London, Tuesday, July 19, 1853 

The Czar* has not only commenced war, he has already 
terminated his first campaign. The line of operations is no longer 
behind the Pruth, but along the Danube. Meanwhile, what are the 
Western Powers about? They counsel, i.e. compel the Sultan” to 
consider the war as peace. Their answers to the acts of the 
autocrat are not cannons, but notes. The Emperor is assailed, not 
by the two fleets, but by no less than four projects of negotiation. 
One emanating from the English Cabinet, the other from the 
French, the third presented by Austria, and the fourth improvised 
by the “brother-in-law” of Potsdam. The Czar, it is hoped, will 
consent to select from this embarras de richesses that which is most 
suitable to his purposes. The (second) reply of M.Drouyn de 
Lhuys to the (second) note of M. de Nesselrode’ takes infinite 
pains to prove that “it was not England and France who made the 
first demonstration.”* Russia only throws out so many notes to the 
western diplomats, like bones to dogs, in order to set them at an 
innocent amusement, while she reaps the advantage of further 
gaining time. England and France, of course, catch the bait. As if 
the receipt of such a note were not a sufficient degradation, it [the 
note] received a most pacific comment in the Journal de l’Empzire in 
an article signed by M. de La Guéronnieére, but written from notes 
given by the Emperor and revised by him. That article “would 
permit to Russia the caprice of negotiating on the right bank rather 

: Quoted from Le Moniteur universel, No. 198, July 17, 1853.— Ed. 

than on the left bank of the Pruth.” It actually converts the second 
note of Count Nesselrode into an “‘attempt at reconciliation.” This is 
done in the following style: 

“Count Nesselrode now speaks only of a moral guarantee, and he announces 
that, for it, is substituted provisionally a material guarantee thus making a direct 

appeal to negotiation. That being the case it is impossible to consider the action of 
diplomatists exhausted.” * 

The Assemblée nationale, the Russian Moniteur at Paris, ironically 
congratulates the Journal de l’Empire for its discovery, however late 
it had come to it, and regrets only that so much noise should have 
been made to no purpose. 

The English press has lost all countenance. 

“The Czar cannot comprehend the courtesy which the Western Powers have 
shown to him.... He is incapable of courteous demeanor in his transactions with 
other powers.” 

So says The Morning Advertiser. The Morning Post is exasperated 
because the Czar takes so little note of the internal embarras of his 
opponents: 

“To have put forward, in the mere wantonness of insolence, a claim that 
pdssessed no character of immediate urgency, and to have done so without any 
reference to the inflammable state of Europe, was an indiscretion almost 
incredible.” 

The writer of the Money Market article in The Economist finds 
out 

“that men discover now to their cost, how inconvenient it is that all the most 
secret interests of the world [i.e., of the Exchange], are dependent upon the 
vagaries of one man.” * 

Yet in 1848 and ’49 you could see the bust of the Emperer of 
Russia side by side with the veau d’or' itself. 

Meanwhile the position of the Sultan is becoming every hour 
more difficult and complicated. His financial embarrassments 
increase the more, as he bears all the burdens, without reaping 
any of the good chances of war. Popular enthusiasm turns round 

, Le Pays, No. 197, July 16, 1853.— Ed. 
“ The Morning Advertiser, July 18, 1853.— Ed. 
July 18, 1853.— Ed. 
© The Economist, No. 516, July 16, 1853.— Ed. 

upon him for want of being directed against the Czar. The 
fanaticism of the Mussulman threatens him with palace revolu- 
tions, while the fanaticism of the Greek menaces him with popular 
insurrections. The papers of to-day contain reports of a conspiracy 
directed against the Sultan’s life by Mussulman students belonging 
to the old Turkish party, who wanted to place Abdul Aziz on the 
throne.'” 

In the House of Lords, yesterday, Lord Clarendon was asked by 
Lords Beaumont and Malmesbury to state his intentions, now that 
the Emperor of France had not hesitated to pronounce his. Lord 
Clarendon, however, beside a brief avowal that England had 
indorsed the note of M.Drouyn de Lhuys, concealed himself 
behind his entrenchment of promises that he would certainly very 
soon give full information to the House. On the question whether 
it was true that the Russians had also seized the Civil Government 
and the Post-Offices of the Principalities, which they had placed 
under military occupation, Lord Clarendon remained “silent,” of 
course! “He would not believe it, after the proclamation of Prince 
Gorchakoff.”'"" Lord Beaumont replied, he seemed to be 
very sanguine indeed. 

To a question concerning the late Smyrna affray,’? put by Sir 
J. Walmsley in the House of Commons, Lord John Russell replied 
that he had heard indeed of the kidnapping of one Hungarian 
refugee? by the Consul of Austria‘; but as to Austria having 
demanded the extradition of all Hungarian and Italian refugees, 
he had certainly heard nothing of that. Lord John manages 
interpellations in a style altogether pleasant and not without 
convenience to himself. Official information he never receives; 
and in the newspapers he never reads anything that you want him, 
or expect him to have read. 

