The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston by Karl Marx

6

There is no such word in the Russian vocabulary as "honour." As to the thing
itself, it is considered to be a French delusion.

"Schto takoe honneur? Eto Fransusski chimere," is a Russian
proverb. For the invention of Russian honour the world is exclusively indebted
to my Lord Palmerston, who, during a quarter of a century, used at every
critical moment to pledge himself in the most emphatic manner, for the “
honour” of the Czar. He did so at the close of the session of 1853, as at
the close of the session of 1833.

Now, it happens that the noble lord, while he expressed “ his most
implicit confidence in the honour and good faith” of the Czar, had just
got into possession of documents, concealed from the rest of the world, and
leaving no doubt, if any existed, about the nature of Russian honour and good
faith. He had not even to scratch the Muscovite in order to find the Tartar. He
had found the Tartar in his naked hideousness. He found himself possessed of
the self-confessions of the leading Russian ministers and diplomatists,
throwing off their cloaks, opening out their most secret thoughts, unfolding,
without constraint, their plans of conquest and subjugation, scornfully railing
at the imbecile credulity of European courts and ministers, mocking the
Villeles, the Metternichs, the Aberdeens, the Cannings, and the Wellingtons;
and devising in common, with the savage cynicism of the barbarian, mitigated by
the cruel irony of the courtier, how to sow distrust against England at Paris,
and against Austria at London, and against London at Vienna, how to set them
all by the ears, and how to make all of them the mere tools of Russia.

At the time of the insurrection in Warsaw, the vice-royal archives kept in
the palace of Prince Constantine, and containing the secret correspondence of
Russian ministers and ambassadors from the beginning of this century down to
1830, fell into the hands of the victorious Poles. Polish refugees brought
these papers over first to France, and, at a later period, Count Zamoyski, the
nephew of Prince Czartoryski, placed them in the hands of Lord Palmerston, who
buried them in Christian oblivion. With these papers in his pocket, the noble
viscount was the more eager to proclaim in the British Senate and to the world,
“ his most implicit confidence in the honour and good faith of the
Emperor of Russia.”

It was not the fault of the noble viscount, that those startling papers were
at length published at the end of 1835, through the famousPortfolio.
King William IV, whatsoever he was in other respects, was a most decided enemy
of Russia. His private secretary, Sir Herbert Taylor, was intimately connected
with David Urquhart,[33] introducing this gentleman to the King himself,
and from that moment Royalty was conspiring with these two friends against the
policy of the “truly English” minister.

“ William IV. ordered the above-mentioned papers to be
given up by the noble lord. They were given up and examined at the time at
Windsor Castle, and it was found desirable to print and publish them. In spite
of the great opposition of the noble lord, the King compelled him to lend the
authority of the Foreign Office to their publication, so that the editor who
took the charge of revising them for the press, published not a single word
which had not the signature or initials attached. I, myself, have seen the
noble lord’s initial attached to one of these documents, although the
noble lord has denied these facts. Lord Palmerston was compelled to place the
documents in the hands of Mr. Urquhart for publication. Mr. Urquhart was the
real editor of the Portfolio.” —(Mr, Anstey, House of Commons,
February 23, 1848.)

After the death of the King, Lord Palmerston refused to pay the printer of
the Portfolio, disclaimed publicly and solemnly all connection on the
part of the Foreign Office with it, and induced, in what manner is not known,
Mr. Backhouse, his under-secretary, to set his name to these denials. We read
in The Times of January 30, 1839:

“ It is not for us to understand how Lord Palmerston
may feel, but we are sure there is no misapprehending how any other
person in the station of a gentleman, and in the position of a minister,
would feel after the notoriety given to the correspondence between Mr.
Urquhart, whom Lord Palmerston dismissed from office, and Mr. Backhouse, whom
the noble viscount has retained in office, by The Times of yesterday.
There never was a fact apparently better established through this
correspondence than that the series of official documents contained in the
well-known publication called the Portfolio, were printed and
circulated by Lord Palmerston's authority, and that his lordship is responsible
for the publication of them, both as a statesman to the political world here
and abroad, and as an employer of the printers and publishers, for the
pecuniary charge accompanying it.”

