London, Tuesday, Aug. 23, 1853 

The German and Belgian papers affirm, on the authority of the 
telegraphic dispatches from Constantinople, of the 13th inst., that 
the Porte has acceded to the proposals of the Vienna Conference. 
The French papers, however, having received dispatches from 
Constantinople of the same date, state merely that the Divan had 
shown a willingness to receive those proposals. The definitive 
answer could hardly reach Vienna before the 20th inst. The 
pending question, and a very serious one, is, whether the Porte 
will send its Ambassador to St. Petersburg before or after the 
withdrawal of the Russian troops from the Principalities. 

The last accounts from the Black Sea announce that the 
north-east winds had begun to disturb the navigation. © veral 
ships anchored at Penderekli and other places on the coast, had 
been compelled to quit their anchorage to avoid being cast ashore. 

You know that after the events in Moldavia and Wallachia, the 
Sultan* had ordered the Hospodars” to leave the Principalities for 
Constantinople, and that the Hospodars refused to comply with 
their sovereign’s demands. The Sultan has now deposed the 
Hospodar of Wallachia on account of his favorable reception of 
the Russian troops and the support he gave them. On the 9th inst. 
this firman was read to the Assembly of Boyards, who resolved to 
petition the Hospodar not to abandon the Government in the 
present critical circumstances. The Prince acted accordingly. 
Mano, the Secretary of State, and Ioanidis, the Director of the 
Ministry of the Interior, have also been summoned to Constan- 

tinople; they, however, refused to go, on the pretext that public 
order might be disturbed. The French and British Consuls, upon 
this, suspended immediately all relations with the rebel Govern- 
ment. 

Affairs in Serbia are taking a complicated turn. The Paris 
Constitutionnel of last Friday had the following Constantinople 
intelligence.* Austria, taking advantage of the Sultan’s difficulties, 
had pressed certain demands upon him. 

An Austrian Consul-General, having lately made a tour of 
inspection through Bosnia and Serbia, declared to Alexander, the 
Prince of Serbia, that Austria was prepared to occupy Serbia with 
her troops in order to suppress any dangerous movement among 
the population. The Prince, having refused the offer of the 
Consul-General, at once dispatched a special messenger to 
Constantinople with an account of this Austrian overture, and 
Reshid Pasha referred to Baron de Bruck for explanations. The 
latter said that the Consul-General had previously communicated 
with the Prince, alleging the fear Austria was in, lest her subjects, 
on the borders of Serbia, should become involved in any 
disturbances arising in that province. The reply of Reshid Pasha 
was to the effect that any occupation of Serbia by Austrian troops 
would be considered an act of hostility by the Porte, which would 
itself be answerable for the tranquility of that province; moreover, 
the Pasha promised that a special Commissioner should be at once 
sent to see and report on the state of affairs in Serbia. 

The day after, several London papers announced the entrance 
into Serbia of the Austrian troops, an announcement which, 
however, has turned out to be unfounded. Yesterday the same 
papers communicated the outbreak of a counter-revolution in 
Serbia, yet this news likewise rested on no better foundation than a 
false translation of the German word, Auflauf,” the fact being that 
only a small riot had taken place. To-day the German papers publish 
news from Constantinople of the 9th inst. According to them, 
several divans had been held on Serbian affairs. The conduct of 
Prince Alexander was much approved of, and the decision arrived 
at that, if Austrian troops should attempt to occupy that province, 
they should, if necessary, be expelled by force. A division of 
troops has actually been directed towards the frontiers of Bosnia. 
Private letters received at Constantinople on the 8th _ inst., 

conveyed thither the news of Prince Alexander having, in 
consequence of his conflict with the Austrian Consul, appealed to 
the decision of the Consuls of France and England, and absented 
himself momentarily from Belgrade. It is said that he went to 
Nissa, there to wait for orders from the Porte. 

Mr. D. Urquhart, in a letter* addressed to The Morning 
Advertiser of this day, remarks, with regard to the Serbian 
complication: 

“War with Turkey is not [...] at present contemplated by Russia; for, by the 
cooperation of Austria,she would lose her ‘Greek’ allies, but she involves Austria in 
a preparatory collision, which will bring Serbia into a condition parallel to that of 
the Principalities. Thus will be introduced a religious warfare between Latins and 
Greeks.... Russia, by a sudden shifting of decorations, may render her own 
occupation of the Principalities acceptable to Turkey, as a protection against the 

Austrian occupation of Serbia, and thus mutually engage Austria and Turkey in 
projects of dismemberment, and support them therein.” 

The Hospodar of Moldavia proposes to contract a loan with 
Russian bankers in order to meet the extraordinary expenses of 
the occupation. 

The want of provisions is so great in the fortresses of Bulgaria 
that the strictest economy has to be observed, and the garrisons 
are suffering severely. 

