THE WAR.—DEBATE IN PARLIAMENT' 

London, Tuesday, June 27, 1854 

The Russian Moniteur of Bucharest '*° officially declares that, in 
obedience to orders sent from St. Petersburg, the siege of Silistria 
is raised, Giurgevo evacuated, and the whole Russian army about 
to recross the Pruth. The Times, in a third edition of yesterday, 
published a telegraphic dispatch from its Vienna correspondent to 
a similar effect, viz: that 

“the Emperor of Russia accepts the Austrian summons out of high consideration for his ancient ally, ar has ordered his troops to recross the Pruth.” °~’ 

Lord John Russell 1: last night’s House of Commons confirmed 
the statement with regard to the abandonment of the siege of 
Silistria, but had received no official information about the answer 
given by Russia to the Austrian summons.’ 

The result of the Austrian intervention will be to interpose a 
barrier between the Turks and the Russians, to secure the retreat 
of the latter from all molestation, to enable them to reenforce the 
garrison of Sevastopol and the Crimea, and perhaps to reestablish 
their communications with the army of Woronzoff. Besides the 
reconstruction of the Holy Alliance between Russia, Austria and 
Prussia must be looked upor as certain the moment the allied 
powers refuse to acquiesce in the simple restoration of the status 
quo ante bellum, with perhaps some slight concessions made by the 
Czar in favor of Austria. 

* Lord John Russell’s speech in the House of Commons on June 26, 1854. The 
Times, No. 21778, June 27, 1854.— Ed. 

The whole fabric of this fine “solution,” devised, it is said, by 
Metternich, is now, however, shattered to pieces by the indiscretion of old Aberdeen and the intrigues of Palmerston. 

It will be remembered that in the late ministerial reconstruction 
the endeavor to place Lord Palmerston in the War Office, the cry 
for the establishment of which was mainly raised by the 
Palmerstonian press, had failed, and the Peelite Duke of Newcastle 
supplanted the noble Lord in his contemplated new office. This: 
failure seems to have reminded Lord Palmerston that it was high 
time to break up the whole Cabinet, and accordingly he has raised 
a perfect storm against its chief, the occasion for which was 
afforded by Lord Aberdeen’s inconsiderate speech in reply to 
Lord Lyndhurst.” The whole English press immediately laid hold 
of that speech. It 1s, however, important to add, that The Morning 
Herald denounced the existence of a conspiracy against Lord 
Aberdeen before the speech was delivered. Mr. Layard rose in the 
House of Commons on Friday last, and gave notice that on 
Thursday next he should move a resolution that 

“the language held by the first Minister of the Crown was calculated to raise 

grave doubts in the public mind as to the objects and ends of the war, and to lessen 
the prospects of an honorable and durable peace.” * 

There are two weak points in this resolution: firstly, its being 
unconstitutional and apt to be set aside for being in contradiction 
to the parliamentary rule which forbids the criticism of a speech 
delivered in the Lords by a member of the Commons; and, 
secondly, because it pretends to distinguish between the occasional 
language of the Premier and the whole acts of the coalition 
Cabinet. Nevertheless, its result was to give such serious apprehensions to Lord Aberdeen that, two hours after the announcement 
of the above resolution, he rose in his place and gave notice, in an 
unusually excited tone, that 

‘on Monday next (thus anticipating Mr. Layard by three days), he should move 
for a copy of the dispatch he had addressed to Russia, after the treaty of 
Adrianople, and that he would take the opportunity of alluding to the 

misconstructions which had been placed on the remarks he had recently addressed 
to their Lordships on the subject of the war.” 

, See this volume, p. 220.— Ed. 
> Lord Aberdeen’s speech in the House of Lords on June 19, 1854. The Times, 
No. 21772, June 20, 1854.— Ed. 
“ Mr. Layard’s speech in the House of Commons on June 23, 1854. The Times, 
No. 21776, June 24, 1854.— Ed. 
4 Lord Aberdeen’s speech in the House of Lords on June 23, 1854. The Times, 
No. 21776, June 24, 1854.— Ed. 