In consequence of her financial distress, resulting from the exhaustion of
the treasury by the unfortunate war of 1828-29, and the debt to Russia
stipulated by the Treaty of Adrianople, Turkey found herself compelled to
extend that obnoxious system of monopolies, by which the sale of almost all
articles was granted only to those who had paid Government licenses. Thus a few
usurers were enabled to seize upon the entire commerce of the country. Mr.
Urquhart proposed to King William IV a commercial treaty to be concluded with
the Sultan, which treaty, while guaranteeing great advantages to British
commerce, intended at the same time to develop the productive resources of
Turkey, to restore her exchequer to health, and thus to emancipate her from the
Russian yoke. The curious history of this treaty cannot be better related than
in the words of Mr. Anstey:

“The whole of the contest between Lord Palmerston on
the one hand, and Mr. Urquhart on the other, was directed to this treaty of
commerce. On the 3rd of October, 1835, Mr Urquhart obtained his commission as
Secretary of Legation at Constantinople, given him for the one purpose of
securing the adoption there of the Turkish commercial treaty. He delayed his
departure, however, till June or July, 1836. Lord Palmerston pressed him to go.
The applications to him urging his departure were numerous, but his answer
invariably was, ‘I will not go until I have this commercial treaty
settled with the Board of Trade and the Foreign Office: and then I will
accompany it and procure its acceptance at the Porte.’ ... Finally, Lord
Palmerston gave his approbation to the treaty, and it was forwarded to Lord
Ponsonby, the Ambassador at Constantinople. [In the meantime the latter had
been instructed by Lord Palmerston to take the negotiations entirely out of the
hands of Mr. Urquhart into his own, contrary to the engagement entered into
with Mr. Urquhart.] As soon as the removal of Mr. Urquhart from Constantinople
had been effected through the intrigues of the noble lord, the treaty was
immediately thrown overboard. Two years later the noble lord resumed it, giving
Mr. Urquhart, before Parliament, the compliment of being the author of it, and
disclaiming for himself all merits in it. But the noble lord had destroyed the
treaty, falsified it in every part, and converted it to the ruin of commerce.
The original treaty of Mr. Urquhart placed the subjects of Great Britain in
Turkey upon the footing of the most favoured nation, viz. the Russians. As
altered by Lord Palmerston, it placed the subjects of Great Britain upon the
footing of the taxed and oppressed subjects of the Porte. Mr. Urquhart’s
treaty stipulated for the removal of all transit duties, monopolies, taxes, and
duties of whatever character, other than those stipulated by the treaty itself.
As falsified by Lord Falmerston, it contained a clause, declaring the perfect
right of the Sublime Porte to impose whatever regulations and restrictions it
pleased, with regard to commerce. Mr Urquhart’s treaty left exportation
subject only to the old duty of three shillings; that of the noble lord raised
the duty from three shillings to five shillings. Mr. Urquhart’s treaty
stipulated for an ad valorem duty in this manner, that if any article
of commerce was so exclusively the production of Turkey as to insure it a ready
sale at the prices usually received under the monopoly in foreign ports, then
the export duty, to be assessed by two commissioners appointed on the part of
England and Turkey, might be a high one, so as to be remunerative and
productive of revenue, but that, in the case of commodities produced elsewhere
than in Turkey, and not being of sufficient value in foreign ports to bear a
high duty, a lower duty should be assessed. Lord Palmerston’s treaty
stipulated a fixed duty of twelve shillings ad valorem upon every
article, whether it would bear the duty or not. The original treaty extended
the benefit of free trade to Turkish ships and produce; the substituted treaty
contained no stipulation whatever on the subject.... I charge these
falsifications, I charge also the concealment of them, upon the noble lord, and
further—I charge the noble lord with having falsely stated to the House
that his treaty was that which had been arranged by Mr. Urquhart.“
—(Mr, Anstey, House of Commons, February 23, 1848.)

So favourable to Russia, and so obnoxious to Great Britain, was the treaty
as altered by the noble lord, that some English merchants in the Levant
resolved to trade henceforth under the protection of Russian firms, and others,
as Mr. Urquhart states, were only prevented from doing so by a sort of national
pride.