The Journal de Constantinople reports from Aleppo: 

“A discovery has recently been made of a gang of evil-disposed Turks about to 
rise, as in 1850, against the Christian population of that town. But thanks to the 
extreme vigilance of the Governor Pasha,” and of Ali Asmi Pasha, the 
Commander-in-Chief of the troops at Aleppo, their attempts have been suppressed 
and public order has been preserved. On this occasion Demetrius, the Patriarch of 
the Greek Catholic creed, and Basilius, the Patriarch of the Armenian creed, have 
addressed in the name of their respective communities a collective letter of 
gratitude to Reshid Pasha, for the protection afforded to the Christians by the 
Sultan’s Government.” 

The German St. Petersburg Gazette has the following in a 
leader on Oriental affairs: 

“What the friends of peace could only hope for at the commencement of July, 
has become a certainty in the latter days. The work of mediation between Russia 
and Turkey is now definitively placed in the hands of Austria. At Vienna there will 
be devised a solution of the Eastern question, which in these latter times has kept 
in suspense all the action between the Black Sea and the Ocean, and which algne 
has prevented European Diplomacy from taking its habitual holidays.” 

Observe the studious affectation with which, in lieu of the four 
Powers, Austria alone is constituted mediator, and which places 
the suspense of nations, in the true Russian style, only on a scale 
with the interrupted holidays of diplomacy. 

The Berlin National Zeitung publishes’ a letter from Georgia, 
dated 15th July, stating that Russia intends a new campaign 
against the people of the Caucasus at the end of the present 
month, and that a fleet in the Sea of Azov is fitted out in order to 
support the operations of the land army. 

The session of 1853 was brought to a close on Saturday 
last— Parliament being prorogued until October 27. A very 
indifferent and meager speech, purporting to be the Queen’s? 
message, was read by commission. In answer to Mr. Milnes Lord 
Palmerston assured Parliament that it could safely disband, as far 
as the evacuation of the Principalities was concerned, giving, 
however, no pledge of any kind but “his confidence in the honor 
and the character of the Russian Emperor,” which would move 
him to withdraw his troops voluntarily from the Principalities.© The 
Coalition Cabinet thus revenged itself for his speech against Mr. 
Cobden,‘ by forcing him to record solemnly his “confidence in the 
character and the honor” of the Czar. The same Palmerston | 
received on the same day a deputation from the aristocratic 
fraction of the Polish Emigration at Paris and its collateral branch 
at London,” presenting his lordship with an address and 
medallions in gold, silver and bronze of Prince Adam Czartoryski, 
in testimony of their gratitude to his lordship for allowing the 
sequestration of Cracow in 1846, and for otherwise exhibiting 
sympathy with the cause of Poland. The inevitable Lord Dudley 
Stuart, the patron of the London branch of the Paris society, was 
of course the master of ceremonies. Lord Palmerston assured 
these simple-minded men “of his deep interest in the history of 
Poland, which was a very painful history.”* The noble lord omitted 
not to remind them that he spoke not as a member of the Cabinet, 
but received them only as a private amateur. 

The first half of the long protracted session of 1853 was filled 
up with the death-struggle of the Derby Ministry, with the 

* National-Zeitung,No. 384, August 19, 1853.— Ed. 

“ Quoted according to The Times, No. 21513, August 22, 1853.— Ed. 

21513, August 22, 1853.— Ed. 

formation and final victory of the Coalition Cabinet, and with the 
Easter recess of Parliament. As to the real session, its most 
remarkable features were the dissolution of all the old political 
parties, the corruption of the members of Parliament, and the 
petrifaction of the privileged constituencies revealing the curious 
working of the Government, embracing all the shades of opinion, 
and all the talents of the official world, proclaiming postponement 
the solution of all questions, shifting all difficulties by half-and- 
half measures, feeding upon promises, declaring ‘performance as 
a kind of will or testament which argues a great weakness in his 
judgment that makes it,” retracting, modifying, unsettling its own 
legislative acts as quickly as it brought them in, living upon the 
inheritance of predecessors whom it had fiercely denounced, 
leaving the initiative of its own measures to the house which it 
presumed to lead, and reaping failure as the inevitable fate of the 
few acts, the uncontroverted authorship of which it holds. Thus 
parliamentary reform, national education reform, and law reform 
(a few trifles apart) have been postponed. The Transportation bill, 
the Navigation bill, etc., were inherited from the Derby Cabinet. 
The Canada Clergy Reserves bill was dreadfully mutilated by 
the Government a few days after having introduced it. As to the 
budget, the Succession act was proposed by the Chancellor of the 
Exchequer only after he had voted against it. The Advertisement 
act was undergone by him only when his opposition to it had twice 
been voted down. The new regulation of the licensing system was 
finally abandoned, after it had suffered various transformations. 
Introduced by Mr. Gladstone with pretensions to a great scheme, a 
thing worth the budget as a whole, it came out of the House as a 
miserable patch-work, as a mere conglomerate of fortuitous, 
incoherent and contradictory little items. The only great feature of 
the India bill, the non-renewal of the Company’s charter, was 
introduced by the Ministry after they had announced its renewal 
for 20 years more. The two acts truly and exclusively belonging to 
the Ministry of all the talents: the Cab act and the Conversion of 
the Public Debt, had scarcely passed the threshold of the House, 
when they were publicly hissed as failures. The foreign policy of 
the “strongest Government England ever saw,” is owned by its 
own partisans to have been the nec plus ultra of helpless, vacillating 
weakness. The Chesham Place Treaty, however, contracted be- 
tween the Peelite bureaucrats, the Whig oligarchs and the 
sham-Radicals,””’ has been linked the more strongly by the 
threatening aspect of things abroad and by the even more 
imminent symptoms of popular discontent at home— manifested 

