London, Friday, Sept. 23, 1853 

The Globe, in its number of Sept. 20, denies the authenticity of 
the statement of the Journal des Débats with regard to the mission 
of Mr. Reeve, and The Times of Wednesday reprints the article of 
The Globe under the head of gobemoucherie, accusing the French 
press of trading in canards. But did not the leading article of The 
Times I analyzed in my last letter* wholly confirm the statement of 
the Journal des Débats? Has there appeared any refutation in the 
Paris Moniteur? Did not, on the same day that The Globe gave the 
lie to the Débats, the Assemblée nationale reiterate that 

“Lord Redcliffe was to notify to the Sultan that, if he refused to withdraw his 

modification, the English fleet would enter the Dardanelles, and the French fleet 
would not be slow to follow?” 

Did not The Times, on the same day on which it reproduced the 
denial of The Globe, explicitly declare that 
“England and France have no business to interfere between Russia and Turkey, 

except on the terms proposed by the four allied Powers, and accepted by Russia, 
whether these terms were agreeable to the haughty spirit of Turkey or not?” 

Were we not told by The Morning Post, before the Journal des 
Débats had arrived at London, that 

“on the receipt of the Emperor of Russia’s© answer to the proposal for the 
modifications of the Vienna Note, the Conference of the Representatives of the 
Great Powers had immediately assembled, and on the 4th inst. dispatched a courier 

to Constantinople with certain communications from the Conference to the Divan, 
which it was hoped would induce the Porte to accept the Vienna Note!”* 

Finally, we read in a morning paper of to-day that 

“Mr. Reeve is going to Constantinople, that he is the bearer of dispatches from 
Lord Clarendon to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, and that a connection of the most 
intimate kind exists between him and the Foreign Office, he having been the 
channel of communication between Downing-st. and Printing-house Square.” 

The truth is, that since the last revelations made by the French 
Press, the Eastern question has again assumed quite a new aspect, 
and the ignominious resolutions the English Ministry had decided 
upon are likely to be frustrated by events contrary to all their 
calculations and expectations. 

Austria has seceded from the joint action with her pretended 
allies; the Vienna Conference has been broken off, at least for a 
moment. Russia has pulled off the mask she thinks no longer of 
any avail, and the English Ministry is driven out of its last 
entrenchments. 

“Lord Aberdeen,” as the Liverpool Courier” justly remarks, “recommended that 
the Sultan should have recourse to a transparent and contemptible fraud; that the 
parties to the Vienna Conference should exercise a mental reservation with regard to 
the note, and that the Sultan should read it in an unnatural sense, i.e., the terms of 
the note being clear and precise, and the Emperor of Russia having refused 
point-blank to adopt the Sultan’s modifications, the Powers should hold themselves 
prepared, hereafter, to act as if those modifications had been received.” 

M. Drouyn de Lhuys suggested to the Vienna Conference an 
explanatory note conceived in that hypocritical sense, and to be 
communicated to the Porte, but Count Buol rejected this 
proposition, declaring that it 

“was too friendly to the Porte, that the time was gone by for collective action, 
and that each power was free to act as it pleased.” 

Thus the English Ministry has lost the resource of covering itself 
with the common arbitration of the European Areopagus, that 
joint-stock company disappearing before one word of the Austrian 
Minister, as it had been conjured up by him. In the beginning 
Austria wanted no conference at all till Russia had crossed the 
Pruth. Russia having advanced to the Danube, Austria does want 
the conference no more, at least no more on its primitive 

* The Morning Post,No. 24881, September 19, 1853.— Ed. 
> Of September 21, 1853.— Ed. 

conditions. On the other hand Count de Nesselrode has published 
two circulars, which do not any longer allow backing the original 
Vienna Note by hidden “good intentions” or interpreting it in any 
other sense than its literal one. 

The modifications proposed by the Porte have reduced the 
whole question to “‘a mere question of words,”* shouted the whole 
ministerial press. 

By no means, says Nesselrode. The Czar puts the same 
interpretation upon the original text as the Sultan did. The 
original note is nothing and has never been intended to be 
anything but a second edition of Menchikoff’s note, and we do 
abide by the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text. The 
ministerial Globe is of course amazed at the discovery that both the 
Czar and the Sultan, regard the original note “as implying 
recognition of those demands which Russia had preferred, which 
Turkey had refused, and which the four Powers did not” (?) 
“intend to indorse,” and that “Russia insists upon an absolute 
recognition of the claims which she first advanced.” And why 
should she not? If she was bold enough to advance those claims 
four months ago, why should she desist now after having won the 
first campaign? 

