Mr. Gladstone, in the sitting of the House of Commons of last 
night, brought forward a resolution that provision should be made 
out of the Consolidated Fund for paying off the South-Sea- 
Stock'*' not commuted under his financial scheme. To bring 
forward such a resolution was to own the complete failure of his 
commutation plan. Beside this small defeat the Ministry has had to 
undergo a very heavy one concerning their India Bill. Sir John 
Pakingson moved the insertion of a clause, by virtue of which the 
salt-monopoly should cease, and enacting that the manufacture 
and sale of salt in India shall be absolutely free, subject only to 
excise or other duty. The motion was carried by 117 against 107, 
notwithstanding the desperate exertions of Sir Charles Wood, 
Lord John Russell, Sir J. Hogg, Sir H. Maddock, and Mr. Lowe 
(of The Times). The oligarchy having succeeded in raising the 
salary of the President of the Board of Control to £5,000, propose 
now to raise the salaries of the immaculate East India Directors 
from £300 to £1,000, and those of the Chairman and Deputy- 
Chairman to £1,500. Evidently they suppose India to possess the 
same miraculous power as is attributed in Hindostan to the leaves 
of a fabulous tree on the extreme hights of the Himalaya, viz.: 
that it converts into gold everything that it touches—the only 
difference being that what the credulous Hindoo expects from the 
juice of the leaves, the enlightened Englishman expects from the 
blood of the natives. 

The Chinese Sultan of the Arabian Nights, who rose one fine 
morning and went to his window to look at Aladdin’s palace, was 
astonished to behold nothing but an empty place. He called his 

Grand Vizier and asked him if he could see the palace. The Grand 
Vizier could see nothing, and was not less astonished than the 
Sultan, who flew into a passion and gave orders to his guards to 
arrest Aladdin. The public of London, when it rose on Wednesday 
morning, found itself much in the situation of that Chinese Sultan. 
London looked as if London had gone out-of-town. There were 
and there continued to be empty places where we were wont to 
see something. And as the eye was amazed at the emptiness of the 
places, so the ear was amazed at their tomb-like tranquillity. What 
was it that had happened to London? A cab-revolution,; cabmen and 
cabs have disappeared, as though by miracle, from the streets, 
from their stands, from the railway stations. The cab-proprietors 
and the drivers are in rebellion against the new Cab-act, that great 
and almost “unique” act of the Ministry of all the talents. They 
have struck. 

It has often been observed that the British public is seized with 
periodical fits of morality, and that once every six or seven years, 
its virtue becomes outrageous, and must make a stand against vice. 
The object of this moral and patriotic fit happened for the present 
to be poor cabby. His extortions from unprotected females and fat 
city men were to be put down, and his fare to be reduced from 1s. 
to 6d. per mile. The sixpenny morality grew epidemic. The 
Ministry, by the organ of Mr. Fitzroy, brought in a draconic law 
against Cabby, prescribing the terms of the contracts he had to 
fulfil with the public, and subjecting at the same time his fares and 
his “Hansoms,” his horses and his morals to Parliamentary 
legislation. Cabby, it appears, was to be forcibly transformed into 
the type of British respectability. The present generation could not 
do without improvising at least one virtuous and disinterested class 
of citizens, and Cabby was selected to form it. So anxious was the 
Ministry of all the talents to perform its masterpiece of legislation, 
that the Cab-act, hardly carried through the House, was put into 
operation before any part of the machinery for working it was 
ready. Instead of authentic copies of the new regulations and 
tables of fares and distances, the Cadis of London having been 
provided beforehand, the police magistrates were advised to 
decide any conflict arising between Cabby and the public in the 
most summary way. Thus, we had during two weeks the various 
and elevating spectacle of a continuous fight before the magis- 
trates between a real army of 6d. Hampdens'” and _ the 
“atrocious” cabmen, the one fighting for virtue, and the others for 
money. Day after day was Cabby moralized, sentenced, impris- 
oned. At last he made sure that he was unable to pay his 

proprietor the old rent with the new tariff, and proprietor and 
driver seceded to their Mons Sacer, to the National Hall, in 
Holborn, where they came to the terrible resolution which for 
three days has produced the cab-desolation of London. Two 
things they have already effected: firstly, that the Ministry through 
the organ of Mr. Fitzroy, have amended their own act so much as 
nearly to annihilate it; and secondly, that the Eastern Question, 
the Danish coup d'état, the bad harvest, and the approaching 
cholera have all disappeared before that one great struggle of 
public virtue, which persists in paying only 6d. per mile, and the 
private interest which persists in asking 12 pence. 