With regard to the secret relations between the noble lord and William IV,
Mr. Anstey stated to the House:

“The King forced the question of the process of
Russian encroachment in Turkey upon the attention of the noble lord.... I can
prove that the noble lord was obliged to take the direction in this matter from
the late King’s private secretary, and that his existence in office
depended upon his compliance with the wishes of the monarch. ... The noble lord
did, on one or two occasions, as far as he dared, resist, but his resistance
was invariably followed by abject expressions of contrition
and compliance. I will not take upon myself to assert that on one
occasion the noble lord was actually out of office for a day or two, but I am
able to say that the noble lord was in danger of a most unceremonious expulsion
from office on that occasion. I refer to the discovery which the late King had
made, that the noble lord consulted the feelings of the Russian Government as
to the choice of an English Ambassador at the Court of St. Petersburg, and that
Sir Stratford Canning, originally destined for the embassy, was set aside to
make room for the late Earl of Durham, an ambassador more agreeable to the
Czar.”—(House of Commons, February 23, 1853)

It is one of the most astonishing facts that, while the King was vainly
struggling against the Russian policy of the noble lord, the noble lord and his
Whig allies succeeded in keeping alive the public suspicion that the
King—who was known as a Tory—was paralysing the anti-Russian
efforts of the “truly English” Minister. The pretended Tory
predilection of the monarch for the despotic principles of the Russian Court,
was, of course, made to explain the otherwise inexplicable policy of Lord
Palmerston. The Whig oligarchs smiled mysteriously when Mr. H. L. Bulwer
informed the House, that “no longer ago than last Christmas Count
Apponyi, the Austrian Ambassador at Paris, stated, in speaking of the affairs
of the East, that this Court had a greater apprehension of French principles
than of Russian ambition.”—(House of Commons,
July 11, 1833)

They smiled again, when Mr. T. Attwood interrogated the noble lord:
“what reception Count Orloff, having been sent over to England, after the
treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, had met with at his Majesty's
Court?”—(House of Commons, August 28, 1833)

The papers entrusted by the dying King and his secretary, the late Sir
Herbert Taylor, to Mr. Urquhart, “for the purpose of vindicating, upon
the fitting opportunity, the memory of William IV,” will, when published,
throw a new light upon the past career of the noble lord and the Whig
oligarchy, of which the public generally know little more than the history of
their pretensions, their phrases, and their so-called principles—in a
word, the theatrical and fictitious part—the mask.

This is a fitting occasion to give his due to Mr. David Urquhart, the
indefatigable antagonist for twenty years of Lord Palmerston, to whom he proved
a real adversary—one not to be intimidated into silence, bribed into
connivance, charmed into suitorship, while, what with cajoleries, what with
seductions, Alcine Palmerston contrived to change all other foes into fools. We
have just heard the fierce denunciation of his lordship by Mr. Anstey:

“A circumstance most significant is that the accused
minister sought the member, viz. Mr. Anstey, and was content to accept his
co-operation and private friendship without the forms of recantation or
apology. Mr. Anstey's recent legal appointment by the present Government speaks
for itself.”—(D. Urquhart’s Progress of Russia.)

On February 23, 1848, the same Mr. Anstey had compared the noble viscount to
“the infamous Marquis of Carmarthen, Secretary of State to
William III, whom, during his visit to his Court, the Czar, Peter I, found
means to corrupt to his interests with the gold of British
merchants.”—(House of Commons, February 23,
1848.)

Who defended Lord Palmerston on that occasion against the accusations of Mr.
Anstey? Mr. Sheil; the same Mr. Sheil who had, on the conclusion of the Treaty
of Unkiar Skelessi, in 1833, acted the same part of accuser against his
lordship as Mr. Anstey in 1848. Mr. Roebuck, once his strong anatagonist,
procured him the vote of confidence in 1850. Sir Stratford Canning, having
denounced during a decennium, the noble lord's connivance with the Czar, was
content to be got rid of as ambassador to Constantinople. The noble lord's own
dear Dudley Stuart was intrigued out of Parliament for some years, for having
opposed the noble lord. When returned back to it, he had become the âme
damnée [french: a
willing tool] of the “truly English” Minister. Kossuth,[34] who might have known from the
Blue Books that Hungary had been betrayed by the noble viscount, called him
“the dear friend of his bosom,” when landing at Southampton.