The same Globe which pretended some days ago the Turkish 
modifications to be scholastic quibbles, superfluous subtilities, is now 
obliged to own that “the Russian interpretation shows that they 
were necessary.” 

The first dispatch of Nesselrode is not yet made public, but The 
Morning Post assures us that it declares “the Vienna Note to be 
neither more nor less than the equivalent of Prince Menchikoff’s 
note,” and the evening Globe adds, that according to it, 

“The Emperor regarded [...] the Vienna Note as securing for him that 
recognition on Turkey, and that hold upon her Government, which the Porte, with 
the support of the four Powers, had refused, and which it was the object of the 
mediation to prevent. [...] That the Emperor [...] never ceased to reserve to himself 

the right of dealing directly with Turkey alone, setting aside the mediators whom 
he affected to acknowledge.” 

At no time did he affect to acknowledge them as mediators. He 
permitted three of them to march in the rear of Austria, while he 
allowed Austria herself to come an humble supplicant to him. 

As to the second dispatch, dated St. Petersburg, 7th, published by 
the Berlin Zeit on the 18th inst., and addressed to Baron 
Meyendorff at Vienna, Nesselrode is perfectly right in stating that 
the original note was described to him as an “ultimatum” by the 
Austrian Envoy, which Russia obliged herself to give her consent 
to upon the express condition of its being accepted by the Porte 
without any alteration whatever. “Will any one refuse to hear this 
testimony to the loyauté of the Emperor?’’* It is true that he has 
committed a little act of “piracy” on the Principalities; that he has 
overrun them, seized them, taxed them, governed them, plun- 
dered them, appropriated them, eaten them up, notwithstanding 
the proclamations of Gorchakoff; but never mind. Did he not, on 
the other hand, “on the receipt of a first draft of a note, notify his 
accession to it by telegraph, without waiting to learn if it had been 
approved in London or in Paris?” Could he be expected to do more 
than to notify by telegraph, that a note, dictated by a Russian 
Minister at Vienna, would not be rejected by a Russian Minister at 
St. Petersburg? Could he do more for Paris and London than not 
even to wait for their approval? But he did more, indeed. The 
draft, whose acceptance he condescended to notify by telegraph, 
was ‘altered’ at Paris and London, and ‘‘did he retract his consent, 
or raise the smallest difficulty?” It is true, that according to his 
own statement, the note in its “final form” is “neither more nor 
less than an equivalent of Prince Menchikoff’s note;” but an 
equivalent note remains, at all instances, “different” from the 
original one; and had he “not stipulated the acceptance of the 
Menchikoff note without any alteration?” Might he not, “on this 
ground alone, have refused to take it into consideration?” He did 
not do so. “Could a more conciliatory spirit be shown?” The 
ultimatum of the Vienna Conference is no business of his; it is 
their own property. “It is their affair to consider the delays which 
will result” from the Sultan not yielding. He, for his part, does not 
care about staying some months longer in the Principalities, where 
his troops are clothed and fed for nothing. 

Odessa does not suffer from the mouth of the Danube being 
blocked, and, if the occupation of the Principalities contributes to 
raise the price of wheat at Mark-lane,” the profane Imperials will 
find the quicker their way back to the Holy Russia. It is, therefore, 
for Austria and the Powers to 

21540, September 22, 1853.— Ed. 

“declare to the Porte, frankly and firmly, that they, after having in vain opened 
up to it the only road that could lead to an immediate restoration of its relations 
with us, henceforth leave the task for itself alone.” 

They did enough for the Sultan by having opened the road to 
the Danube to the Czar and closed the road to the Black Sea to 
the Allied Squadron. Nesselrode’s “august master” denounces 
then, “the warlike inspiration which seems at present to influence 
the Sultan and the majority of his Ministers.” He, on his part, 
would certainly prefer the Sultan taking it coolly, opposing peace 
tracts to gunboats, and compliments to Cossacks. “He _ has 
exhausted the measure of concessions, without the Porte having 
yet made a single one. His Majesty can go no further.” Certainly 
not, he can go no further, without crossing the Danube. Nesselrode 
compresses his whole argument into a masterly dilemma not to 
be escaped from. Either the alterations proposed by the Porte mean 
nothing, or they mean something. If they mean nothing, why 
should the Porte insist upon them? If they mean something, “‘it is 
very simple that we refuse to accede to them.” 

