smith O’Brien in the
House of Commons, on April 18, 1847.

The French Government having applied to Palmerston for his co-operation in a
joint protest against the incorporation of Cracow, Lord Normanby,[18] under
instructions from the noble viscount, answered that the outrage of which
Austria had been guilty in annexing Cracow was not greater than that of France
in effecting a marriage between the Duke of Montpensier and the Spanish
Infanta—the one being a violation of the Treaty of Vienna, and the other
of the Treaty of Utrecht. Now, the Treaty of Utrecht, renewed in 1782, was
definitely abrogated by the Anti-Jacobin war; and had, therefore, ever since
1792, ceased to be operative. There was no man in the House better informed of
this circumstance than the noble lord, as he had himself stated to the House on
the occasion of the debates on the blockades of Mexico and Buenos Ayres, that

“the provisions of the Treaty of Utrecht had long
since lapsed in the variations of war, with the exception of the single clause
relating to the boundaries of Brazil and French Guiana, because that clause had
been expressly incorporated in the Treaty of Vienna.”

We have not yet done with the exertions of the noble lord in resisting the
encroachments of Russia upon Poland.

There once existed a curious convention between England, Holland, and
Russia—the so-called Russian Dutch loan. During the Anti-Jacobin war the
Czar, Alexander, contracted a loan with Messrs. Hope & Co., at Amsterdam;
and after the fall of Bonaparte, the King of the Netherlands, “desirous
to make a suitable return to the Allied Powers for having delivered his
territory,” and for having annexed to it Belgium, to which he had no
claim whatever, engaged himself—the other Powers waiving their common
claims in favour of Russia, then in great need of money—to execute a
convention with Russia agreeing to pay her by successive instalments the
twenty-five million florins she owed to Messrs. Hope & Co. England, in
order to cover the robbery she had committed on Holland, of her colonies at the
Cape of Good Hope, Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice, became a party to this
convention, and bound herself to pay a certain proportion of the subsidies
granted to Russia. This stipulation became part of the Treaty of Vienna, but
upon the express condition “that the payment should cease if the
union between Holland and Belgium were broken prior to the liquidation of the
debt.” When Belgium separated herself from Holland by a revolution, the
latter, of course, refused to pay her portion to Russia on the ground that the
loan had been contracted to continue her in the undivided possession of the
Belgian provinces, and that she no longer had the sovereignty of that country.
On the other hand, there remained, as Mr. Herries stated in Parliament,
“not the smallest iota of a claim on the part of Russia for the
continuance of debt by England.”—(House of Commons,
January 26, 1832.)

Lord Palmerston, however, found it quite natural that “at one time
Russia is paid for supporting the union of Belgium with Holland, and that at
another time she is paid for supporting the separation of these
countries.”—(House of Commons, July 16, 1832.)

He appealed in a very tragic manner for the faithful observance of
treaties—and above all, of the Treaty of Vienna; and he contrived to
carry a new convention with Russia, dated November 16, 1831, the preamble of
which expressly stated that it was contracted “in consideration of the
general arrangements of the Congress of Vienna which remain in full
force.” When the convention relating to the Russian Dutch loan had been
inserted in the Treaty of Vienna, the Duke of Wellington exclaimed: “This
is a master-stroke of diplomacy on the part of Lord Castlereagh;[19] for Russia
has been tied down to the observance of the Vienna treaty by a pecuniary
obligation.”

When Russia, therefore, withdrew her observance of the Vienna treaty by the
Cracow confiscation, Mr. Hume moved to stop any further annual payment to
Russia from the British treasury. The noble viscount, however, thought that
although Russia had a right to violate the treaty of Vienna, with regard to
Poland, England must remain bound by that very treaty with regard to Russia.

But this is not the most extraordinary incident in the noble lord's
proceedings. After the Belgian revolution had broken out, and before Parliament
had sanctioned the new loan to Russia, the noble lord defrayed the costs of the
Russian war against Poland, under the false pretext of paying off the old debt
contracted by England in 1815, although we can state, on the authority of the
greatest English lawyer, Sir E. Sugden,[20] now Lord St. Leonards, that “there was not a
single debatable point in that question and the Government had no power
whatever to pay a shilling of the money”—(House of Commons,
June 26, 1832); and, on the authority of Sir Robert Peel, “that Lord
Palmerston was not warranted by law in advancing the money.”
—(House of Commons, July 12, 1832.)

Now we understand why the noble lord reiterates on every occasion that
“nothing can be more painful to a man of proper feeling, than discussions
upon the subject of Poland.” We can also appreciate the degree of
earnestness he is now likely to exhibit in resisting the encroachments of the
Power he has so uniformly served.