“Strike” is the order of the day. During the present week 5,000 
miners have struck in the northern coal district; 400 to 500 
journeymen cork-cutters in London; about 2,000 laborers em- 
ployed by the different wharfingers on the Thames; the police 
force at Hull, similar attempts being made by the City and general 
Metropolitan Police; and finally the bricklayers employed at St. 
Stephens, under the very nose of Parliament. 

“The world is becoming a very paradise for laborers. Men are 
becoming valuable,” exclaims The Times. In the years 1849, ’50, 
"51, °52, while commerce was progressively growing, industry 
extending to unheard-of dimensions, and profits continually 
augmenting, wages in general remained stationary, and were in 
most instances even maintained at the reduced scale occasioned by 
the crisis of 1847. Emigration having reduced the numbers, and 
the rise in the prices of the first necessaries having sharpened the 
appetites of the people, strikes broke out, and wages rose in 
consequence of those strikes, and lo! the world becomes a 
paradise for laborers—in the eyes of The Times. In order to 
reduce that paradise to terrestrial dimensions, the mill-lords of 
Lancashire have formed an association, for mutually assisting and 
supporting each other against the demands of the people. But not 
content with opposing combination to combination, the 
bourgeoisie threaten to appeal to the interference of law—of law 
dictated by themselves. In what manner this is done may be 
inferred from the following expectorations of The Morning Posi, 
the organ of the liberal and amiable Palmerston. 

“If there be a piece of wickedness which preeminently deserves to be punished 
with an iron hand, it is the system of strikes.... What is wanted is some stringent and 
summary mode of punishing the leaders and chief men of these combinations. [...] 
It would be no interference with the freedom of the labor market to treat these 
fellows to a flogging.... It is idle to say that this would interfere with the labor 
market. As long as those who supply the labor market refrain from jeopardizing 

the interests of the country, they may be left to make their own terms with the 
employers.” * 

Within a certain conventional limit, the laborers shall be allowed 
to imagine themselves to be free agents of production, and that 
their contracts with their masters are settled by mutual convention; 
but that limit passed, labor is to be openly enforced upon them on 
conditions prescribed by Parliament, that permanent Combination 
Committee of the ruling classes against the people. The deep and 
philosophical mind of the Palmerstonian organ is curiously 
disclosed in its yesterday’s discovery, on that “the hardest used of 
all classes in this country is the poor of the higher ranks,” the poor 
aristocrat who is forced to use a cab instead of a “brougham” of 
his own.” 

Like the world in general, we are assured, that Ireland in 
particular is becoming a paradise for the laborer, in consequence 
of famine '** and exodus. Why then, if wages really are so high in 
Ireland, is it that Irish laborers are flocking in such masses over to 
England to settle permanently on this side of the “pond,”* while 
they formerly used to return after every harvest? If the social 
amelioration of the Irish people is making such progress, how is it 
that, on the other hand, insanity has made such terrific progress 
among them since 1847, and especially since 1851? Look at the 
following data from “the Sixth Report on the District Criminal 
and Private Lunatic Asylums in Ireland”: 

1851—Sum total of admissions in Lunatic Asylums .................. 2,584 
(1,301 males and 1,283 females.) 

Sy tiathosice co sce ca tas ies ope tbwieds sataaaticaactusal gat ean chanted onde etunoe aaah reneeaseaee 2,662 
(1,276 males and 1,386 females.) 

March: 1853) xcccttetecete ciel eee vie OS 2,870 

(1,447 males and 1,423 females.) 

And this is the same country in which the celebrated Swift, the 
founder of the first Lunatic Asylum in Ireland,’*’ doubted 
whether 90 madmen could be found. 

The Chartist agitation reopened by Ernest Jones, is proceeding 
vigorously, and on the 30th inst., a great open-air meeting of the 
Chartists of London will be held on Kennington Common, the 
place where the great gathering of April 10, 1848, took place.'*° 

Mr. Cobbett has withdrawn his Factory Bill, intimating his 
intention of reintroducing it early in next session. 