“The evacuation of the Principalities,” said Lord Clarendon, “is 
a sine qua non, preliminary to any settlement.”* Quite the contrary, 
answers Nesselrode. “The settlement,” i.e., the arrival of the 
Turkish Ambassador bearing the Austrian note without alterations 
“is a sine qua non preliminary to the evacuation of the Principalities.” 

In one word, the magnanimous Czar is ready to part with the 
Vienna Conference humbug, as it is no longer wanted for 
terminating his first campaign; but he will hold the closer the 
Principalities, as they are -the indispensable condition for com- 
mencing the second one. 

If it be true, as we are informed to-day by telegraphic dispatch, 
that the Conference has resumed business, the Powers will repeat 
to Nicholas the song Alexander was received with by the Paris 
mob: 

Vive Alexandre, 
Vive le roi des rois, 

Sans rien prétendre 
Il nous donne des lois. 

* Quoted from Clarendon’s House of Lords speech on August 8, 1853 in The 
Times.No. 21502, August 9, 1853.— Ed. 

The Czar himself, however, holds no longer his former control 
over the Eastern complication. The Sultan has been forced to 
conjure up the old fanatic spirit, to cause a new invasion of 
Europe by the rude warlike tribes of Asia, not to be soothed down 
with diplomatic notes and conventional. lies, and there seems 
transpiring, even through the insolent note of the Muscovite, 
something like an apprehension at the “warlike spirit” domineer- 
ing over Stambul. The manifesto, addressed by the Sultan to the 
Mussulmans, declines any other concession to Russia, and a 
deputation of the Ulemas is said to have called upon the Sultan 
to abdicate or to declare war without further delay. The division 
in the Divan is extreme, and the pacific influence of Reshid Pasha 
and Mustafa Pasha is giving way to that of Mehemet Ali, the 
Seraskier.* 

The infatuation of the so-called radical London press is quite 
incredible. After having told us some days ago, that “the laws of 
England have to be exercised in their penal rigor upon the persons of 
four traitors” * (Aberdeen, Clarendon, Palmerston and Russell), The 
Morning Advertiser, of yesterday, concludes one of its leaders as 
follows: 

“Lord Aberdeen must, therefore, make way for a successor. Need we say who 
that successor must be? There is but one man to whom the country points at this 

important junction, as fit to be entrusted with the helm of affairs. That man ts Lord 
Palmerston.” 

The Morning Advertiser being unable to read events and facts, 
should at least be able to read the articles of Mr. Urquhart, 
published day after day in its own columns. 

On Tuesday evening a meeting of the inhabitants of Sheffield 
was called, by requisition to the Mayor, “to take into consideration 
the present unsettled and unsatisfactory state of the Eastern 
question and the propriety of memorializing government on the 
subject.” A similar meeting is to be held at Stafford and many 
other attempts are afloat at getting up public demonstrations 
against Russia and the ministry of “all the talents.” But, generally, 
public attention is absorbed by the rate of discount, corn prices, 
strikes and commercial apprehensions, and more yet by the cholera 
ravaging Newcastle and being met with explanatory notes by the 

London Board of Health. An order in council has been issued, 
putting in force the provisions of the Epidemic Disease Act for the 
next six months throughout the Islands; and hasty preparations 
for the due reception of the scourge are making in London and 
other great towns. If I shared the opinions of Mr. Urquhart, I 
should say, that the Czar had dispatched the Cholera morbus to 
England with the “secret mission” to break down the last remnant 
of what is called the Anglo-Saxon spirit. 

