No more fighting of any account has taken place in Turkey 
since my last letter, but Russian diplomacy, more dangerous than 
Russian generalship, is again at work, and the revival of the 
famous London Conferences of 1840 and 1841, which terminated 
with sanctioning the treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, under a slightly 
altered form, is more or less clearly announced through the 
medium of the ministerial papers on both sides of the Channel. 
The Times even hints at “vigorous measures of pacification,” viz.: a 
sort of armed pacification directed against Turkey by her self-styled 
protectors. There is one great diplomatic fact not to be misunder- 
stood, namely, the last Note sent by the English Cabinet to 
Constantinople, presented by the British Ambassador to the Porte, 
rejected by the Divan on the 14th Nov., and turning out to be but 
a second edition of Reshid Pasha’s answer to Prince Menchikoff’s 
ultimatum in the month of May last.*’? This is the manner in 
which the Palmerstons and Aberdeens give the Sultan* to 
understand that, however the face of things may have otherwise 
changed, the relative situations of Turkey and Russia have 
undergone no change whatever since the month of May last, 
Turkey having won nothing nor Russia lost anything in the eyes of 
Western diplomacy. 

As Prince Alexander of Servia forbids the Turkish troops to 
cross his territory, asks for the return of the Russian Consul- 
General, and treats, in his declaration to the Sultan, Turkey and 
Russia as the two protecting powers placed on the same footing 
with regard to the Principality, serious conflicts with Servia may be 

apprehended, which, fatal as they might have proved to Turkey at 
any other moment, are at present perhaps the only means of 
saving her from the claws of Western diplomacy. Every new 
incident adding to the present complication, driving bankrupt 
Austria out of her dangerous neutrality, augmenting the chances 
of an European war, and enforcing upon Turkey the alliance with 
the revolutionary party, must turn out favorable to her, at least in 
her conflict with Russia. The constitutional causes of her decay 
will, of course, continue to do their work, if not counteracted by 
thorough transformation of the Turkish rule in Europe. 

From the war carried on in the Principalities between Russians 
and Turks, let us return for one moment to the war raging in the 
manufacturing districts of England between masters and men. You 
will remember the epoch when the masters fiercely opposed and 
denounced the short-time movement on the part of the men. Now 
the tables are turned, and, as I predicted at the time, the system of 
short time is enforced by the masters on the men.* The lock-out . 
exhibits its true meaning as a financial measure on the part of the 
masters, as a sort of antidote to an industrial over-production 
unparalleled in the “history of prices.”” Since Monday last the 
mills have resumed work, but only for four days per week, in the 
Rochdale district—Burnley, Bacup, Newchurch—at Bury in the 
Ashton district—Ashton, Stalybridge, Glossop, Hyde, Newton. 
Bolton will soon be obliged to follow. Manchester is deliberating 
the question not whether, but when, to give way. In two or three 
weeks short time will be general, save in some few favored 
branches of industry. This, of course, must be followed by a stop- 
page of the supplies to the Preston resistants. But even four days’ 
work still overruns the demand. Just think that not three weeks ago 
the Preston masters had on hand a stock equal to twenty weeks’ 
production, which proved almost unsalable. The industrial crisis has 
no longer to begin; it has fairly set in. 

“The reduction of time,” says The Times, “is accompanied by a reduction of 
wages to the standard [...] before the recent advances were obtained by the 

hands.”* “A pauper cannot dictate conditions—he must take what is offered him,” 
says The Economist, in a fit of sincerity. 

I have repeatedly stated that the turn-outs of the men, by 
beginning at too late an epoch, when the opportunities afforded 
by unprecedented prosperity were already vanishing away, could 
not prove successful in an economical point of view, or as far as 
their immediate end was concerned. But they have done their 
work. They have revolutionized the industrial proletariat, and, 
stirred up by dear food and cheap labor, the political conse- 
quences will show themselves in due time. Already the idea of a 
Parliament of Labor which, in fact, means nothing but a general 
reassembling of the workingmen under the banners of Chartism, 
evokes the fears of the middle-class press. 

“Mr. Ernest Jones [...],” says The Economist, “the editor of The People’s Paper, is 
described as the successor of Mr. Feargus O’Connor, as Mr. O’Connor was the 
successor of Mr. Hunt.... From following Hunt and O’Connor, the workingmen got 
nothing but hard knocks and great losses; nevertheless, they place equal confidence 
in the successor of these great kings, and now look to be saved by Jones.”* 

From the following quotations you will see that the English class 
papers, if stimulated by party motives, as is the case with The 
Morning Herald, or if inspired, as The Morning Post, by a cynical 
but keen observer like Palmerston, know how to judge the present 
state of affairs, and how to deal with the vulgarism of Prosperity- 
Robinson?: 

“To hear them now, you would suppose that the authority of millowners was 
nothing less than divine, and that the safety of the empire depended on their being 
allowed to exercise powers little short of those of the French Emperor“.... Some 
60,000 of the workingmen of Lancashire are at this moment living on fare which 
barely suffices to keep soul and body together, without so much as a thought of a 
plunder or violence, although in towns which manufacturing economy has left 
wholly unguarded by police. Right or wrong these men have stood by their 
opinions and their leaders manfully, and it would not be easy to find another 
instance of a movement at once so peacefully and so effectually carried out.” 

(Morning Herald) 

“Our economists boasted of the overwhelming blessings which would flow, past 
all our dreams, as the result of free trade; yet there we are with the winter before 
us, and the pestilence only waiting the return of spring, and just when our poor 
are most in need of more than usual food and clothing to raise their physical 
system up to the point most capable of resisting disease— just at this time, they are 
actually crushed by the unprecedented high prices of all the necessaries of life. Not 
a sign is visible of the milk and honev that were to enrich the land; while all that 

was predicated of the perpetuity of cheapness and plenty seems in a fair way of 
being classed among the other thousand popular delusions by which society has 
been gulled.... English society is a filthy, pestilent, immoral, ignorant, cruel, 
blundering, discontented, and uncommonly hard up community.” 

Such is the language of The Morning Post,* the drawing-room 
print, and the official organ of my Lord Palmerston. 

Written on December 2, 1853 Reproduced from the New-York