So strong was the belief that Mr. Layard’s motion would result 
in the expulsion of Lord Aberdeen from the Cabinet, that The 
Morning Advertiser, for instance, has published already the list of 
the Ministry which is to succeed him; a list including the names of 
Lord John Russell as Premier, and of Lord Palmerston as Minister 
of War. It may be imagined, then, that the sitting of the Lords of 
last night attracted an unusual number of the curious and excited 
intrigants of the aristocracy, anxious to witness in what manner 
Lord Aberdeen would clear himself from his somewhat difficult 
and intricate position. 

Before giving a resumé of the speech of Lord Aberdeen, and of 
the attack made upon him by the Marquis of Clanricarde, I must — 
recur to the epoch and the circumstances, to which both 
speakers particularly referred, in the year 1829, when Lord 
Aberdeen found himself at the head of the British Foreign Office. 
At that time a Russian fleet under the command of Admiral 
Heiden was blockading the Dardanelles, the Gulfs of Saros and 
Enos, as well as those of Adramyti and Smyrna, notwithstanding 
an agreement concluded between the Cabinets of St. Petersburg 
and London in 1815, that Russia should not exercise any 
belligerent rights in the Mediterranean. These blockades, threatening to injure the British commerce in the Levant, aroused the 
otherwise dull opinion of the English of that time into vehement 
declamations against Russia and against the Ministry. Interviews, 
accordingly, took place between the Russian Embassadors Prince 
Lieven and Count Matusczewicz on the one side, and Wellington 
and Aberdeen on the other side. In a dispatch under date of 
London Ist (13th) June 1829, Prince Lieven reports as follows on 
the character of these interviews: 

“The conversation with Lord Aberdeen which took place some hour later,” 

than that with the Duke of Wellington, which had not been 
altogether very satisfactory to the Russian diplomatist 

“was not less remarkable. As he was acquainted only imperfectly with our 
conversation with the first Minister, he labored, when he learned the details of it, 
to soften the disagreeable impressions that might have been left upon us by his 
language at the commencement of it, by the reiterated assurance that at no period 
had it entered into the intentions of England to seek a quarrel with Russia; that if the 
ministry had sought to induce us not to insist on the blockade of Enos, it was in the 
full desire to prevent importunate reclamations, and to cement the good 
intelligence between the two cabinets, that we should have to congratulate ourselves more 
than perhaps we were aware on the benefits we received from that happy and constant 
concurrence. He was flattered that he could place the maintenance of that harmony 
higher than the momentary advantages that the blockade of the Gulf of Enos 

would have offered us; but he feared that the position of the English Ministry was 
not well understood at St. Petersburg. They attributed to malevolent intentions, 
and to hostile views, the difficulties that he sometimes raised, as in the matter that 
had just been terminated, while these intentions and these arriéres pensées* were 
very far from his spirit and from his policy. But, on the other hand, he found 
himself in a delicate situation. Public opinion was always ready to burst forth 
against Russia. The British Government could not constantly brave it, and it would be 
dangerous to excite it on questions (of maritime law) that touched so nearly the 
national prejudices. On the other side we could reckon upon the well-disposed and 
friendly dispositions of the English Ministry which struggled against them (the 
national prejudices). 

“T know, I replied, the weight of public opinion in England, and I have seen it 
change in a few days. It is against us in our war because it thinks us aggressors, 
while we have been attacked; because it imputes to us the idea of overthrowing the 
Ottoman Empire, while we declare that such is not our object; because, finally, it 
believes that we pursue an ambitious policy against which we ourselves protest. To 
enlighten it on this point would be the surest way to correct it. 

“Lord Aberdeen replied to me, that the matter was not exactly as I represented; 
public opinion was pronounced against us, because generally in England it took 
with ardor the side of the Whigs—but au reste, the British Cabinet was far from not 
wishing us success, on the contrary, it wished us success, prompt and decisive, because it 
knew that it was the only means of terminating the war, which could not be 
regarded except as a great misfortune, since it was impossible to foresee its results! 
In conclusion, the English Minister entered into long deductions to demonstrate 
that we lent to him intentions that he could not have, and ended by saying that the 
Cabinet of London desired that the war should be terminated to the honor and 
advantage of Russia.” 