A wonderful change has come over the manufacturing districts 
during the last four weeks. In July and the beginning of August 
there was nothing to be seen but bright prosperity, only slightly 
overshadowed by the distant cloud of the “Eastern Question,” and 
more so, perhaps, by the fear that a shortness of hands would 
prevent our cotton-lords to explore to the dregs that immense 
mine of profitable business which they saw before them. The 
Eastern dispute seemed settled, the crop might certainly turn out a 
little short, but there was free trade to keep prices down with the 
never-failing supplies of America, of the Black Sea and the Baltic. 
Day after day the demand for manufactured goods went on 
increasing. California and Australia poured forth their golden 
treasures into the lap of British industry. The Times, forgetting 
Malthus and all its own former rhapsodies about overpopulation, 
seriously discussed the question whether the shortness of the 
supply of working-hands, and consequent rise of wages, would 
not, by raising the cost of production of British manufactures in a 
proportionate manner, put a stop to this flourishing trade, unless 
the Continent sent a colony of workmen. The working classes 
were, as their employers said, only too well off, so much so, that 
their demands knew no bounds, and their “impudence” was daily 
becoming more intolerable. But that was in itself a proof of the 
immense, unheard-of prosperity which the country was enjoying; 
and what could be the cause of this prosperity but Free Trade? 
And what was worth more than all this, was the certitude that the 
enormous trade done was sound, that there were no stocks, no wild 
speculation. Thus the manufacturers, one and all, were wont to 
express themselves, and they acted upon these views; they built 
factories by the hundred, they ordered steam-engines of 
thousands of horse-power, thousands of power-looms, hundreds 
of thousands of spindles. Never was engineering and machine- 
making a more profitable trade than in 1853. Establishments 
broken down in the whole of their internal organization by the 
great strike of 1851,7*7 now regained their position, and even 
improved it; and I could name more than one first-rate and 

celebrated machine-making firm who, but for this unprecedented 
business, would have succumbed under the consequence of the 
blow inflicted by the mechanics during the great turn-out. 

The fact is that the bright sunshine of prosperity is for the 
moment hidden by gloomy clouds. No doubt the altered aspect of 
the Eastern dispute has contributed a good deal; but that affects 
the home American and Colonial trade very little. The raising of 
the rate of discount is less a cause than a symptom of “something 
being rotten in the state of Denmark.”* The shortness of the crop 
and increase in the price of provisions are no doubt causes which 
have counteracted and will counteract still more the demand for 
manufactured goods from those markets which are exposed to the 
operation of these causes, and among these the home market, the 
mainstay of British industry, stands in the first rank. But the rise 
in the price of provisions is at this moment, in most districts of 
England and Scotland, very nearly or altogether compensated by 
the rise of wages, so that the purchasing power of the consumer 
can hardly be said to have been already lessened much. Then the 
rise in wages has raised the cost of production in those branches 
of industry in which manual labor prevails; but the price of nearly 
all manufactured goods was, up to August, pushed a good deal 
ahead of the cost of production by the large demand. All these 
causes have cooperated to deaden business; but, after all, they are 
not sufficient to account for the general anxiety that pervades the 
commercial classes of the manufacturing districts. 

The fact is, that the spell of the Free Trade delusions is 
vanishing away, and the bold industrial adventurers begin to have 
a glimmering that economical revulsions, commercial crises and 
recurrence of over-production are yet not quite so impossible in a 
Free Trade country as they dreamt. And over-production there 
has been, there is, there must be, for even those bugbears of The 
Manchester Guardian, the “Stocks,” are there; aye, and increasing 
too. The demand for goods is decidedly falling off, while the 
supply increases every day. The largest and most numerous of the 
new industrial constructions are only now gradually coming into 
operation. The shortness of hands, the strikes of the building 
trades, the impossibility of supplying the enormous quantities of 
machinery on order, have caused many an unforeseen delay and 
postponed, for a time, the eruption of those symptoms of 
industrial plethora which otherwise would have shown themselves 
sooner. Thus the largest mill in the world, Mr. T. Salt’s, near 

Bradford, was only to be opened this week, and it will take some 
time yet, ere the whole of the productive power employed there 
can be brought fully to bear on the market. Thus plenty of the 
larger new concerns in Lancashire will not be fit for work before 
winter, while it will be spring, and perhaps later, before the market will 
feel the full effect of this new and stupendous accession of productive 
power. According to the last news from Melbourne and Sydney, 
import markets were becoming much duller, and many shipments 
will now be indefinitely postponed. As to over-speculation, we shall 
hear of that by and by, when accounts come to be closed. 
Speculation has been distributed over such a variety of articles that 
it shows less this time than before, although there is plenty of it. 

Written on September 23, 1853 Reproduced from the New-York