through the unprecedented intensity and generality of strikes,and 
the renewal of the Chartist agitation. In judging the external 
policy of the ruling classes and of the Cabinet, we must not lose 
sight of a war with Russia training behind it a _ general 
revolutionary conflagration of the Continent, and at this time 
likely to meet with a fatal echo from the masses of Great Britain. 

As to the House of Lords, its doings admit of a very short 
résumé, It has exhibited its bigotry by the rejection of the Jewish 
Emancipation bill,””? its hostility to the working classes by burking 
the Workingmen’s Combination bill, its interested hatred of the 
Irish people by shelving the Irish Land bills, and its stupid 
predilection for Indian abuses by re-establishing the Salt monopoly. 
It has acted throughout in secret understanding with the 
Government that whatever progressive measures might by chance 
pass the Commons, should be canceled by the enlightened Lords. 

Among the papers laid on the table of Parliament before its 
prorogation, there is a voluminous correspondence carried on 
between the British and Russian Governments with regard to the 
obstructions to navigation in the Sulina mouth of the Danube. The 
correspondence begins on Feb. 9, 1849, and concludes in July, 
1853, having concluded nothing whatever. Things have now 
arrived at such a point that even the Austrian Government is 
forced to announce that the mouth of the Danube has become 
impassable for navigation, and that its own mails to Constantinople 
will be henceforth forwarded by Trieste. The whole difficulty is 
the fruit of British connivance at Muscovite encroachments. In 
1836 the English Government acquiesced in the usurpation of the 
mouth of the Danube by Russia, after having instructed a 
commercial firm to resist the interference of the officers of the 
Russian Government. 

The so-called peace concluded with Burma, announced with a 
proclamation of the Governor-General of India,* dated June 30, 
1853, and upon which the Queen is made to congratulate 
Parliament, is nothing but a simple truce. The King of Ava,” 
starved into submission, expressed his desire for the cessation of 
war, set the British prisoners at liberty, asked for the raising of the 
river blockade, and forbade his troops to attack the territories of 
Mecadeay and Toungu, where the British Government had placed 
garrisons—in the same manner as the Turkish Government has 
forbidden its troops to attack the Russians stationed in the 

Principalities. But he does not recognize the claims of England to 
Pegu or to any other portion of the Burmese Empire. All that 
England has got by this struggle is a dangerous and controverted 
frontier instead of a secure and acknowledged one. She has been 
driven out of the ethnographical, geographical and_ political 
circumscription of her Indian dominions, and the Celestial Empire 
itself no longer forms any natural barrier to her conquering force. 
She has lost her point of gravitation in Asia and pushed into the 
indefinite. She is no longer mistress of her own movements, there 
being no stopping but where the land falls into the sea. England 
seems thus to be destined to open the remotest Orient to Western 
intercourse, but not to enjoy nor to hold it. 

The great colliers’ strikes in South Wales not only continue, but 
out of them have arisen new strikes among the men employed at 
the iron mines. A general strike among the British sailors is 
anticipated for the moment when the Merchant Shipping bill will 
come into operation, the foreigners being, as they say, admitted 
only for the purpose of lowering their wages. The importance of 
the present strikes, to which I have repeatedly called the attention 
of your readers, begins now to be understood even by the London 
middle-class press. Thus, the Weekly Times of last Saturday 
remarks: 

“The relations between employer and employed have been violently disturbed. 
Labor throughout the length and breadth of the land has bearded capital, and it 
may safely be asserted that the quarrel thus evoked has only just commenced. The 
working classes have been putting forth strong feelers to try their position. [...] The 
agitation at present is limited to a series of independent skirmishes, but there are 

indications that the period is not very distant when this desultory warfare will be 
turned into a systematic and universal combination against capital ....”* 

Written on August 23,1853 Reproduced from the New-York 
Tribune, No. 3864, September 5, 1853; 
Tribune, No. 864, September 6, 1853