It is strange that none of the opponents of Lord Aberdeen have 
thought proper to recur to this dispatch, so conclusive against his 
conduct at the time before the treaty of Adrianople, that it would 
have been impossible to attach any importance to anything 
contained in a secret dispatch of his Lordship, written after the 
conclusion of that treaty. The production of the above dispatch 
would have demolished at one stroke the only argument of | 
defense which Lord Aberdeen could bring forward in his speech 
of yesterday. His true defense would have been an open 
recrimination against Lord Palmerston, since the whole “row” was 
exclusively between these two old rival servants of Russia. 

Lord Aberdeen began by saying that he had nothing either to 
retract or to contradict, but only to “explain.* He had been falsely 
accused of having claimed the honor of having framed the treaty 
of Adrianople. Instead of having framed it, he had protested 

* Ulterior motives.— Ed. 
> Nevertheless.— Ed. 
“ Lord Aberdeen’s speech in the House of Lords on ae 26, 1854. The Times, 
No. 21778, June 27, 1854.— Ed. 

against it, as their lordships would see from the dispatch for the 
production of which he now made a motion. Such had been the 
alarm produced on his mind, and on his colleagues’ mind, by that 
treaty, that the whole policy of the Government had been changed 
in a most material point in consequence of its existence. Which 
was this change of policyr Before the treaty of Adrianople was 
signed, he, Lord Aberdeen and the Duke of Wellington, therein 
following the policy of Canning, had never contemplated constituting Greece an independent kingdom, but only as a vassal state 
under the suzeraineté of the Porte, somewhat similar to Wallachia 
and Moldavia. After the treaty of Adrianople had been signed, the 
condition of the Turkish Empire appeared to them so perilous, 
and its existence so precarious, that they proposed to convert 
Greece from a vassal state into an independent kingdom. In 
other words, it was resolved, since the treaty of Adrianople did 
so much to weaken Turkey, to counteract its perilous consequences by dismembering whole provinces from it. This was the 
“change.” 

Although their alarm for the consequences of that treaty had 
been exaggerated, Lord Aberdeen was far from not considering it 
as in the highest degree disastrous and prejudicial. He had said 
that “Russia had not acquired great territorial acquisitions by that 
treaty,” and even now he contended that the Russian empire had 
not greatly increased in Europe within the last fifty years, as Lord 
Lyndhurst had asserted.(Bessarabia, Finland, and the Kingdom of 
Poland, appear not to be any significant acquisitions in the view of 
the noble Lord.) But, as he had stated in his dispatch of 
December, 1829, if the territorial acquisitions of Russia had been 
small, they had been important in their character—the one giving 
Russia “exclusive authority over the navigation of the Danube, and 
the other ports in Asia which, though small in extent, yet had the 
character of high political importance.” (The vast territory 
acquired in the Caucasus is again not present to Lord Aberdeen’s 
mind.) Starting from this point of view, he asserts that the treaty 
of Adrianople was the commencement of a change of policy on 
the part of Russia, which, since the time of that treaty, had looked 
to an extension of political influence rather than to the acquisition 
of territory. This change of policy had not been a change of 
intention. “Satan had only grown wiser than in days of yore.” The 
fact that Russia concerted a plan with Charles X for the acquisition 
of Turkey—not through alarming conquests, but through a series 
of treaties—is passed over in silence. Nor did Lord Aberdeen 
think fit to mention that even before the treaty of Adrianople and 

the treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi,’** which he quotes in proof of the 

change in Russian policy, Russia had bound herself to France and 
England already, in 1827, not to seek to derive any further 
territory from the war against Turkey, and that, but for the 
permission of England, she would never have been able to 
advance an army upon Constantinople in 1833. 