The Kolnische Zeitung in a letter dated Vienna, July 11, contains 
the following report on the Smyrna affair: 

“Chekib Effendi has been sent to Smyrna in order to commence an instruction 
against the authors of the sedition in which M. de Hackelberg perished. Chekib has 
also received orders to deliver to Austria the refugees of Austrian or Tuscan 
origin. Mr. Brown, Chargé d’Affaires of the United States, has had communica- 
tions on this subject with Reshid Pasha, the result of which was not yet known. I 
hear at this moment that the assassin of Baron Hackelberg has received from the 
American Consul at Smyrna a passport that places him out of the reach of the 

Turkish authorities. This fact proves that the United States intend intervening in 
European affairs. It is also sure that three American men-of-war are with the 

Turkish fleet in the Bosphorus, and further, that the American frigate Cumberland 
has brought 80,000,000 of piasters to the Turkish Government.” 

Whatever truth there be in this and like reports, they prove one 
thing, viz.: that American intervention is expected everywhere, 
and is even looked upon with favor by portions of the English 
public. The behavior of the American Captain” and Consul are 
loudly praised in popular meetings, and the “Englishman”*‘ in The 
Advertiser of yesterday called the Stars and Stripes to appear in the 
Mediterranean and to shame the “muddy old Union Jack” into 
activity. 

To sum up the Eastern question in a few words: The Czar, 
vexed and dissatisfied at seeing his immense Empire confined to 
one sole port of export, and that even situated in a sea 
innavigable through one half of the year, and assailable by 
Englishmen through the other half, is pushing the design of his 
ancestors, to get access to the Mediterranean; he is separating, one 
after another, the remotest members of the Ottoman Empire from 
its main body, till at last Constantinople, the heart, must cease to 
beat. He repeats his periodical invasions as often as he thinks his 
designs on Turkey endangered by the apparent consolidation of 
the Turkish Government, or by the more dangerous symptoms of 
self-emancipation manifest amongst the Slavonians. Counting on 
the cowardice and apprehensions of the Western Powers, he bul- 
lies Europe, and pushes his demands as far as possible, in order to 
appear magnanimous afterward, by contenting himself with what he 
immediately wanted. 

The Western Powers, on the other hand, inconsistent, pusil- 
lanimous, suspecting each other, commence by encouraging the 
Sultan to resist the Czar, from fear of the encroachments of 
Russia, and terminate by compelling the former to yield, from fear 
of a general war giving rise to a general revolution. Too impotent 
and too timid to undertake the reconstruction of the Ottoman 
Empire by the establishment of a Greek Empire, or of a Federal 
Republic of Slavonic States, all they aim at,is to maintain the status 
quo, i.e., the state of putrefaction which forbids the Sultan to 
emancipate himself from the Czar, and the Slavonians to 
emancipate themselves from the Sultan. 

The revolutionary party can only congratulate itself on this state 
of things. The humiliation of the reactionary western govern- 
ments, and their manifest impotency to guard the interests of 

* K6lnische Zeitung, No. 193, July 14, 1853.— Ed. 

European civilization against Russian encroachment cannot fail to 
work out a wholesome indignation in the people who have 
suffered themselves, since 1849, to be subjected to the rule of 
counter-revolution. The approaching industrial crisis, also, is 
affected and accelerated quite as much by this semi-Eastern 
complication, as by the completely Eastern complication of China. 
While the prices of corn are rising, business in general is 
suspended, at the same time that the rate of Exchange is setting 
against England, and gold is beginning to flow to the Continent. 
The stock of bullion in the Bank of France has fallen off between 
the 9th of June and the 14th of July, the sum of £2,220,000, 
which is more than the entire augmentation which had taken place 
during the preceding three months. 

The progress of the India bill through the Committee has little 
interest. It is significant, that all amendments are thrown out now 
by the Coalition coalescing with the Tories against their own allies 
of the Manchester School. j 

The actual state of India may be illustrated by a few facts. The 
Home Establishment absorbs 3 per cent. of the net revenue, and 
the annual interest for Home Debt and Dividends 14 per 
cent.—together 17 per cent. If we deduct these annual remittances 
from India to England, the military charges amount to about 
two-thirds of the whole expenditure available for India, or to 66 
per cent., while the charges for Public Works do not amount to 
more than 2°/; per cent. of the general revenue, or for Bengal 
1 per cent., Agra 7°/4,, Punjab '/s, Madras '/», and Bombay | per cent. 
of their respective revenues. These figures are the official ones of the 
Company itself. 

On the other hand nearly three-fifths of the whole net revenue 
are derived from the land, about one-seventh from opium, and 
upward of one-ninth from salt. These resources together yield 85 
per cent. of the whole receipts. 

As to minor items of receipts and charges, it may suffice to state 
that the Moturpha revenue maintained in the Presidency of 
Madras, and levied on shops, looms, sheep, cattle, sundry 
professions, &c., yields somewhat about £50,000, while the yearly 
dinners of the East India House* cost about the same sum. 