‘ » Lhe Morning Post, No. 24835, July 27, 1853.— Ed. 
> The Morning Post, No. 24836, July 28, 1853.— Ed. 

As to the financial and general prospects of England The 
Manchester Guardian of the 27th inst., entirely confirms my own 
previous predictions in the following passages of a leading 
article:— 

“Seldom perhaps has there been a time when there were floating in our 
commercial atmosphere so many elements of uncertainty calculated to excite 
uneasiness— we use that mild word advisedly. At any former period before the 
repeal of the Corn Laws, and the general adaptation of the free trade policy, we 
should have used the stronger term of serious alarm. These elements are firstly the 
apprehended deficiency of the crops, secondly the continued abstraction of gold 
from the cellars of the bank, and thirdly the great probability of war.” 

The last of the Constitutions of 1848, has now been overthrown 
by the coup d’état of the Danish King.* A Russian Constitution has 
been conferred upon the country, which, by the abolition of the 
Lex Regia, was doomed to become a Russian Province.'*’ In a 
subsequent letter I shall give an exposé of the affairs of that 
country.” 

“It is our policy to see that nothing new happens during the next four months, 
and I hope we shall accomplish it, because men in general prefer waiting, but the 
fifth must be fruitful in events.” 

Thus wrote Count Pozzo di Borgo on the 28th Nov., 1828, to 
Count Nesselrode,© and Count Nesselrode is now acting on the 
same maxim. While the military assumption of the Principalities 
was completed by the assumption of their Civil Government by the 
Russians, while troops after troops are pouring into Bessarabia 
and the Crimea, a hint has been given to Austria that her 
mediation might be accepted, and another to Bonaparte that his 
proposals were likely to be met with a favorable reception by the 
Czar. The Ministers at Paris and London were comforted with the 
prospect that Nicholas would condescend to definitively accept 
their excuses. All the Courts of Europe, transformed into so 
many Sultanas, were anxiously waiting which of them, the mag- 
nanimous commander of the faithful would throw his handkerchief 
to. Having kept them in this manner for weeks, nay for months, in 
suspense, Nicholas suddenly makes a declaration that neither 
England, nor France, nor Austria, nor Prussia, had any business in 
his quarrel with Turkey, and that with Turkey alone he could 
negotiate. It was probably in order to facilitate his negotiations with 
Turkey, that he recalled his embassy from Constantinople. But while 

he declares that the Powers are not to meddle in Russia’s concerns, 
we are informed on the other hand that the representatives of 
France, England, Austria and Prussia kill their time in meeting at 
Vienna in conference, and in hatching projects for the arrangement 
of the Eastern Question, neither the Turkish nor Russian Ambas-. 
sador participating in these mock-conferences. The Sultan* had 
appointed, on the 8th inst. a warlike ministry, in order to escape 
from his armed suspension, but was compelled by Lord Redcliffe to 
dismiss it on the same evening. He has now been so much confused 
that he intends to send an Austrian courier to St. Petersburg with the 
mission of asking whether the Czar would re-enter into direct 
negotiations. On the return of that courier and the answer he 
brings, shall depend, whether Reshid Pasha is himself to go to 
St. Petersburg. From St. Petersburg he is to send new draft notes to 
Constantinople; the new draft notes are to be returned to 
St. Petersburg, and nothing will be settled before the last answer is 
again returned from St. Petersburg to Constantinople—and then 
the fifth month will have arrived, and no fleets can enter the Black 
Sea; and then the Czar will quietly remain during the winter in 
the Principalities, where he pays with the same promises that 
still circulate there from his former occupations, and as far back 
as 1820. 

You know that the Serbian Minister GaraSanin has been 
removed at the instance of Russia. Russia insists now, following up 
that first triumph, on all anti-Russian officers being expelled 
the service. This measure, in its turn, was intended to be followed 
by the reigning Prince Alexander being replaced by Prince Michel 
Obrenovic, the absolute tool of Russia and Russian interests. 
Prince Alexander, to escape from this calamity, and likewise under 
the pressure of Austria, has struck against the Sultan, and 
declared his intention of observing a strict neutrality. The Russian 
intrigues in Serbia are thus described in the Presse of Paris: 

“Every body knows that the Russian Consulate at Orsova—a miserable village 
where not a single Russian subject is to be found, but situated in the midst of a Servian 
population, is only a poor establishment, yet it is made the hotbed of Muscovite 
propaganda. The hand of Russia was judiciarily seized and established in the affair of 
Ibraila in 1840, and of John Lutzo in 1850, in the affair of the recent arrest of 
14 Russian officers, which arrest became the cause of the resignation of GaraSanin’s 
Ministry. It is likewise known that Prince Menchikoff, during his stay at Constan- 
tinople, fomented similar intrigues through his agents at Broussa, Smyrna, as in 
Thessalonica, Albania and Greece.” 

x Quoted from J. Paradis’ article in La Presse, July 26, 1853.— Ed. 