Lord Aberdeen next stated that his expression that “if we could 
obtain a peace which should last twenty-five years, as had been the 
case by the treaty of Adrianople, we should not have done amiss,” 
had been falsely construed into the meaning that he would return 
to a treaty similar to that of Adrianople. He had only meant to say 
that 

“if by any treaty which the fortune of war might enable them to make, they 
could secure a peace for twenty-five years, considering the instability of human 
affairs they would not have done amiss. He had never recommended a return to the 
status quo, nor did he not object to the status quo. Before the declaration of war the 
status quo had been all they hoped for or desired, and all that they attempted to 
attain, and it was that which the Turkish Government consented to give, and it was 
much more than they had a right to expect. But, from the instant war had been 
declared, the whole question was changed entirely, and everything depended upon 
the war itself.... How far they might ultimately deviate from the status quo no man 
could say, as it depended on events not in their power absolutely to control. This 
he would say, that the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire must be 
secured, effectually secured.” 

How it is to be secured Lord Aberdeen could not say, as this, 
again, depended on the events of the war. 

He had been understood to express some doubt or disbelief as 
to the danger of Russian aggression, but, in fact, he had the 
greatest alarm at Russian aggression on Turkey, although he did 
not feel great alarm with respect to the danger of Russian 
aggression on Europe, and “he was inclined to feel less so every 
day.” He considered France more powerful than Russia and 
Austria put together. The noble Lord then complained of the 
“extraordinary absurdity and malignity of the personal imputations to which he had been exposed.” It was true that there was 
no greater peacemonger in the country than himself, but his very 
love of peace peculiarly fitted him to carry on the war in the most 
vigorous manner. | | 

“His colleagues would admit that he personally had been more urgent than 
perhaps any other man in exhorting a speedy advance and concentration of the 
allied forces beyond the Balkans, in order to support the gallant army of Omer 
Pasha, and to extend a hand to Austria, in order to enable her to take a more 
active part in the operations of the war.” 

This was the course he invariably urged. On the interpellation 
of Lord Beaumont’ he declared that 

“intimate as he formerly was with Prince Metternich, since he had been in 
office, for the last eighteen months, he had not communicated with him, directly or 
indirectly, until a few days ago, when a friend told him she was about to write to’ 
Metternich, and asked him whether he had anything to say to the Prince; 
whereupon he said: ‘Pray, make my best remembrances to him.’” 

Aberdeen’s speech was on the whole favorably received by the 
House; but it is a curious fact that the acrimonious answer that he 
met with from the Marquis of Clanricarde—a_ disappointed 
place-hunter, and Lord Palmerston’s old Embassador at St. 
Petersburg—was not replied to by any member of the Cabinet, 
and that none of them came forward to certify to his having been 
the foremost in urging a vigorous war. 

The Marquis of Clanricarde” principally dwelt upon Aberdeen’s 
participation in the treaty of Adrianople; the general character of 
his political past, and on the shortcomings of his present 
administration. He said that Lord Aberdeen had produced now, 
for his own personal convenience and from a merely personal 
motive, a dispatch which he had some months ago refused to 
other members of either House. It was, however, quite different 
from what the noble lord had written to St. Petersburg in 
December, 1829, when the treaty of Adrianople had been signed 
in September. The real question was what instructions he had 
given to their Embassador‘ at that time, and what steps he had 
taken to prevent the signing of the treaty. The Russian general 
commanding at Adrianople had not had above 15,000 men, and 
that amount had to be diminished by some 5,000 or 6,000 who, 
either from disease or wounds, were literally hors de combat*. The 
Turkish general’ on the other hand, was within a short distance 
with 25,000 Albanians. The Russian general gave a very short 
respite to Turkey to sign or not to sign, for he knew that his real 
position might be discovered if he gave a long one. Consequently 
he did not give beyond five or eight days. At Constantinople the 

“ Lord Beaumont’s interpellation to the House of Commons on June 26, 1854. 
The Times, No. 21778, June 27, 1854.— Fd. 
The Marquis of Clanricarde’s speech in the House of Lords on June 26, 1854. 
The Times, No. 21778, June 27, 1854.— Ed. 
: Gordon.— Ed. 
General Diebich.— Ed. 
© Out of action.— Ed. 
: Apparently Mustapha Pasha.— Ed. 