The great bulk of the revenue is derived from the land. As the 
various kinds of Indian land-tenure have recently been described 
in so many places, and in popular style, too, I propose to limit my 

observations on the subject to a few general remarks on the 
Zemindari and Ryotwar systems.'” ; 

The Zemindari and the Ryotwar were both of them agrarian 
revolutions, effected by British ukases, and opposed to each other, 
the one aristocratic, the other democratic; the one a caricature of 
English landlordism, the other of French peasant-proprietorship; 
but pernicious, both combining the most contradictory character — 
both made not for the people, who cultivate the soil, nor for the 
holder, who owns it, but for the Government that taxes it. 

By the Zemindari system, the people of the Presidency of 
Bengal were depossessed at once of their hereditary claims to the 
soil, in favor of the native tax gatherers called Zemindars. By the 
Ryotwar system introduced into the Presidencies of Madras and 
Bombay, the native nobility, with their territorial claims, meras- 
sees, jagheers, &c., were reduced with the common people to the 
holding of minute fields, cultivated by themselves in favor of the 
Collector of the East India Company.'” But a curious sort of 
English landlord was the Zemindar, receiving only one-tenth of 
the rent, while he had to make over nine-tenths of it to the 
Government. A curious sort of French peasant was the Ryot, 
without any permanent title in the soil, and with the taxation 
changing every year in proportion to his harvest. The original class 
of Zemindars, notwithstanding their unmitigated and uncontrolled 
rapacity against the depossessed mass of the ex-hereditary landhold- 
ers, soon melted away under the pressure of the Company, in order 
to be replaced by mercantile speculators who now hold all the land of 
Bengal, with exception of the estates returned under the direct 
management of the Government. These speculators have introduced 
a variety of the Zemindari tenure called patnee. Not content to be 
placed with regard to the British Government in the situation of 
middlemen, they have created in their turn a class of “hereditary” 
middlemen called patnetas, who created again their sub-patnetas, &c., 
so that a perfect scale of hierarchy of middlemen has sprung up, 
which presses with its entire weight on the unfortunate cultivator. As 
to the Ryots in Madras and Bombay, the system soon degenerated 
into one of forced cultivation, and the land lost all its value. 

“The land,” says Mr. Campbell, “would be sold for balances by the Collector, 
as in Bengal, but generally is not, for a very good reason, viz.: that nobody will buy 
i? 

Thus, in Bengal, we have a combination of English landlordism, 
of the Irish middlemen system, of the Austrian system, transform- 
ing the landlord into the tax-gatherer, and of the Asiatic system 
making the State the real landlord. In Madras and Bombay we 
have a French peasant proprietor who is at the same time a serf, 
and a métayer of the State. The drawbacks of all these various 
systems accumulate upon him without his enjoying any of their 
redeeming features. The Ryot is subject, like the French peasant, 
to the extortion of the private usurer; but he has no hereditary, no 
permanent title in his land, like the French peasant. Like the serf 
he is forced to cultivation, but he is not secured against want like 
the serf. Like the métayer he has to divide his produce with the 
State, but the State is not obliged, with regard to him, to advance 
the funds and the stock, as it is obliged to do with regard to the 
métayer. In Bengal, as in Madras and Bombay, under the Zemindari 
as under the Ryotwar, the Ryots—and they form 11-12ths of the 
whole Indian population—have been wretchedly pauperized; and 
if they are, morally speaking, not sunk as low as the Irish cottiers, 
they owe it to their climate, the men of the South being possessed 
of less wants, and of more imagination than the men of the North. 

Conjointly with the land-tax we have to consider the salt-tax. 
Notoriously the Company retain the monopoly of that article 
which they sell at three times its mercantile value—and this in a 
country where it is furnished by the sea, by the lakes, by the 
mountains and the earth itself. The practical working of this 
monopoly was described by the Earl of Albemarle in the following 
words: 

“A great proportion of the salt for inland consumption throughout the country 
is purchased from the Company by large wholesale merchants at less than 4 rupees 
per maund*; these mix a fixed proportion of sand, chiefly got a few miles to the 
south-east of Dacca, and send the mixture to a second, or, counting the Government 
as the first, to a third monopolist at about 5 or 6 rupees. This dealer adds more earth 
or ashes, and thus passing through more hands, from the large towns to villages, the 
price is still raised from 8 to 10 rupees and the proportion of adulteration from 25 to 
40 per cent. [...] It appears then that the people [...] pay from £21, 17s. 2d. to £27, 6s. 
2d. for their salt, or in other words, from 30 to 36 times as much as thé wealthy people 
of Great Britain.” 

As an instance of English bourgeois morals, I may allege, that 
Mr. Campbell defends the Opium monopoly because it prevents 

July 1, 1853, published in The Times, No. 21470, July 2, 1853.— Ed. 

the Chinese from consuming too much of the drug, and that he 
defends the Brandy monopoly (licenses for spirit-selling in India) 
because it has wonderfully increased the consumption of Brandy 
in India. 

The Zemindar tenure, the Ryotwar, and the salt tax, combined 
with the Indian climate, were the hotbeds of the cholera— India’s 
ravages upon the Western World—a striking and severe example 
of the solidarity of human woes and wrongs. 

Written on July 19, 1853 Reproduced from the newspaper 

Tribune, No. 3838, August 5, 1853