There ts no more striking feature in the politics of Russia than the 
traditional identity not only of her objects, but of her manner in 
pursuing them. There is no complication of the present Eastern 
Question, no transaction, no official note, which does not bear the 
stamp of quotation from known pages of history. 

Russia has now no other pretext to urge against the Sultan, except 
the treaty of Kainardji,'* although that treaty gave her, instead of a 
protectorate over her correligionists, only the right to build a chapel 
at Stamboul, and to implore the Sultan’s clemency for his Christian 
subjects, as Reshid Pasha justly urged against the Czar in his note of 
the 14th inst. But already in 1774, when that treaty was signed, 
Russia intended to interpret it one day or the other in the sense of 
1853. The then Austrian Internuncio at the Ottoman Porte, Baron 
Thugut, wrote in the year 1774 to his Court: 

“Henceforth Russia will always be in a situation to effect, whenever she may 
deem the opportunity favorable, and without much preliminary arrangement, a 
descent upon Constantinople from her ports on the Black Sea. In that case a 
conspiracy concerted in advance with the chiefs of the Greek religion, would no 
doubt burst forth, and it would only remain for the Sultan to quit his palace at the 
first intelligence of this movement of the Russians, to fly into the depth of Asia, and 
abandon the throne of European Turkey to a more experienced possessor. When 
the capital shall have been conquered, terrorism and the faithful assistance of the 
Greek Christians will indubitably and easily reduce, beneath the scepter of Russia, 
the whole of the Archipelago, the coast of Asia Minor and all Greece, as far as the 
shore of the Adriatic. Then the possession of these countries, so much favored by 
nature, with which no other part of the world can be compared in respect to the 
fertility and richness of the soil, will elevate Russia to a degree of superiority 
surpassing all the fabulous wonders which history relates of the grandeurs of the 
monarchies of ancient times.” [Pp. 579-80.]* 

In 1774, as now, Russia was tempting the ambition of Austria 
with the prospect of Bosnia, Servia and Albania being incorporated 
with her. The same Baron Thugut writes thus on this subject: 

“Such aggrandizement of the Austrian territory would not excite the jealousy of 
Russia. The reason is that the requisition which Austria would make of Bosnia, 
Servia, etc., although of great importance under other circumstances, would not be 
of the least utility to Russia, the moment the remainder of the Ottoman Empire 
should have fallen into her hands. For these provinces are inhabited almost entirely 
by Mahommedans and Greek Christians: the former would not be tolerated as 
residents there; the latter, considering the close vicinity of the Oriental Russian 
Empire would not hesitate to emigrate thither; or if they remained, their 
faithlessness to Austria would occasion continuous troubles; and thus an extension 
of territory, without intrinsic strength, so far from augmenting the power of the 
Emperor of Austria, would only serve to weaken it.” 