Minister of Turkey summoned to his council the French and 
English Embassadors and the Prussian Minister, and asked for 
their advice.’ The English Embassador, under instructions from 
Lord Aberdeen, tendered the advice to sign as soon as possible 
that treaty which the noble lord now told them was so disastrous. 

The noble Marquis did not like to allude to the circumstance, 
that it was exactly the vehement denunciation which his friend 
Palmerston, then in opposition, directed against Lord Aberdeen, 
when he charged him with being yet too anti-Russian, which 
induced the latter to give the order for the signing of the treaty. 

The Marquis proceeded to reproach the Premier with having 
been always the most zealous, the most constant, and the most 
powerful supporter of the arbitrary governments of Europe, in 
_ proof of which he reviewed the history of Portugal, Belgium, and 

Spain, alluding to Aberdeen’s opposition to the famous Quadruple 
Alliance of 1834.'°' It certainly wanted all the cool impudence of 
an old Whig Lord to exult, at this moment, in the glory of 
Belgium, the constitutionalism in Portugal and Spain, and the 
general blessings Europe derives from the Quadruple Alliance 
which Palmerston, in his defense, falsely stated to have been 
devised not by himself but by Talleyrand. 

As to the operations of the present war, Clanricarde said that 
the plan of the campaign had been drawn up by the highest 
military authorities in Russia, in December last, and that the 
British Government had been informed of that plan, aiming not at 
the mere occupation of the Principalities, but at crossing the 
Danube, seizing Silistria, masking Shumla, and marching on the 
Balkans. The noble Lord, with such information in his possession, 
had come down to this House talking of peace, and neglecting to 
give those orders which were at the time given by the Cabinet to 
the Ministry of War until the end of February or the beginning of 
March. . 

If Lord Clanricarde had chosen to remember the answers given 
by Lord Palmerston* to Mr. Disraeli in the Commons and by Lord 
Clarendon?” to himself in the Lords, he would have abstained from 
the ridicule of charging with those neglects of duty only Lord 
Aberdeen, and exempting his Whig friends from a blame equally 
attaching to the whole Cabinet. 

* Lord Palmerston’s speech in the House of Commons on February 20, 1854. 
The Times, No. 21670, February 21, 1854.— Ed. 

» Lord Clarendon’s speech in the House of Lords on February 6, 1854. The 
Times, No. 21658, February 7, 1854.— Ed. 

“If,” exclaimed the Marquis—“if a proper, he would almost say an honest, 
course had been taken by the Government fifteen months ago, there never would 
have been a war.” 

Now, these are the very same words which Mr. Disraeli 
addressed to Lord John Russell. 

Finally, the Marquis has the absurdity to charge also Lord 
Aberdeen, individually and exclusively, with al] the failures of the 
coalition, and their continuous defeat in Parliament on. all 
important questions. It does not occur to his memory that at the 
very formation of the Cabinet it was declared by every judicious 
man, that it could not hold together for six weeks except it left all 
legislation an open question, and abstained from politics. 

After a silly speech from Lord Brougham,* who expressed 
himself very much contented with Lord Aberdeen’s first speech, 
but still more so with his second one, the subject dropped. 

The serious result of this whole incident is the baffling of the 
secret protocol drawn up at Vienna, and consequently the 
continuance of hostilities, and of a war, the speedy cessation of 
which was so confidently anticipated that consols rose 3 per cent. 
notwithstanding heavy loans in the market, and that any bets were 
taken at the military clubs against the prolongation of war beyond 
four weeks. 

Written on June 27, 1854 Reproduced from the New-York 

; ; : ; Daily Tribune 
Tribune, No, 4126, July 10; reprinted 
in the New-York Semi-Weekly Tribune, 
No. 952, July 11 and the New-York Weekly 
Tribune, No. 670, July 15, 1854 

Signed: Karl Marx