Politicians are wont to refer to the testament of Peter I,!°° in 

order to show the traditional policy of Russia in general, and 
particularly with regard to her views on Constantinople. They 
might have gone back still further. More than eight centuries ago, 
Svyatoslav, the yet Pagan Grand Duke of Russia, declared in an 
assembly of his Boyars, that “not only Bulgaria, but the Greek 
Empire in Europe, together with Bohemia and Hungary, ought to 
undergo the rule of Russia.” Svyatoslav conquered Silistria and 
threatened Constantinople, A.D. 968, as Nicholas did in 1828. The 
Rurik dynasty transferred, soon after the foundation of the 
Russian Empire, their capital from Novgorod to Kiev, in order to 
be nearer to Byzantium. In the eleventh century Kiev imitated in 
all things Constantinople, and was called the second Constantinople, 
thus expressing the everlasting aspirations of Russia. The religion 
and civilization of Russia are of Byzantine offspring, and that she 
should have aimed at subduing the Byzantine Empire, then in the 
same decay as the Ottoman Empire is now in, was more natural 
than that the German Emperors should have aimed at the 
conquest of Rome and Italy. The unity, then, in the objects of 
Russian policy,is given by her historical past, by her geographical 
conditions, and by her necessity of gaining open sea-ports in the 
Archipelago as in the Baltic, if she wants to maintain her 
supremacy in Europe. But the traditional manner in which Russia 
pursues those objects, is far from meriting that tribute of 
admiration paid to it by European politicians. If the success of her 
hereditary policy proves the weakness of the Western Powers, the 
stereotyped mannerism of that policy proves the intrinsic barba- 
rism of Russia herself. Who would not laugh at the idea of French 
politics being conducted on the testament of Richelieu, or the 
capitularies of Charlemagne’? Go through the most celebrated 
documents of Russian diplomacy, and you will find that shrewd, 
judicious, cunning, subtle as it is in discovering the weak points of 
European Kings, ministers and courts, its wisdom is at a complete 
dead-lock as often as the historical movements of the Western 
peoples themselves are concerned. Prince Lieven judged very 
accurately of the character of the good Aberdeen when he 
speculated on his connivance with the Czar, but he was grossly 
mistaken in his judgment of the English people when he predicted 
the continuance of Tory rule on the eve of the Reform move of 1831. 
Count Pozzo di Borgo judged very correctly of Charles X, but he 
made the greatest blunder with regard to the French people when he 
induced his “august master” to treat with that King of the partition 
of Europe on the eve of his expulsion from France. The Russian 

policy, with its traditional craft, cheats and subterfuges, may impose 
upon the European Courts which are themselves but traditional 
things, but it will prove utterly powerless with the revolutionized 
peoples. 

At Beyrut, the Americans have abstracted another Hungarian 
refugee from the claws of the Austrian eagle. It is cheering to see 
the American intervention in Europe beginning just with the 
Eastern Question. Besides the commercial and military importance 
resulting from the situation of Constantinople, there are other 
historical considerations, making its possession the _ hotly- 
controverted and permanent subject of dispute between the East 
and the West—and America is the youngest but most vigorous 
representative of the West. 

Constantinople is the eternal city—the Rome of the East. Under 
the ancient Greek Emperors, Western civilization amalgamated 
there so far with Eastern barbarism, and under the Turks, Eastern 
barbarism amalgamated so far with Western civilization, as to 
make this center of a theocratical Empire the effectual bar against 
European progress. When the Greek Emperors were turned out 
by the Sultans of Iconium,'’ the genius of the ancient Byzantine 
Empire survived this change of dynasties, and if the Sultan were 
to be supplanted by the Czar, the Bas-Empire would be restored to 
life with more demoralizing influences than under the ancient 
Emperors, and with more aggressive power than under the Sultan. 
The Czar would be for Byzantine civilization what Russian 
adventurers were for centuries to the Emperors of the Lower 
Empire—the corps de garde of their soldiers. The struggle 
between Western Europe and Russia about the possession of 
Constantinople involves the question whether Byzantinism is to fall 
before Western civilization, or whether its antagonism shall revive 
in a more terrible and conquering form than ever before. 
Constantinople is the golden bridge thrown between the West and 
the East, and Western civilization cannot, like the sun, go around 
the world without passing that bridge; and it cannot pass it 
without a struggle with Russia. The Sultan holds Constantinople 
only in trust for the Revolution, and the present nominal 
dignitaries of Western Europe, themselves finding the last 
stronghold of their “order” on the shores of the Neva, can do 
nothing but keep the question in suspense until Russia has to meet 
her real antagonist, the Revolution. The Revolution which will 
break the Rome of the West will also overpower the demoniac 
influences of the Rome of the East. 

Those of your readers who, having read my letters on German 

Revolution and Counter-Revolution, written for The Tribune some 
two years ago,’ desire to have an immediate intuition of it, will do 
well to inspect the picture? by Mr. Hasenclever, now being 
exhibited in the New-York Crystal Palace,‘ representing the 
presentation of a workingmen’s petition to the magistrates of 
Dusseldorf in 1848. What the writer could only analyze, the 
eminent painter has reproduced in its dramatic vitality. 

Written on July 29, 1853 Reproduced from the New-York